Nigel Farage is another of his ‘news’ conference has repeated his view that the BBC should become a subscription broadcaster like Netflix and Sky. The exception apparently is the news and it can be understood why. Farage gets far more coverage on BBC News and of course Question Time than any other politician. When Farage claims the BBC is ‘institutionally’ biased we can understand the actual meaning of his words.
A subscription model would see an end to such classics as the Archers and Test Match Special. They still draw millions of listeners but its doubtful there is much commercial advantage. They are what public service broadcasting is all about.
The same goes for Traitors which could indeed have been made, for example, by Sky. The final episode of Celebrity Traitors got 11.1m viewers bringing the country together to watch a TV show in the moment. Sky can’t achieve that and its also of course the kind of unity Farage hates
Below is a Guardian account of what Farage said on the BBC on 10th November 2025
Q: What do you think needs to change at the BBC?
Farage says the BBC has been “institutionally biased for decades”.
He says he spoke to Donald Trump on Friday.
He just said to me, is this how you treat your best ally?
It’s quite a powerful comment, isn’t it? It’s quite a powerful comment. So there’s been too much going for too long.
Farage says last year half a million people stopped paying the licence fee. He says, if the culture there does not change, millions more people could start doing this
He say he would like to see the BBC “slimmed down”.
When it comes to entertainment, when it comes to sport and many other areas like that, they should compete against everybody else [with] a subscription model. That’s the modern world that we live in.
So the licence fee, as currently is, cannot survive. It is wholly unsustainable.
Farage says he is not saying he does not want the BBC to survive. The BBC World Service is “very important”, he says. He says it should just focus on doing “straight news”
Leave a Reply