Tony Ball, then Chief Executive of BSkyB, announced in the MacTaggart Lecture that an unprecedented majority (51 per cent) of the public, responding to a National Opinion Poll survey, believes that the BBC licence fee no longer represents good value for money. Worse, the poorest people feel most aggrieved with 60 per cent reporting their dissatisfaction with the value offered by the licence fee. With BSkyB now reaching 7 million homes offering viewers an ‘explosion of choice’, Ball argues it is time to reassess the relationship between broadcasters and government, as well as the character of public-service broadcasting. It is time to raise a ‘red flag’ to halt the BBC's ‘expansionary ambitions’.

Ball underpins his argument by offering three ‘cardinal points’ about government and broadcasting. First public funding offers no ‘sure-fire guarantee of quality’. Second, the greater the degree of public funding and government control, the greater the ‘scope for abuses’. Finally, in an age of spectrum abundance, publicly funded television must work harder than ever to justify its subsidy. Funding for the BBC is ‘money coerced from people under legal sanction, ultimately under the threat of jail’ and consequently there is a need for programme-makers to be accountable.