[DTV]

The licence freeze isn't the biggest factor.

Taking the time to look at facts, and ask questions is always a very good thing

From 2011/12 to 2021/22 alone, licence income fell in real terms by 16% or £700m. I’d argue that is a pretty substantive factor in the BBC’s financial issues. There might additionally be some mismanagement, there might additionally be some waste, there might even additionally be some odd commissioning costs, but those aren’t the main factors as they just don’t run into being the best part of a billion.

All your comparisons are pure apples and oranges stuff. A one-off location VT commission is not comparable to the unit cost of one hour of a daily studio-bound talk series. Channel 5 primetime content is not comparable to that of BBC One (plus, things like dramas – the most expensive content – are that which most pays for itself commercially). And, of course there’d be savings if the BBC was more like an average European broadcaster, its service provision is substantially broader than that of other European PSBs (you might argue it should be narrower in scope, but your argument is that its narrowing of scope is necessitated by not pursuing these ‘savings’).

You accuse others of not using evidence, but don’t provide a figure for the ‘huge sums’ spent on ‘poor’ content, which you suggest is another real reason that dramatic cuts have to be made to BBC News and Local Radio. Your suggestions of poor content are some BBC Sounds podcasts and BBC Verify, the latter of which is not going to be more than a few £m, a not insubstantive portion of which will simply be a reallocation from departments it absorbed. Where you do provide evidence, as with how many efficiency savings can be wrought, you link to a document that states the opposite.

And you do all this with a rather arrogant and bullying tone, abrading anybody who dares to suggest that the loss of at least one-sixth of your main revenue stream might be the reason that you have to cut programming budgets. Because, of course, only you can see the truth – it’s not political decisions, it’s management investment in a few dozen podcasts.