Matthew Lesh is a Public Policy Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs and a Director at Freshwater Strategy
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the telescreen could be turned down but never off. The BBC hasn’t gone quite this far in its obsession with shoving its content down our throats. But they’re not too far off either.
The national broadcaster, struggling with declining audiences and licence fee revenues, seems to be giving up on producing content people actually want to watch. Instead, it has come up with a host of creative new ways it expects the Government to force viewers in its direction.
As The Times recently reported, the Beeb has demanded a mandatory BBC button on all remote controls. While Netflix and others must pay for the special privilege, the BBC wants it for free to drive viewers its way.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg of a recent BBC submission to the government’s green paper on media reform. “Prominence of PSM [public service media] content should also be considered across the full audience journey,” the BBC writes, “from turning on a device, to finding and launching content or services, to playback, and navigating to further content.” They also don’t want any “pathways through which audiences discover and access content” to be left unconsidered.
In other words, there’s no escaping Aunty. No matter the device, the platform or context, whether it’s a gaming console, a television screen or anywhere else you may view anything. They even want Ofcom to have “delegated”, that is, unaccountable, powers to push further requirements down the track. In a quickly changing world, democratic accountability and audience choice must apparently be thrown out of the window in the name of everlasting BBC prominence.
This comes as part of Lisa Nandy’s culture department’s proposals, which drew significant attention for proposing ‘prominence’ for public service broadcasters– the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and 5, as well as S4C, the Welsh-language broadcaster – on digital platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. That could mean replacing recommended ‘up next’ videos on TikTok with BBC news clips, whether or not they’re relevant to a user’s interests, or clogging our Instagram feeds with Channel 4 documentaries.
The BBC would also like special passage on mobile and broadcast networks, including priority for its data and zero-rating of its content so it doesn’t count against your data allowance. In 2023, the BBC rejected these ideas on the basis that they would let some content providers “gain a competitive edge”. It would appear that if an idea could benefit the BBC, it is now morally righteous. They also want mandatory radio buttons on car dashboards, clearly worried that drivers are listening to podcasts and streaming music rather than terrestrial radio.
This very concept of ‘prominence’ is unsettling. It amounts to the state directing what private citizens see online, raising serious free speech issues. It undermines alternative broadcasters, content creators and even the news media, all of whom are fighting for eyeballs in a competitive landscape. These demands rest on a fundamental unfairness: replacing algorithms designed to serve people with ones designed to serve the state.
It’s understandable that a government may prefer we spend more of our time watching state-sanctioned media. But as citizens, we should reject this approach in favour of pluralism and, if anything, welcome the fact that we now have many more ways to access information. There is some talk about extending the regime to include national and local newspapers – but possibly on condition that they join a state regulator, a re-run of the Leveson 2 proposal that news publishers would wisely reject.
The BBC is enthusiastically backing the Government on prominence requirements, whether through pressure and negotiation or explicit regulation. The BBC is still Brits’ number one source of trusted news. It has significant quantities of excellent content, many talented staff and an unmatched global reputation. It’s therefore disappointing that the Beeb is now grasping for such obviously self-serving regulatory interventions, rather than spending its time trying to win back audiences and update its business model for the modern era.
In 2016, a major IEA paper edited by Philip Booth explained that a compulsory licence fee makes no sense in the modern world and should be replaced with a more commercial model that forces the BBC to win viewers rather than be funded by default – an argument that perhaps should be revisited as the BBC approaches its Royal Charter review.
The quantity of excellent content provided by the BBC is zero.
I don't think that the BBC are trying to force anyone to watch anything. Nor indeed should they. If BBC iPlayer were a commercial service it would knock Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV and a stack of others, into the proverbial cocked hat. The provison is extensive and the quality excellent. And excellent value when comparing costs. What needs to be addressed are the thieves, millions of them, who decry the. service, but watch it just the same. The sooner the BBC drop the licence fee and go commercial, the better. As the National Broadcaster however, they could and should make illegal access nigh impossible. Unpaid access to all any.streaming services requires some kind of illegal activity , and the BBC is no different with the exception that it has legal powwers that others do not. Educating the nation that stealing TV services is a crime, would be doing another great public service.