Work

The end of the television licence fee? Applying the German household levy model to the United Kingdom

Year: 2018

Type: article

Abstract: While the United Kingdom (UK) government has renewed the BBC Royal Charter until 2027 and confirmed that the television licence fee will last for this period, a medium-term shift from the television licence fee to a household levy is still a policy option. Drawing on the German experience, we discuss the probable difficulties, possible benefits and the overall implications of such a shift in the UK. The article employs a comparative media policy analysis. After a brief history of public service broadcasting funding in the UK, we provide an outline of the recent German public service media funding reform. We point out the difficulties from the German model to predict the future total revenues and elaborate on the suitability of it in the UK context, contrasting the possibilities of policy transfer and policy failure.

Source: European Journal of Communication

DOI: 10.1177/0267323118775300

Authors: Phil Ramsey, Christian Herzog

Institutions: University of Ulster, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Language: English

Topic: Media Studies and Communication

Subfield: Communication

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: green

Funder: Univerza v Ljubljani