London cutting
The BBC World Service is in financial trouble. Bad news for Britain and for the free world.
‘Hands off the BBC’, shouted the veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner in one of his usual heckles during the summoning of the House of Commons for the then Queen’s Speech. In spite of his longtime socialist views, this little newsletter might have agreed with Mr. Skinner that indeed it was best for the government to steer clear of the state broadcaster, watering down the proposed reform at the time.
Yet, rather than reporting the news, lately the BBC has been at the centre of it, and it might most definitely need a friendly hand to solve its own internal matters. In the space of a year, its best-known presenter was handed a suspended six-month prison sentence for accessing indecent images of children, and a documentary on the war in Gaza was pulled after it emerged that its protagonist was the son of a Hamas deputy minister. Not an enviable record! If that was not enough, the Corporation has also been recently accused of anti-Israel biases for the broadcast of an anti-IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) chant by a rap duo at Glastonbury, a music festival in the South West of England that is taking place in these very days. With negotiations for the new Charter due to start in 2027, things do not look great for Auntie Beeb at home.
However, it is abroad that the BBC faces the most severe and daunting challenges for its future as a world-leading broadcaster. The World Service, hailed as the ‘jewel of the crown’ of the BBC offering, finds itself in serious financial trouble. Given that the last Tory governments chronically underfunded it, the BBC has had to repeatedly cut many language services, with dire implications for audiences worldwide.
Although in 2024 the new Labour government allocated more money to the World Service, the uptick came too little, too late, and a further round of cuts took place at the end of January this year.
Moreover, the government is not likely to foot the bill again in the future. As part of the slashing of the foreign aid budget announced last February by Sir Keir (from 0.5% to 0.3% of GDP), the Foreign Office is exploring further cuts to the World Service funding. Under this scenario, it is likely that more language services will have no option but to close, as unnamed BBC sources told The Guardian in June.
For its part, the Corporation is trying to look for alternative ways to raise funds abroad, with the licence fee under scrutiny at home. In February, it announced plans to close the audio app BBC Sounds for listeners outside the UK, replacing it with a new audio section on the international app and website. Contrary to the UK website, internationally the BBC website carries advertisements and is operated by BBC Studios, its overseas commercial arm.
Moreover, the Corporation announced last Thursday that for the first time it will introduce a paywall for users in America, which attracts the biggest audience to the BBC website outside Britain.
Party like a Russian (or a Chinese)
In rare good news, the BBC has just opened a new website and service in Polish and is experimenting with artificial intelligence to reach more people abroad. However, all these efforts are a long way off from being enough to save the World Service. According to the Financial Times, about £137mn of the £400mn World Service budget for 2024 came from government grants. Replacing them remains a long shot for an already struggling BBC.
With its future uncertain, and with it the future of much of the remaining British soft power abroad, it is likely that in Moscow and Beijing the demise of ‘London calling’ will be celebrated. After all, in areas where BBC coverage is brought to a halt, the Russian and Chinese governments are bringing their own state media to take up the very same frequencies left free by the BBC.
Mr. Skinner was right at the time to advocate for the independence of the BBC from the government. However, to avoid that even foreign actors might sooner rather than later put their hands on the BBC itself, the Corporation needs external help and proper funding, urgently.