as a specialist adviser during their inquiry into the wider public service broadcasting landscape. and, of course, they did havejohn whittingdale in front of them at that time answering questions. and i think that. i mean, i went into that inquiry thinking, yes, why doesn t the bbc have the courage of its convictions around some of its great content? why don t they ask people to pay for it? and they could end up maybe making more money out of that than they do from the licence fee. but what i learned as you ve heard from helen and from phil is that we don t have the infrastructure that would allow that to happen. a key tenet of the bbc has to be universality. and if, ultimately, you went down a subscription route, you would end up disenfranchising or cutting people off from bbc content at the most vulnerable fringes of our society so people who are geographically remote, or perhaps don t have the money or the inclination to get onto high speed broadband and that would be the la
is the big problem with the licence fee coming, because ultimately young people aren t they re not watching on tv. so in some ways, a licence fee has to attach itself to some other form of infrastructure that s more universally used. and also, young people aren t consuming bbc content in the way that older people do. but that s something that needs to be considered. the argument that the government appears to want to be having is the wrong argument. ok, well, radio four is taking a deep dive into all these issues about how to fund the bbc if the licence fee goes. the briefing room with david aaronovitch is on thursday evening at 8pm on radio four, and available via bbc sounds afterwards, for listeners now who want even more on the licence fee. but for us, today, let s zoom out of these discussions for a moment, because within all these newspaper scoops about operation red meat and parties at downing street, there are some pretty difficult questions for the media to answer. for exampl
and they could end up maybe making more money out of that than they do from the licence fee. but what i learned as you ve heard from helen and from phil is that we don t have the infrastructure that would allow that to happen. a key tenet of the bbc has to be universality. and if, ultimately, you went down a subscription route, you would end up disenfranchising or cutting people off from bbc content at the most vulnerable fringes of our society so people who are geographically remote, or perhaps don t have the money or the inclination to get onto high speed broadband and that would be the last thing that anybody wants. so on that basis, there is a big problem with the licence fee coming, because ultimately young people aren t they re not watching on tv. so in some ways, a licence fee has to attach itself to some other form of infrastructure that s more universally used. and also, young people aren t consuming bbc content in the way that older people do. but that s something t