The licence fee is not the BBC's problem. The BBC's idea of itself is.
Funding reform will not save an institution that no longer agrees on what it is for.
Every conversation about the future of the BBC eventually defaults to the licence fee. It is the wrong conversation, conducted in the wrong room, and it is allowing the institution to avoid the question that actually matters.
The licence fee is a funding mechanism. Funding mechanisms can be replaced; many have been. What cannot be replaced, easily or quickly, is institutional clarity about purpose — and on that front, the BBC has been visibly drifting for the better part of a decade.
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