Two great anxieties are running Britain’s media ragged as Gordon Brown’s visions of Digital Britain take shape. One, stretching back over anxious decades, is the BBC’s fear of losing its licence fee (or watching it sliced away by competitors short of advertising). The other, transfixing both national and regional press, sees internet websites taking over print’s role without providing anything approaching traditional newspaper revenue streams: no cover price, few subscriptions, only fatally cheap ads. These are the ways that worlds end – unless somebody comes up with a bright idea. So tie these two ends together.The BBC fights to keep its fee by offering something for everybody, even at the peripheries of a broadcasting brief. Thus, this year, it is raising its website spending to £145m, surging on with iPlayer promotion, beginning to stream full-length programmes on demand to your laptop or mobile phone. The television set in the front room and the PC in the office are no longer separate tools; they are merging, becoming the same. Fantastic value for £142.50 a year, perhaps, but gradually, inexorably, turning into a net loss. For there, just beside the 45-inch flat screen in your living room, is an elephant that can’t be ignored.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/19/internet-licence-fee
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