UK’s media watchdog calls for BBC licence fee to be reviewed
The head of the UK’s media watchdog has said the government should look again at how the BBC is funded and called for the national broadcaster to be more transparent in how it handles complaints.
Ofcom chair Michael Grade, a former BBC chair, described the licence fee to the Financial Times as a “regressive tax”, explaining that he would pay no more than a “single mum with three kids in a rented room.”
He added that the national broadcaster needs to be more “independent and transparent” in its approach to how complaints are handled and said this is something Ofcom has pushed “quite hard.”
“The board does need to be much more publicly open about what they think about some of the stuff that becomes controversial. We hardly ever hear from the board and that leaves a vacuum,” Grade told the paper.
It comes as the government is interviewing a shortlist of around 10 candidates to be the next chair of the BBC, including acting chair Dame Elan Closs Stephens and former BBC non-executive director Samir Shah.