Speeches by Hinds.

“Am I right in remembering that, with the Swiss example, part of it was to do with radio playing in businesses? So, all households and businesses became liable for this fee. Maybe it was TV and radio, but there was quite a brouhaha about businesses. And you have got to make those decisions, right? You have got to say, “…”

“Again, that might be a cultural difference. In this country, I think that we are absolutely used to saying the Government make decisions, and if the people do not like the decisions that the Government make, the people kick out the Government. You are right—there are degrees of directness in democratic accountability. …”

“Who of everybody else do we think will suffer the most?”

“I am glad you mentioned Switzerland, because that highlights another question. There is an interesting intellectual and policy question about where you want to end up, but there is also an interesting question about what happens by just making a change, wherever you go. Natasha was jokingly referring to what happens wh…”

“Answerable to who?”

“Although you are right that it did not match up to expectations or hopes in the domestic market, there was not a colossal public backlash against that idea of, “If you want to watch ‘The Good Life’ from the 1970s, it is on this subscription channel.” Q109 I notice that iPlayer now has its own little classics section, s…”

“Sorry to rush you, but of course there is a difference with some of those tech plays that you spoke about, because on terrestrial TV you cannot do programmatic advertising fully. That may change over time. In theory, if you can start doing the same targeting on telly and on radio as you can with online advertising, tha…”

“At all?”

“Germany is a very different country from ours. I have been scribbling down a few of the relevant differences. It has a written and recent constitution, and they are used to having political parties part paid for by the state. There is even a church tax where churches are funded through tax, and there are all the guilds…”

“They have a referendum for everything. They would have a referendum about a Toblerone.”

“But it is slightly different to talk about an ad/no ad thing. Unless I was really bad at looking, I think it was the case that you could get only a certain amount of BBC stuff going back only so far on iPlayer, and for the “classics”, you got BritBox. In covid, a lot of us, or our children, discovered classic comedy, b…”

“Sorry, but can I interrupt you there, Maria? You say it is a problem that the Government set the level. If the Government do not set the level and it is a compulsory charge, where is the democratic legitimacy?”

“This is an important piece of work from Alan Milburn, but what principles will underpin the Government’s approach? Does the Minister think that, other things being equal, if we increase the cost of employing people, then that will come at the expense of jobs? Does he think that, with slack in the labour market, if we d…”

“You mentioned having a core PSB offering and a separate subscription service. You also talked about BritBox—that was what BritBox did, was it not?”

“Very few people know that, though. More people knew what BritBox was. BritBox had ITV and Channel 4 branding, but it had heavy BBC branding, if I recall correctly.”

“Rob, you mentioned UKTV. If the BBC were to introduce advertising into its core UK offering that people recognise as the BBC, what would that do to the size of the advertising spend market? To what extent would it grow it? If it does not grow it, where does that spend come from?”

“Yes, if you are signed in, but lots of people are still consuming radio and telly without being signed in, so you cannot track them as an individual, right?”

“Yes, that is the key question.”

“Has anybody done analysis of what would happen to the total available funding for British-produced content if you did not have a licence fee at all and were just reliant on ad revenue?”

“Yes.”