Quote

It was an interesting question as to whether the BBC had a future in the digital world, and what form of market failure could justify the licence fee system.

I want the BBC to be a mass market public service broadcaster still funded by the licence fee... and the licence fee is more durable than many people in the commercial sector believe.

There is still an element of the BBC that feels it is somehow wrong, or it will be open to criticism, if it makes more money.

The U.K. has been very progressive about on-demand, and the iPlayer has been a great invention. It has trained a generation of viewers to expect on-demand - unfortunately, it trains them to expect free!

The challenge is the culture. You have to have a vision for the BBC-it can't merely be that it's big and has a place in the market.

It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a broad spectrum of interest, and if there was a hole in that spectrum, then the BBC would fill it.

The BBC is the greatest broadcaster in the world. It's the standard that everyone measures themselves against. If we lose the BBC, it won't be quite as bad as losing the royal family, but an integral part of this country will have gone. But then, I'm an old guy.

The problem with TV now is that there's so much competition, that you're always on the chopping block.

Without the BBC, the proliferation of television and radio channels by the private sector would simply result in more and more channels, with tiny audiences, all seeking to do the same thing. The future would be one of fragmentation - fragmentation without either plurality or diversity.

The reason people talk about cable cutting is they imagine the price burden will get so high that people won't be able to pay it. They're missing something: that the actual price of the electronic package is going down. They've got their Internet, phone, TV, all of it. Now people are using more and more stuff for less.