A Spectator's Notebook
THE BBC's incorpe, we are told by the Committee of Public Accounts, is 'considerably in excess of its immediate needs.' This will presumably lead to a demand that a larger slice of licence revenue should be appropriated by the State. In theory this can be justified by the same arguments that 'raiding the Road Fund' used to be justified : that the revenue from motorists' activities was higher than could profitably be spent. The present state of the roads suggests that this argument was misguided : if the money had been spent on them, Britain would not now be in the ignominious situation of having the most antiquated, inefficient and dangerous roads of any civilised country in the world. In any case, it will be as well to bear in mind that the snipers against the BBC are not all disinterested men, whose only desire is to save the taxpayer a few pennies. Last autumn the Spectator warned that after a few months of commercial televisiOn a campaign would be opened against the licence system 'based on the reasonable assumption that millions of viewers getting good service from the commercial stations can easily be stirred into resentment at having to pay £3 a year to the BBC.' It was with no surprise, therefore, that I read a letter to the Daily Telegraph last week from the Secretary of the Popular Television Committee, which always pops up when hatchet work needs to be done. 'The BBC admit that three out of five viewers who are free to choose prefer the ITA programmes,' the letter ran. 'Would it not seem, therefore, that the licence fee, which makes no con- tribution to ITA costs, is too high?'
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