The pace at which households are opting not to pay the licence fee has been alarming BBC executives for months, with the annual report conceding a \u201csteeper projected decline in licence fee sales\u201d.<\/p>\n
The report also revealed that the BBC\u2019s top on-air earner in 2025-26 was Scott Mills, on \u00a3750,000, though he has since been sacked after allegations about his personal conduct<\/a>.<\/p>\n It means the top earner is now the radio presenter Greg James, who earns up to \u00a3445,000 a year. He is followed by fellow radio presenters Stephen Nolan, on \u00a3430,000, and Vernon Kay, on \u00a3410,000, and the television presenter Laura Kuenssberg, also on \u00a3410,000.<\/p>\n It comes amid huge change in the media that has seen the rise of streaming services and digital platforms such as YouTube. While 94% of people in the UK continued to use the BBC each month, fewer than 80% of households contributed to the licence fee.<\/p>\n The broadcaster said changing audience behaviours was having a \u201csignificant adverse impact on licence fee income\u201d. It also said a \u201clight sports year\u201d meant it had not been able to use big sports events to drive licence fee sales.<\/p>\n The BBC is aiming to make about \u00a3500m in savings over three years, with as many as 2,000 job losses planned. Photograph: Graeme Robertson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The BBC is scrambling to make cuts<\/a> that will result in as many as 2,000 job losses and about \u00a3500m in savings over three years. Major changes to the licence fee are being lined up to arrest its decline.<\/p>\n The current licence fee only covers those watching live television or iPlayer, but BBC executives and government figures accept the definition is now outdated.<\/p>\n There are signs that the fee will be expanded to include anyone who watches streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime, with the fee potentially added to subscriptions for those services.<\/p>\n While it is only one option being discussed, it appears to be the one with the broadest support. Brittin has said replacing the licence fee with a household levy would be simpler and easier to collect, but ministers have ruled this out, deeming it a new tax.<\/p>\n The BBC\u2019s licence fee income rose slightly because the levy increased to \u00a3174.50 in April last year. However, despite the \u00a33.9bn it receives from the licence fee and \u00a32.1bn it generates through its commercial arm, the BBC made an operating loss for the third year in a row. It recorded a deficit of \u00a3121m in 2025-26.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter | Every day<\/p>\n Sign up to Headlines UK<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The BBC said the licence fee income was around a quarter lower, about \u00a31.2bn in real terms, than in 2017, when its current royal charter was agreed.<\/p>\n Brittin said the BBC was facing \u201creal challenges\u201d, adding that he was carrying out a root and branch review of what it produces.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a moment of real jeopardy, not just for the BBC but for public service broadcasting and the UK as a whole,\u201d Brittin said. \u201cMaking the savings we require will not be easy and will inevitably have an impact on what we make and how we deliver it. We have to ask ourselves, honestly: if we were inventing the BBC today, what would we do?<\/p>\n \u201cThe BBC has proved throughout its history how quickly it can reinvent itself to serve the needs of audiences \u2013 from restructuring for world war 2 to repurposing during Covid, to spinning up services in conflict zones. We need, collectively, to call on that sense of urgency now.\u201d<\/p>\n Samir Shah, the BBC chair, acknowledged the impact of a series of BBC controversies in the last year that ultimately led to the departure of Tim Davie as director general.<\/p>\n \u201cThe challenges faced by the BBC over the past year have been significant \u2013 from the Panorama edit of President Trump\u2019s speech<\/a> on 6 January 2021 and the breach of our editorial guidelines by Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone<\/a>, to the serious broadcasting errors at Glastonbury<\/a> and the Bafta film awards<\/a>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that people care deeply about these mistakes. They affect confidence in our journalism, trust in the BBC as a public institution, and perceptions about how effectively we are held to account.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of people paying the BBC\u2019s licence fee has fallen faster than expected in the last year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-540907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782393755_714_500.jpg\")
<\/p>\n