The broadcaster faces an existential crisis - with challenges from government, from its digital rivals, and from its own staff
The resignation yesterday of the BBC’s director general, Tony Hall marks a perilous moment in the corporation’s existence. Whoever replaces Hall has the substantial task of tackling the hostile politics of Boris Johnson’s government as well as fighting obsolescence in a post-broadcast age.
The BBC’s social contract is for a civic, not commercial, enterprise. Its promise is for something owned by society, offering more than the flat space of internet “content”. This contract is in need of urgent renewal, if that is at all possible. However, the omens from a Conservative government are that it wishes to throw the contract into the white-hot furnace of lobbying cash generated by commercial media and tech platforms, seeking to limit the BBC’s reach and funding.