It won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that the National Audit Office thinks the BBC faces ‘significant’ uncertainty over its financial future due to changes in viewing habits. The NAO’s findings are about as ground-breaking as your average anodyne Beeb drama, but they do tighten the cilice on a funding model that is impossibly outdated in the 21st century.
In the past decade alone, there has been a 30 per cent decline in BBC TV viewing; on average, the amount of time an adult spent watching broadcast BBC TV fell from 80 minutes per day in 2010 to 56 minutes in 2019.
When it comes to younger viewers, the NAO’s findings are ever more troubling for the BBC: in the UK, 18-34 year olds now watch seven times as much Netflix and YouTube as BBC1 content. They spend more time watching Netflix and YouTube than all other public service channels put together.
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