The BBC’s future is hanging by a thread

Reading the speech Tony Hall gave to the Edinburgh Television Festival, I was struck by his upbeat, confident tone. The outgoing director-general of the BBC talked about how its reporting of the coronavirus crisis had brought its core mission as a public service broadcaster into sharper focus and boosted its popularity, particularly among 16- to 34-year-olds. He said his goal when he arrived at the BBC was to reach a global audience of 500 million by 2022, its centenary year, and this target has now been revised upwards to a billion by the end of the decade. ‘But it needs extra investment from government and that bid is with them right now,’ he said.

Doesn’t Tony Hall realise that the BBC’s future is hanging by a thread? The corporation struck a deal with the government five years ago whereby it promised to cover the cost of providing free TV licences to the over-75s in return for hiking up the licence fee, and it has now reneged on that deal.