BBC Director General Tony Hall announced yesterday that in a few months BBC3 will become an online-only channel. As someone who has never knowingly watched BBC3, my reaction to this is one of near indifference. But consider.
The BBC is paid for via the licence fee. There are many arguments against the licence fee, the most cogent being that it is effectively a broadcasting poll tax which takes no account of ability to pay. There's nothing the Corporation can do about that, but it has tried assiduously to disarm another objection - that the licence fee forces people to pay for something they may not in fact use - by providing programmes to suit every taste. There will be few TV watchers who can't find anything to enjoy, and as commercial TV has gone downmarket, the BBC has followed it conscientiously. It's been an impressive attempt to outflank the Corporation's opponents.
Last night I watched the final episode of Outnumbered on iPlayer. As it happens, I have paid the licence fee, but I could have watched it legally without having done so. That's an annoying anomaly. But by sticking BBC3 online Tony Hall has gone one step further.
It's one thing to make available online a programme that's previously been broadcast on TV, where the licence fee for that device has paid to produce the programme. However making people pay, via the TV licence fee, for something that isn't even going to be broadcast on TV is another matter.
It seems to be blindingly obvious to me that the future of the BBC lies in subscription. By that I mean, that's where we'll end up, for good or ill. As soon as it became possible to watch programmes on a computer the argument for the licence fee became impossible to sustain. Making programmes to watch on computers only is, in that context, frankly ridiculous.
According to a report in the Torygraph today, Tony Hall "would like the licence fee to be extended to iPads and other tablets, as well as smartphones and all other devices capable of gaining access to BBC content". If true, this is a mad proposal. Firstly, can you imagine any politician telling people they needed a licence to have an iPhone? Electoral hari kiri. Secondly, "all other devices" would presumably include laptops and PCs. Would we be the only country in the world stupid enough to licence ownership of computers? What about the computer user who doesn't watch BBC programmes?
All this leads me to the rather gloomy conclusion that if Hall understands the import of the BBC3 decision at all, he has drawn the wrong conclusion from it. For the licence fee to be justified the bare minimum requirements are that the licence should be for the device via which the content is accessed and that without the licence it shouldn't be possible to access the content legally. Ironically the BBC itself drove a coach and horses through this principle by coming up with the iPlayer. Post the BBC3 shift online, that argument is in tatters, and the news that Hall is seeking to square the circle by licensing the other content accessing devices looks to me a desperate flailing around to avoid the inevitable.
Subscription. Be afraid.
