UK mulls idea of making streaming services users pay license fee to fund BBC - report
Seeking Alpha News (Tue, 28-Jan 12:47 PM)
The UK is thinking of making households who use streaming services like Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Disney (NYSE:DIS) pay a license fee as part of plans to fund the British Broadcasting Corp., Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the internal government deliberations.
The report said alternatives under discussion include allowing the BBC to use advertising, imposing a specific tax on streaming services, and asking those who listen to BBC radio to pay a fee.
Another option is to leave the license fee largely as it is, with a few tweaks, a continuation of uprating, and better enforcement, a person familiar with the internal deliberations told Bloomberg. If there were an obvious alternative model, the license fee would have been scrapped already, they added.
Sources told Bloomberg that government discussions are preliminary at the moment and nothing has been decided. The UK government is in the early stages of examining how to fund Britain’s public broadcaster when its current 11-year charter ends after 2027.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office, the Treasury, and the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport said they wouldn’t comment on “speculation,” adding, “We will provide more details about charter review plans in due course.”
However, a report from Deadline on Tuesday suggested the British government has effectively ruled out the idea of imposing a levy on U.S. streamers amid a funding crisis for domestic scripted series.
Sir Chris Bryant, the creative industries minister, reportedly told lawmakers that “we haven’t got any plans” to follow other European countries in introducing a so-called streamer levy.
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