MICHAEL GRADE, the new Chairman of the BBC, began his first day in the job with a stirring pledge to defend the licence fee. And now, not to be outdone, Mark Thompson, the BBC’s newly appointed Director-General, wonders whether the licence fee will “grow quickly enough to keep pace with viewers’ expectations”. The licence fee is an unfair, legally enforceable, regressive tax, and it is deeply unpopular. But, despite that, it will probably be retained.

The Government is keen to demonstrate its respect for BBC independence in the wake of the Hutton report. For its part, the Conservative Party now apparently regards itself as the corporation’s friend and protector. Like most other “great debates” in Britain that rely on the political parties, this one has already gone by default.

But we should not be surprised. Forget Eton, the Guards and Home Counties golf clubs. Broadcasting is one of the last redoubts of unchallenged elitism in British society. The high-decibel disputes which occur from time to time about what is shown on television are never permitted to go as far as challenging core institutions, let alone the assumptions behind them.

True, the BBC has been forced grudgingly to confront change. Lord Reith’s original demand for public sector monopoly, on the ground that “an ethical policy cannot stand competition”, had to give way to the emergence of ITV in the 1950s, more terrestrial channels and cable in the 1980s, and satellite broadcasting in the 1990s. The digital revolution now means that the BBC has to operate in a world of 400 channels.

It is, therefore, a tribute to the corporation’s clout that the broadcasting elite can find any arguments at all to make in favour of subsidies, cartels and state intervention. But they manage.

BROADCASTING is an industry that has been transformed by technology more than almost any other. No one seriously argues that those other industries should be coddled, coerced and controlled, as enlightened opinion still requires for broadcasting. As the far-sighted Peacock report envisaged in 1985, broadcasting has evolved a network of producers, outlets and customers, similar to publishing. The State does not control a single newspaper which everyone has to buy — on pain of a fine or prison sentence. Nor does the State license bookshop chains on the basis that it approves of the material they sell. Yet that is what happens, mutatis mutandis, in broadcasting — where the BBC operates as Pravda and the ITV companies as something like the Gum stores of Soviet Russia.

The root of the problem is the concept of public service broadcasting. Governments and directors-general come and go. But veneration of public service broadcasting never seems to falter. No one knows any longer precisely what it means. It now usually refers to the broadcasting of current affairs, high culture, educational and minority interest programmes that no one would otherwise very much want to see. But it retains its importance to the vested interests. Above all, it is used by the BBC to preserve its illiberal licence fee and by the ITV companies to preserve their cartel in advertising.

Public service broadcasting is nowadays justified, as in the Davies report in 1999, as a “merit good”. Such goods, we are told, cannot be left to markets to provide because they have a value to society that exceeds the valuation an individual would place upon them. But the economics is a smoke screen. We live in a diverse society, where there is really no common agreement about values. In any case, the fundamental objection remains: who shall decide whether something is meritorious enough to be force-fed to the public? In every age, the answer is the same: those who wield power. The British broadcasting clerisy has enough already.

The author is Consultant Director of Politeia.

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