Boris Johnson has not been considered a great friend of public television for a long time - at least since he canceled participation in a TV debate on Channel 4 and the broadcaster placed a melting block of ice in his place. The Tories were not amused by this and complained to the British media regulator. Now the prime minister is indirectly questioning the future of the BBC: he is considering decriminalizing the failure to pay broadcasting fees, a government spokesman said. Tory MP Rishi Sunak confirmed these plans to the British media, the Guardian reported.
The BBC is funded similarly to public service broadcasting in Germany. Unlike in Germany, the British only have to pay a radio license fee if they own a television or are registered as users on the BBC's iPlayer web platform.
This fee revenue is the main source of income for the UK broadcaster. It takes criminal action against people who do not pay the amount. Without enforcing these rights, the BBC estimates it would lose £ 200m annually, according to a New York Times report.
Radio 4 boycotted
The Guardian reported that Johnson is not a fan of the BBC, as shown in the boycott of radio station Radio 4: due to alleged anti-Tory reporting, he canceled an appearance in the station's prestigious morning program at the weekend.
Already during the election campaign, Johnson had threatened to cut the BBC's fees, the Guardian said. The prime minister proposed that the broadcasting fee be converted into a general tax. However, Parliament would have to approve changes to the BBC funding model.
Most recently, however, the BBC had to struggle with the "Netflix effect": According to a report by the "Times", fewer and fewer people paid the radio license fees. More than 860,000 of the UK's TV licenses were canceled within a year, it said. This is probably also due to the growing popularity of streaming offers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, commented the news agency "Bloomberg" at the time.
