Lord Carter, the new minister for technology, communications and broadcasting, and former head of Ofcom has signalled that the BBC could face competition for state funding of public service content in a fully digital future. He refused to rule out the possibility of splitting the licence fee once the economics of funding public service television becomes even more difficult. “Parliament very recently had that debate and decided against contestability [of funding],” he said. “Does that mean that, for ever and a day, if looking at funding structures you would rule out any form of sharing the licence fee? I don’t think it would be sensible to do that.”

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