The outgoing director said that the BBC is in a crisis (Image: Getty)
The BBC is in “crisis”, says the director general Tim Davie. The broadcaster has faced backlash for its plans to increase the licence fee, which will rise to £180 from April 1. The increase, required by the 2022 Licence Fee Settlement, will rise by £5.50 for the year, meaning a standard colour TV licence will now cost households £15 a month.
Speaking on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, Mr Davie, who announced his resignation in November 2025, claimed that The BBC and other institutions are certainly in “crisis”.
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He said: ” Trust is built and I’m semi-obsessed by this – trust is built by people absolutely believing that someone is acting in their interest and that they listen to them. And if you think about an old-school broadcaster, it broadcasts…
“I think there have been too many instances where institutions – and the BBC is definitely not exempt from this – where, call it what you will, metropolitan, a certain lens on life.”
According to the departing boss, as long as the BBC is providing value to viewers, there should be no issues with an increase in the licence fee, reports the Mirror.
Mr Davies explained: “We’re at a consultation phase, but we have set out a very clear preference which is and I would do this to the point about restarting where we’re at – I think there is a model which says: look, if we can deliver value for every household and really work at that, then everyone contributes fairly, and I think that is a model that’s worth fighting for.”
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He added: “I don’t see it as something potentially trapped in the past. I actually think it could be something exciting for the future – quite enlightened. You don’t have to go exactly where the market is going currently. You have to make markets, and I think we can do that.”
Though the BBC has recently faced various allegations, including that one of its Panorama documentaries misled viewers by editing a speech by US President Donald Trump.
It had been alleged in a leaked internal BBC memo that those working on the Panorama programme edited two sectors of the speech together so that it appeared as Trump explicitly encouraged the Capitol Hill riot back in 2021. Trump has since launched a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the broadcaster, which is scheduled to go to trial in February 2027.
The BBC’s specific errors were not mentioned during Trump’s tenure, though he did say the world was in an age of “weaponisation”, where the broadcaster was under strict scrutiny over one thing, but not referencing all the good work they’ve done.
“We’ve made mistakes, sometimes serious mistakes, which we regret. But weaponisation is selectively taking one fact – it may be a fact, so you’re standing on a fact – but what you’re not standing on is any effort to be proportionate,” he says.
“You’re not saying, look, a thousand stories run, we’re running, and one didn’t get it right, or overall this is where there’s no balance of data. It’s literally just selecting a fact to make a case.”
