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British Broadcasting Corp (BBC)- End of story, How to protect its funding, should license fees be shared with rivals?

By Amarendra Bhushan for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:July 3, 2009

The British Broadcasting Corp. is preparing an aggressive defense against a plan to redistribute some of its funding to struggling commercial rivals — the opening salvo in a broader budget struggle over one of the world’s wealthiest state broadcasters.

The outline of a law proposed by the ruling Labour Party this week would allocate £125 million ($200 million) of the BBC’s £4.4 billion annual budget to rival media outlets to provide television news. While the proposal involves a fairly small portion of the BBC’s budget, it could open the door to more sweeping attempts to tap into the BBC’s rich funding in the future, BBC executives fear, wsj reported.

BBC’s funding:

- £3.4 billion it receives annually from a £142.50 tax (TV license fee).

- The BBC will continue to be funded by the television licence fee for the next 15 years.

- TV tax is scheduled for renewal in 2012 (it could either be reduced or shared with other outlets).

- Two-thirds of all shows made by U.K. television networks are BBC productions.

- 56% of all U.K. radio shows are made by the BBC.

- The most-read news Web site in the U.K. is bbc.co.uk

- Under the new law, commercial media outlets would be given money earmarked for the BBC to produce TV news bulletins about cities and towns that don’t have their own commercial TV stations.

- Under the proposals, up to £100m of the BBC’s funding could be used to pay independent companies to make regional news programmes. A further £30m could be made available for producers to make current affairs documentaries either for television or the internet.

The BBC’s publicly funded position has come under more and more scrutiny as its commercial rivals have struggled in the economic downturn.

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