Culture, Media and Sport Committee
9 June 2026
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Culture, Media and Sport Committee House of Commons
00:00 - 01:13
Speaker 6
Order. Welcome to this morning's meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. And today is the third oral evidence session of our BBC Royal Charter Review inquiry. And we're joined by our first panel, which is Iain Dale, broadcaster, author, journalist, podcaster, a list as long as my arm of achievements. And similarly, joined by Jordan Schwarzenberger, the CEO and founder of Arcade, but also very well known as a key figure in the Sidemen collective.
So you're very welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. I would just remind members to declare an interest at the point that you ask your questions, please. And I would like to kick off the questions with you, please, Iain, if I can. What's your answer to the argument that the BBC is a public good and should be paid for by households irrespective of whether they watch live TV or whether they watch BBC News, or all they do is listen to the West Ham game on Radio 5 Live?
01:13 - 02:21
Speaker 5
Um, thank you, Chair. First of all, thanks for inviting me to give evidence. I should say I'm speaking in a personal capacity. I do not represent Global Media in what I say. I think that argument held up until maybe the last 20 years where people have so much more choice as to how they watch and what they watch.
And you see the drop-off in the number of people paying the license fee. People don't see why they should have to pay a license fee, even though we could all articulate the argument that public service broadcasting needs to be funded by the public. Most houses now have subscriptions to Netflix, to Disney, to well, whatever. So they're used to paying for subscriptions and rather, I think a lot of people resent the fact that they're effectively paying what 40 years ago we would have called a poll tax. And I remember writing a piece six years ago on the future of the BBC where I said, well, look, it's up to the BBC to come up with alternatives because they must realize as an entity that things will have to change at some point.
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