01 / The case for change
It’s time for change.
Let’s put ads on the BBC.
You didn’t choose to pay for it, and it isn’t cheap. Just look at what it costs us.
£3.84bn
One year of licence-fee income
2024/25 · our fixed benchmark throughout
2024/25 · our fixed benchmark throughout
“nearly £4bn of public money each year, a colossal sum by any reckoning”
ITV plc, written evidence to Parliament, BBC0030 ↗
That is a competitor describing the sum. On scale alone, asking whether there is a better way to pay for it is a fair question.
Where these numbers come from, and what they include
£3.84bn: £3,843m in net licence-fee income. This is our fixed 2024/25 benchmark, not the BBC’s entire budget or a claim about current income. National Audit Office ↗
21,773 staff: average full-time-equivalent employees including apprentices — 17,531 in the public-service group and 4,242 in the commercial group, which funds itself. Not individual headcount; casual contracts are reported separately. BBC Annual Report 2024/25, note D1 ↗
208,832 hours: reported BBC Local Radio output in the England data pack. A subset of BBC output, not a total of unique new programmes, and shared broadcasts must not be read as separately commissioned content. BBC Annual Report 2024/25, England data ↗
10 and 58: eight pan-UK TV channels plus BBC Scotland and BBC ALBA; the 58 radio stations include national, minority-language and local services. Counts follow the NAO’s 2024/25 overview. National Audit Office, page 20 ↗
200+ countries: BBC Studios reports availability in more than 200 countries and territories for the international, English-language BBC News TV channel. Availability is not measured audience, and this is not the World Service’s country count. Checked September 2026. BBC Studios distribution ↗
A note on scope: staff numbers and international availability include commercial operations that do not run on licence-fee income. We have counted them here because the question in this step is how big the institution is, not what the fee alone buys.
There are three obvious ways to pay for it instead: advertising, subscription, or some mix of the two.
Let’s price them.
02 / Put your alternative to the test
Same ambition.
Different way to pay.
Start with the alternative you think should work. Change the assumptions, watch the total, then take your proposal into the next step.
Your annual total
£2.52bn
£1.33bn below the £3.843bn benchmark
AdvertisingSubscriptionsLicence fee
What would close the gap?
At 10 million subscribing homes, this mix needs £21.04 a month before additional costs.
One complication, from an unlikely source
The money has to come from somewhere.
This calculator moves advertising into the BBC column. ITV — which competes with the BBC for viewers and would gain nothing from defending it — told Parliament that BBC advertising would “primarily divert advertising and not grow the market”, drawing revenue “at scale” away from commercial broadcasters. On that reading, a share taken here is a share removed from ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 rather than new money.
We have not modelled that effect: the market size stays fixed above, which is the assumption most favourable to your proposal. It is worth knowing that the company with the strongest commercial reason to want the BBC weakened argues against this specific idea. ITV plc written evidence, BBC0030 ↗
Every assumption, calculation and limitation
- Every slider is a scenario input you control, not an estimate of what would happen. The advertising benchmark is the 2024 UK TV market of £5,271.4m including streaming; the subscriber slider is a design range, not measured demand.
- Target: £3,843m net licence-fee income in 2024/25. NAO. This is a dated benchmark, not total BBC income or a claim about the current year.
- Advertising: £5,271.4m × the selected market share. AA/WARC, 2024. This is TV including streaming, not all advertising. The model holds market size fixed; it does not predict demand growth, prices, radio or other digital advertising, and it does not model the diversion effect ITV describes above.
- Subscription: price × 12 × subscribing homes. Price and demand are deliberately independent so you can test your own case. The 30m slider ceiling is a design range, not a demand forecast or a measured market size.
- Retained licence-fee income: £3,843m × the selected percentage. It is revenue retained, not a proposed household price or a household levy.
- Advertising and subscriptions are counted before deductions. VAT, sales costs, collection, churn, enforcement, exemptions and transition costs are not modelled. Existing non-licence income and the service ambition are held constant. This is optimistic gross arithmetic, not a business plan.
- A hybrid assumes the two revenue streams can be added. It does not model how an ad-free tier reduces ad inventory or how advertising affects subscriber demand.
- Presets are illustrative starting points, not forecasts. The chart rescales if income exceeds the target. Break-even rounds the subscription price up to the next 10p. Saving an attempt keeps it only until you reload this page.
- The next step uses an explicitly illustrative schedule. No funding gap is allocated to a named service, and no programme cost or future cut is calculated.
What about a household levy?
A levy could also raise public funding. Replacing the collection system would raise separate questions about fairness, exemptions, enforcement, independence and transition. This calculator cannot establish that the licence fee is uniquely capable of funding the BBC.
A mix can reach the target. The next question is what the money is holding up, and whether a different funder would keep paying for all of it.
03 / Follow your funding choice
What disappears
between the favourites?
The funding total is only part of the story. Confirm your mix in step 2, or explore the funding level below.
An illustrative day of public service.
06:00An illustrative gap
The first bulletin of the day
Radio · news & weather
07:00An illustrative gap
The morning headlines
TV & radio · news bulletin
08:30A story never commissioned
A new story, made for children here
Children’s TV · original UK commission
10:00Less room for the local conversation
Your council, questioned
Local radio · a locally produced interview
11:30An illustrative gap
An hour with a writer you hadn’t heard of
Radio · arts & speech
13:00An illustrative gap
A documentary you didn’t go looking for
TV · factual
16:00An illustrative gap
Help with tomorrow’s lesson
Online & educational TV · learning resources
18:00A broadcast no longer transmitted
A world beyond the headlines
World Service · a language-service radio broadcast
20:00An illustrative gap
The programme everyone’s talking about
TV · shared evening viewing
21:00An investigation never started
The story that took eight months
News & online · investigation
22:30An illustrative gap
Music from somewhere you’ve never been
Radio · specialist music
At the benchmark, the full illustrative schedule is visible.
How to read the disappearing schedule
The money comes from your calculation. The gaps are an editorial illustration of vulnerability, not calculated programme losses. Children’s commissioning, local programme sharing, World Service broadcasts and expensive reporting are foregrounded because there is documented evidence to examine below for each. We cannot establish which would be cut first in a future BBC.
Each entry now fades across its own band of funding rather than all at once. The investigation starts thinning immediately below full funding and is gone by 86%; the World Service runs 97% to 80%, children's commissioning 93% to 74%, local radio 89% to 68%. Specialist music, arts and speech, factual and learning follow between 72% and 30%. The bulletins and the big evening programme are last, the evening programme surviving to 0%, because a mass audience is the easiest thing to sell advertising against.
That order is an editorial judgement, not a finding. It reflects how commercially attractive each kind of output is, which is the argument this site makes — but no source establishes which provision a future BBC would actually cut first, or at what funding level. The percentages are animation settings. Empty slots stay visible to make absence noticeable; raising funding brings every entry back. A fully funded mix deletes nothing here and still has to answer for access and public obligations.
Show someone the gaps.
Copies a link that opens this page with your funding mix already set, so they can argue with the same numbers.
What sits behind the gaps
Six things the money holds up.
A little help.
A bigger future.
A bigger future.
Homework without a checkout.
Learning resources that a child can open without asking a parent to buy another subscription. The BBC’s learning remit includes resources to support formal education and preschool learning.
Supporting learning is part of the BBC’s remit. Provision can be commissioned for its educational value, rather than only its ability to attract paying households.
What has already happened
The gaps have a history.
More choice does not guarantee more made here.
Ofcom records falling UK commissions and commercial pressure across children’s TV. It identifies children’s programmes and news as less commercially attractive genres that need support.
This is a sector-wide trend, including the BBC. Changing viewing habits and distribution also matter; it is not a controlled experiment proving one cause.
History shows the vulnerability. It cannot tell us exactly which future programme would be cut.
So where does that leave it? →04 / Where we land
Are we better off keeping the licence fee?
This site says yes — and you have now seen the working behind it. You can still question the spending, challenge the coverage and expect reform. The case for retaining the fee is a case for protecting a shared service while improving it.
£15.00per household, per month
A TV Licence costs £180 a year — £15 a month, whatever size the household. One price, whether you watch everything or almost nothing.
For that: 10 TV channels and 58 radio stations, iPlayer and Sounds, Bitesize, local radio across England, and a World Service reaching people whose own media they cannot trust. No advertising break, no tier, no price rise for the household that uses it most.
£180 is the current licence fee, checked on GOV.UK in September 2026. It is a different figure from the £3.843bn of 2024/25 income used in the model above, and the two should not be added together or read as one year’s arithmetic. TV Licence fee, GOV.UK ↗
Keep
Public funding that supports services beyond the programmes any one of us would choose to buy.
Improve
Accountability, value for money and support for people who struggle to pay.
Ask
Any replacement to explain who will pay, who will have access and how less commercial services will be protected.
A starting point to adapt
I support retaining the BBC licence fee through Charter renewal, alongside stronger accountability and fair treatment of people who struggle to pay. Before any replacement is adopted, I want clear evidence of how it would fund the BBC’s public remit, maintain access and protect less commercial services.
What position will you take on this in Parliament?
Draft only. Review and send it yourself through your MP’s official contact details.
Your verdict
Now you’ve seen the working.
Do you agree?
Did this site change your mind?
A running tally of people who reached the end of this page. Everyone here chose to visit a site about the licence fee and chose to answer, so it measures this page’s readers and nothing wider. It is not a representative poll and should never be quoted as one.
2000 left
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The current Charter expires on 31 December 2027. The public consultation has closed; Charter review continues. Follow the review ↗
Read the evidenceSources & accountability
An argument you can check.
Keeping the licence fee is the position of this site. Published facts, our calculations and illustrative scenarios are labelled separately.
01 / National Audit OfficeThe £3.843bn benchmark ↗
Net licence-fee income in 2024/25. Not the BBC’s total income.
02 / Advertising Association & WARCThe television ad market ↗£5.2714bn in 2024, including streaming. The model holds this market fixed.
03 / ITV plcA competitor on BBC advertising ↗Written evidence BBC0030: ad funding would divert revenue rather than grow the market.
04 / OfcomChildren’s media and public provision ↗Evidence to Parliament on UK commissioning, market pressures and the BBC’s remit.
05 / National Audit OfficeWorld Service savings and reach ↗Documented platform closures and the decline in audience, with qualifications.
06 / OfcomIndependent scrutiny of the BBC ↗Performance against its public purposes, including areas needing improvement.
07 / UK GovernmentThe Charter review ↗The current Charter expires on 31 December 2027. Follow official developments here.
Why use 2024/25 figures?
This version keeps the £3.843bn benchmark used throughout the original argument and pairs it with 2024 advertising data. It does not describe these as the latest figures. 2025/26 accounts are available; any update to this exercise should update the target, comparisons and source notes together.
What other people said