BBC Publishes Study on License Fee

LONDON: The BBC has published a new study, carried out by research firm MTM, that finds that households living without the pubcaster for nine days would prefer to pay the license fee and keep the service.

In an attempt to investigate the value audiences get from the BBC, 70 households from across the U.K. went without the BBC's services for nine days. At the start, 48 of them were in favor of either paying nothing and not receiving the BBC or paying a reduced license fee. Two-thirds had changed their mind and were willing to pay the full £2.80-a-week license fee by the end of the period.

In fact, 33 out of the 48 households who originally said they would prefer to not pay at all and not receive the BBC, or who wanted to pay a lower license fee, changed their minds and said they were now willing to pay the full license fee for the BBC. And 21 out of the 22 households who originally said that they were happy to pay the license fee or more still held this view, and 15 of these households believed this even more strongly than at the beginning of the study.

Various reasons were given for people’s willingness to pay the full license fee at the end of the study, including being unable to find alternatives for programs and services they enjoy on the BBC; valuing advertising-free programs; young families not being able to find educational content to match CBBC and CBeebies; participants missing access to Red Button and BBC iPlayer, News and Sport; and an inability to find a replacement for Radio 2 with its presenters and mix of music. More broadly, households commented on the BBC’s cultural and historical role in the U.K. as well as its ability to bring the nation together for Royal events and create national conversations through moments like the killing of Lucy Beale on EastEnders or the Strictly Come Dancing final.

Nick North, the director of BBC Audiences, said: “This rigorous study enabled us to follow a group of U.K. households through their weekly routine to explore their media habits and to identify those occasions—the big must-see shows or the small moments woven into their daily lives—where they felt a sense of loss without the BBC.

“The results showed overwhelmingly that most people felt they got great value from the BBC when they came to realize the full range and breadth of what we provide—often in quite stark contrast to what they thought in advance of the experiment.”