Written evidence submitted by
Professor Beth Johnson, Professor Dave O’Brien and Dr Laura Minor
About the authors
Beth Johnson is Professor of Television and Media Studies at the University of Leeds. Dave O’Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Manchester. Laura Minor is Senior Lecturer in Television Studies at the University of Salford, specialising in authorship, genre, class and representation.
The authors are investigators on the AHRC-funded project What’s On? Rethinking Class in the Television Industry (2023–2026), examining class inequality in UK television through analysis of production cultures, representation and audience interpretation. This submission is independent and reflects the views of the authors.
Executive summary
The BBC remains an essential democratic and cultural institution. The principal question for Charter Review is therefore not simply how the BBC should be funded or the scale at which it should operate, but whether it remains trusted, representative and sustainable in the conditions of the next decade.
1. The purpose of the BBC
The BBC’s core purpose should remain to provide universally available, high-quality content and services that serve citizens as well as consumers. In a media environment shaped by global platforms, audience fragmentation and misinformation, that role remains essential.
The market alone will not reliably provide trusted news, culturally specific storytelling, minority language provision, children’s content, local services or socially ambitious programming. These remain core public purposes.
The next Charter should also recognise the BBC as a form of national cultural infrastructure: an institution that supports democratic life, shared cultural experience, social cohesion, and the long-term health of the UK’s creative economy. Evidence from the What’s On? project, which traces class across production, representation and reception through interviews with commissioners and television workers, analysis of two contemporary television drama case studies, and audience research conducted between 2023 and 2026, suggests that public value is shaped not only by what the BBC broadcasts, but by who is able to make it and whose lives are represented with authority.
2. Trust, relevance and audiences who do not see value in the licence fee
Our research indicates that audience trust is shaped not only by output quality, but by whether content feels credible, recognisable and made with an understanding of the lives represented.
Participants in our audience research frequently judged drama through cues of class, place, accent, tone and everyday experience. They distinguished between portrayals experienced as nuanced and truthful, and those experienced as patronising, superficial or out of touch.
This has direct implications for the BBC. Trust cannot be secured through branding or institutional reputation alone. It depends in part on who has creative authority, whose perspectives shape commissioning, and whether audiences feel seen rather than spoken for.
The BBC’s relevance to audiences who question the licence fee should therefore be considered not only in terms of usage, but in terms of recognition, legitimacy and cultural credibility.
3. Attracting young audiences
The challenge of attracting younger audiences should not be understood solely as a distribution issue. It is also a workforce issue.
In our study, 61% of participants obtained their current role through personal networks, compared with only 8% through openly advertised roles, indicating the continued importance of closed-network recruitment. Younger workers are entering television through a more precarious labour market characterised by short contracts, informal hiring and weaker progression routes.
Our project draws on more than 60 interviews with television workers across career stages, many of whom described insecurity and unclear progression as major barriers to staying in the industry. If those without financial backing are less able to remain and progress, the range of voices shaping future BBC content will narrow.
Measures designed to attract younger audiences should therefore sit alongside secure paid entry routes, transparent recruitment, structured development and clearer progression pathways.
If younger audiences are to see the BBC as relevant, younger generations must also be able to shape what the BBC becomes.
4. Across the UK
The Committee should distinguish between production activity outside London and genuine decentralisation of power.
Our research suggests that while regional production has expanded, commissioning authority and career progression remain concentrated in London. Production spend alone is therefore an insufficient measure of success.
In one of our case studies, around four-fifths of participants who relocated to London were from working-class backgrounds, illustrating how geographic concentration can impose disproportionate costs on those with fewer financial resources.
The next Charter should place greater emphasis on sustainable regional careers, senior decision-making roles outside London, and stronger cultural authority across the nations and regions.
The same principle applies to minority language provision and wider representation: lasting inclusion requires institutional power as well as visible output.
A BBC that reflects the whole UK must do so not only on screen, but within its structures of decision-making.
5. Future of public service media
The BBC now operates in a media system shaped by streamers, video-sharing platforms and internet-delivered television. Charter Review should therefore be considered alongside wider media policy.
This wider context matters because our research finds that workforce conditions, commissioning cultures and representational legitimacy are shaped by the broader ecology in which UK television now operates. Public service institutions are increasingly competing for attention, talent and cultural authority on terms not designed around public purposes.
Against that background, three issues are particularly important.
First, prominence and discoverability of public service content must be protected as audiences move from linear broadcasting to IPTV and platform interfaces.
Second, public service broadcasters should not be judged solely against commercial or subscription competitors whose obligations are fundamentally different.
Third, the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence should be assessed in relation to both labour and trust, including whether new technologies strengthen or weaken public service values, creative employment and audience confidence.
The future of the BBC cannot be separated from the future governance of the wider media environment in which it now operates.
6. Independence and accountability
The BBC should be both independent and properly accountable. These are complementary, not competing, objectives.
However, accountability frameworks should focus more clearly on outcomes that matter to licence fee payers. In our view, these include:
This would provide a more meaningful picture of whether the BBC is delivering public value than narrow output or volume metrics alone.
Editorial independence should remain protected, but institutional accountability should be strengthened where evidence of public value can be more effectively measured.
7. Trusted news and local news
The BBC’s role in providing accurate and impartial news remains one of its most important public functions.
In an era of misinformation and declining trust in institutions, that role should be protected. However, trust in news is also linked to wider institutional legitimacy. Our audience research found that trust is shaped not only by accuracy, but by whether institutions are perceived to understand people’s communities, concerns and lived realities.
For that reason, trusted news should be considered alongside local news provision, regional presence and broader representation across the UK.
The strength of BBC News is connected not only to editorial standards, but to the public’s sense that the institution itself remains rooted in the society it serves.
Recommendations
We recommend that the Committee consider the following:
Conclusion
The central question for Charter Review is not simply the scale of the BBC, but how public it should remain.
Our evidence suggests that credibility, trust and long-term relevance depend on the relationship between what the BBC makes and the conditions under which it is made.
A renewed Charter should therefore secure a BBC that is universal, independent, representative and sustainable for the decade ahead.
16 April 2026
Professor Beth Johnson (University of Leeds)
Professor Dave O’Brien (University of Manchester)
Dr Laura Minor (University of Salford)