TV Licence decriminalization: just how much is it going to cost you?

As there is the potential for the BBC funding method to be changed by Parliament today, I thought it might be helpful to look at how much extra it would cost - or what services would be cut - if the BBC moved from the Licence Fee to subscription or adverts.

You can see the appeal of using "civil recovery" for non payment of the TV Licence but it is not going to come without a cost.

• BBC News - Labour set to back TV licence fee powers change
• The BBC will, in effect, be privatised with vast consequences Telegraph Blogs
• Labour will support Commons vote to decriminalise TV licence fee evaders - Media - theguardian.com

In the diagram below the BBC 2013** service costs are shown on the left, and the current and potential income streams on the right.



The cyan arrow is the current Licence Fee income, the blue and green arrows are two possible subscription levels - "80%", "70%" and "60%" refer to the percentage of UK homes taking the BBC subscription.

I have factored in £4.83 a month for the cost of subscription services over what Licence Fee collection currently costs. This is based on BSkyB Annual Report figures. If the BBC had to provide a scramble and payment service for Freeview, this would be the baseline cost for this too.

The magenta arrow shows the total current adverting revenue for ITV and STV and UTV.

The proposed levels of the BBC service subscription are shown in the second graph.



This graph shows the how BBC subscription income would relate to the current Licence Fee levels for take-up levels of 50% (blue), 60% (orange), 70% (green) and 80% (blue).

For example, if there was an 80% take-up of services, the BBC would need to charge £18 per month to maintain the current service level. At 60%, for no cuts to services would require the charge to be £23 a month.

**The Licence Fee is also funding the BBC World Service radio and S4C from 2015 onwards.