Licence fee to be shared under Tories

Should the conservatives win the next General Election, they are talking of sharing out some of the proceeds from the licence fee with commercial television channels. This would take place through a new fund which would be overseen by an independent commission, the members of which would be picked by MP’s.

Naturally the BBC will still be getting the bulk of the licence fee, but by giving out cash to the likes of ITV, Channel Four and even Sky TV they believe that this will increase the need for the BBC to produce better programming. Therefore the fund is intended not to harm the BBC, rather the opposite in fact, if the other channels are producing good work; it is them up to the BBC to produce better work.

This could work very well in the children’s TV sector, recently we noted that ITV have cutback their children’s programming even further. But maybe with a fund like this available the channel may reconsider or if not one of the other channels would take up the challenge of competing with the BBC for programming which is dedicated to children.