JONATHAN MAITLAND: Labour’s plan for the BBC won’t ever work. But right here, as a stalwart of 40 years, is a radical answer to reserve it

Another week, another BBC crisis. This time it’s President Trump making good on his threat to sue the BBC for $10billion.

It seems potentially catastrophic: that sum is double what the corporation earns annually from the licence fee.

The most likely outcome, however, is a humiliating out of court settlement.

Earlier this year, in a similar case, Trump accused US media company Paramount Global of deceptively editing an interview with former Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The broadcaster settled for a relatively piffling £13.5million ($16million). This would come as scant comfort to the BBC, however. It has been a terrible year, even by its own gaffe-prone standards.

The disastrous Panorama edit, which misleadingly spliced together two different parts of a Trump speech, making it look as if he was inciting violence, followed hot on the heels of a BBC documentary about Gaza which, post-broadcast, turned out to have been narrated by the 13-year-old son of a senior Hamas official.

That, in turn, followed the furore over MasterChef host Gregg Wallace who was sacked after, amongst other things, putting a sock on a certain part of his anatomy, waving it at colleagues and shouting ‘wahey!’

Lower down the food chain in terms of seriousness, but not a good look for our national broadcaster.

And I have not even mentioned the seemingly endless scandals at Strictly Come Dancing.

Testing times indeed.

Which is why I recently received a WhatsApp message from a friend exhorting me to sign an open letter supporting the BBC. It warned of an ‘existential threat’ to the Corporation as its ‘enemies’ threatened to make hay out of scandals.

I declined, despite having worked there on and off, enjoyably, for more than 40 years as a presenter, producer and reporter before becoming a playwright.

I thought it wouldn’t make any difference and, more importantly, felt the letter was focusing on the wrong story.

Because by far the most important existential threat to the Corporation is the issue of its funding for the future. This raises the question of how long the licence fee can last in the age of streaming. And if it goes, what will replace the BBC we know?

Yesterday, the Government published its green paper – or consultation document – on the future funding of the BBC. Not before time.

The combined forces of technology, economics and demographics suggest the licence fee is in its death throes.

Disastrously few 16 to 24-year-olds – tomorrow’s licence fee payers – watch the BBC. The TV watchdog Ofcom says they spend just 5 per cent of their viewing time with the corporation, compared to 34 per cent with platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.

It will be increasingly difficult to argue that we should be forced to pay £174.50 a year or more if that trend continues.

With the consultation paper, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy fires the starting gun on licence fee negotiations to be concluded by 2027 and she announces a range of options for supplementing the BBC’s income.

Those include taking adverts, introducing subscriptions for higher levels of service and making people on higher incomes pay more while students and benefit claimants pay nothing.

This matters. Because so much is at stake, regardless of which side you are on.

You may think a strong BBC is an indispensable foundation of our democracy. Or that it’s run by anti-Semitic, woke snowflakes who believe men can give birth. But you can’t deny its value to our bottom line.

The BBC keeps our creative sector afloat. That industry is worth £124billion, employs more than 2million and contributes 5.8 per cent to UK GDP. Well intentioned though Lisa Nandy’s proposals are, however, they simply wouldn’t work. They are too piece-meal.

As one former culture minister told me this week, they would create a Frankenstein BBC which would please few and invite opposition from the many.

Taking adverts, for example, would be disastrous for commercial broadcasters such as ITV, Sky, Channel 4, and Channel 5, given the increasingly thin advertising income available.

What is needed is something bold and visionary. The BBC can only survive if it goes the whole hog and is fully funded by subscription.

Research has found that up to 70 per cent of us would pay for the BBC voluntarily, which would mean 17 million subscribers. I have crunched some numbers assuming two equally popular pricing points – £150 for a standard annual subscription and £300 for a gold one – and they show that with those subscribers, the BBC could make £3.85billion a year.

That’s £200million more than it currently earns from the licence. And it could be better still. A subscription model opens up potential customers overseas.

This isn’t fantasy economics. Both the £150 and the £300 deals are excellent value, given that a Sky subscription – or at least the top-rate one I pay – costs 400 per cent more than my putative BBC gold one.

I put the figures to Sir Peter Bazalgette, a former ITV chairman and the executive behind Ready Steady Cook, Changing Rooms, Ground Force, Big Brother and more.

Although he is ‘currently’ not in favour of a 100 per cent subscription model, he is ‘intrigued’ by the proposition but thinks it would be risky.

‘You could get a healthy number signing up in year one but a massive fall off in year two which, for the BBC, would be disastrous,’ he told me. ‘However, I would be extremely interested to see proper modelling on this.’ What would help the argument for subscription, says Bazalgette, is ‘consolidation’. By this, he means the BBC merging with Channel 4, for example.

For many industry types – people who lack imagination – consolidation is beyond the pale. It shouldn’t be.

The UK has five public service broadcasters: the BBC, ITV, Channel 5, Channel 4 and S4C. But that seems unsustainable, given ten-tonne gorilla competitors such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple.

If the BBC combined with Channel 4, it could create a global force boasting, under one roof, the likes of Bake Off, Strictly and Celebrity Traitors, plus high quality drama, documentaries and sport. And a news service viewed – by many but not all – as world class, trustworthy and independent. People would subscribe for all that.

Of course change of this magnitude would be complicated and painful.

Complicated, because of logistics: What would happen to BBC Radio? Would the nation still come together at moments of national importance, such as the Coronation? And, most important of all, how would we pay for, and guarantee, a functioning BBC News service?

Painful, because it would be a death of sorts. The BBC as we know it wouldn’t exist.

But there would be advantages. The BBC’s life would be easier when it comes to scandal. Because of its privileged position we hold it to higher standards than other outlets. A BBC scandal is always massive news.

We need to admit the truth: with hundreds of viewing options, the BBC cannot, and should not, be required to be all things to all people.

The licence fee seems safe until 2027, when the BBC’s new deal will be announced. But the devil will be in the detail. Because it might include a fundamental review at half-time, as it were, in 2032 – when an anti-BBC Reform could be in power.

If we do opt for the change I have described, we would witness the distressing death of a much-loved institution.

But I believe a resurrection would follow – the BBC has to die first if it is to be saved.