£174.50 for What? The BBC ‘TV Tax’ Is Collapsing
Britain has moved to on-demand choice — but the BBC still relies on a compulsory household charge.
On 16 December 2025, the government launched the BBC Royal Charter Review and published its Green Paper, “Britain’s Story: The Next Chapter.” Charter reviews happen anyway — but this one lands at the moment when the relevance of the licence fee couldn’t be more in the spotlight.
The numbers explain why. The BBC is now losing £1.1bn+ a year through evasion and opt-outs. And 3.6 million households have formally declared they “do not need” a licence — up 50% since 2020/21.
That isn’t a wobble. That’s a funding model coming apart.
🏠 Unfair by Design: A Household Tax in a World of Choice
The licence fee is sold as a “fee” for a service. In reality, it behaves like a flat household tax.
It’s charged per household, not per person — so a single adult living alone pays the same £174.50 as a family of four. Income doesn’t matter. Household size doesn’t matter. Usage doesn’t matter.
In the 1970s and 1980s, this was easier to defend because choice was limited and most households consumed the BBC by default. That world has gone.
To be clear: if you don’t watch live TV and don’t use BBC iPlayer, you can legally opt out — and the fact millions now do exactly that is the clearest sign the licence fee is becoming unsustainable. Because it isn’t “consumer choice” if the state still demands payment as the default, even when people increasingly live outside broadcast TV altogether.
📉 The Audience Has Collapsed — and the Alternatives Are Winning
Shared viewing has plummeted. One comparison makes the point:
In 1985, Only Fools and Horses (To Hull and Back) drew 16.9 million viewers on BBC1.
In 2025, one of the biggest Christmas Day entertainment titles, The Scarecrows’ Wedding, drew 4.31 million (reported overnight figure).
And it’s not just TV. Even in audio — once the BBC’s fortress — commercial radio has pulled ahead. Commercial radio holds a record 56% share versus the BBC’s 41.7%, with 39.7 million weekly listeners — 8.8 million more than the BBC.
That’s what competition looks like: people choosing what they want, without being forced.
📺 Streaming Giants Show Where Britain Is Heading
Britain’s viewing habits are already elsewhere. Ofcom estimates Netflix is in 59% of UK households, and Amazon Prime Video is in 46%.
And here’s the key signal: audiences aren’t rejecting adverts — they’re accepting them as the price of choice. Ofcom’s VoD survey shows Netflix’s ad-tier rose to 49% in 2025.
People will tolerate ads for a lower price because that’s voluntary. The licence fee isn’t.
⚽ And football exposes the same problem. The BBC pays around £70m+ per year for Premier League highlights. If the BBC didn’t pay, the highlights wouldn’t vanish — the rights would go elsewhere, and the content would still end up on TV and online. So why should a compulsory household charge bankroll expensive highlight packages in a world where highlights exist regardless?
🎙️ The BBC No Longer Has a Monopoly on “Broadcasting to the Nation”
This isn’t the 1980s. You don’t need the BBC to reach Britain.
Today, anyone with an audience can broadcast live on YouTube, X, TikTok, podcasts, streaming platforms, and live radio distributed online. I see it first-hand: I go on The Mike Graham Show regularly — and Mike reaches his own audience completely independently, without a compulsory household TV tax.
And this is where the “star talent” defence collapses:
Chris Evans was paid well over £1.6m on BBC Radio 2 — then took a very similar breakfast show format to Virgin Radio, where listeners can tune in without paying a penny in licence fee “TV tax.” Ken Bruce did the same, leaving Radio 2 for Greatest Hits Radio after years on a published BBC pay band in the hundreds of thousands.
So the question writes itself: why should households be compelled to fund celebrity salaries, when the same output can be delivered directly and funded voluntarily in the open market?
🧨 The Question the Charter Review Can’t Dodge
The BBC can still have a role — especially in areas the market doesn’t naturally provide: trusted news, national moments, education, emergency broadcasting, and cultural output that isn’t built purely to chase clicks.
But the licence fee model is the wrong tool for that job in 2026.
Because it forces everyone to pay as the default, even as millions opt out of broadcast TV entirely, even as audiences fragment, even as the market offers endless alternatives. That isn’t “public service”. It’s compulsion dressed up as tradition.
The principle is simple:
If the BBC is valuable, people will choose it. If it needs enforcement and a household tax to survive, that tells you the model is broken.
The Charter Review should be honest about the options: a genuinely modern levy, a tighter core remit with commercial funding for the rest, or voluntary subscription for non-essential output. What can’t continue is the current limbo: a 20th-century TV tax pretending Britain still has 20th-century viewing habits.
✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions
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Tbh I now watch Traitors, news once a day and the occasional bbc radio 4. That’s all my bbc. I’m now invested in high quality content from YouTube and Times Radio. The licence fee is certainly an outdated model. I will keep paying but I’m becoming very reluctant to subside all these pointless radio and tv stations and the way that Tim Davie decimated local radio.
The bbc and trusted news died a long time ago