What an excellent argument against the BBC licence fee this is
Not that Ms. Reynolds means it this way of course, she thinks she is producing the concluding argument for the retention of the BBC's licence fee:
Anne McElvoy makes several sound points (“‘The Beeb is not facing involuntary euthanasia’”, Comment). Her easy assumption, however, that BBC radio operates with an unfair advantage – “a serious radio competitor, for example, has never got off the ground…” – must not pass unchallenged. Commercial radio in the UK competes seriously and successfully wherever there is a mass audience to be attracted. It does not, however, compete in “serious radio” because the audience it would attract (for features, documentaries, drama, comedy, etc) is not sufficient to justify the higher costs entailed. What “serious radio” commercial competitor would, for instance, underwrite her regular Radio 3 arts review, Free Thinking, or her Radio 4 series on Charlemagne and his legacy, or even the show where she has now also become a regular, Radio 4’s Moral Maze? Meanwhile, as a frequent visitor to New Broadcasting House, it cannot have escaped her eagle eye that further cuts to BBC radio budgets will seriously threaten the continued existence of any kind of “serious radio”.
Gillian Reynolds
Radio critic, Daily Telegraph
London W2
The point being that there really are things that must be done and can only be done by government and the power to tax. Radio not being one of those of course. There's also a weaker argument that there's things it would be nice to have and where it's worth taxing the masses to produce a benefit to said masses. But what there isn't is a space for the argument that the proles must be taxed in order to provide something of only minority interest. For if something does not justify the costs then we should not be doing it. If producing "serious" radio costs more than can be gained from doing so then this is an activity which makes us all poorer.
The BBC licence fee is a tax of course. And we're really sorry to have to point this out but the point of mass taxation is not so as to provide sweeties for some small section of the metropolitan intelligentsia.
That not many people are interested in "serious" radio is an argument against the tax funding of it: that it doesn't, as claimed, cover the costs of its production is an argument against doing it at all, not in favour of taxing those who are uninterested in it.