The BBC under threat from the government

I can't see Radio 1 or 2 being sold off, but they could be tendered out for commercial groups to operate those stations on behalf of the BBC with a similar budget to now.

But would the BBC want to be associated with something over which it would no longer have any editorial control?

These Number 10 advisers are embarrassing themselves badly. This Government was voted in on a promise to 'Get Brexit Done' and little else, so they are now floundering around trying to come up with set of policies. Whinging about the BBC and issuing threats is not going to get them as far as they think, although that isn't to say the BBC faces tough times ahead.

The power has already gone to the heads of these advisers though, and I suspect they will hit a lot of walls soon. Next month, they will realise they haven't yet "sorted Brexit" and I think the focus will return to negotiations with the EU.

That said, I agree with Andrew on the BBC not always promoting itself well. My TV licence comes out monthly on direct debit (like many others' will, I'm sure). To me, it's already feels like any other subscription - Netflix, Prime, Spotify, newspaper etc.

£13ish a month for a TV, Radio, Podcasts and News all-in-one is easily great value when you consider adding up the costs of the other services competing with it. One fee per household, use it on unlimited devices. (*Minimum term: 12 months).

I think some people see linear TV channels going down the pan a bit, and forget there's so much more you'd be throwing away. I also think iPlayer looks a little dated in presentation now compared to other streaming services. Spruce it up a little and I think the BBC should be able to promote itself quite easily. Despite being skeptical at first, I'm also a big fan of the BBC Sounds app now too.

Also, why is this government - like the last - still turning a blind eye to the disaster that is local TV?!

I don't know if that's possible with the group of people you highlighted. I'm going to overgeneralize here but it seems like the vast majority of people who complain about the BBC's so-called political bias aren't doing so because they're genuinely concerned about the BBC's impartiality but because the corporation's political reporting isn't (in their eyes) favourable towards their side of politics. In other words, they wouldn't be complaining if the BBC never reported anything negative about their political views

The trouble is there aren’t many other radio groups remaining, and of those there are, I doubt any of them would have the funds to buy a big chunk of BBC Radio.

Would it have to be an existing commercial radio group though?
Could it be someone else who can see the profit that could be made, or even could it be a company from outside the UK?

I’d the BBC moves from license fee and into subscription model, if they’ve no income from gov sources (aside from maybe World Service) then surely they become another, effectively, commercial organisation and what they decide to do is surely up to them.

I’m surprised the argument about BBC and advertising hasn’t started already... though I expect others such as ITV to be up in arms of that was allowed...

Quite possibly, although in recent years new groups haven’t exactly been lining up to get into British radio. The only big new entrant to the market has been Communicorp, but only as a means of helping Global to roll out its brands.

Obviously a potential sell-off of BBC radio stations might prove attractive, but if all stations became advertising funded, the already shrinking amount of money in the commercial radio sector would be spread even thinner. So the potential profitability of ex-BBC stations could be limited.

It's worth remembering before the last licence fee settlement when John Whittingdale was Culture Secretary (who is now back at the DCMS) there were weeks of stories about threats to the BBC in The Sunday Times. Like most stories from "Number 10 sources", apart from taking on licence fees for the over 75s, these never came to pass.

That said, the BBC has got to stand up for itself and get a formidable lobbying operation in place. An occasional sharply worded tweet from the BBC Press Office account isn't going to cut it.

This entirely. The BBC isn't perfect and there are some of its programmes and services that I never bother with, but I'm willing to bet this country would be worse off without it.

The government's intention to dismantle the BBC no matter what is an act of cultural vandalism - nothing more, nothing less.

The BBC is extremely good at naval-gazing, almost to the point of apologising for its existence. Now it's under attack from all sides. Now is the time for the corporation to face those critics head-on and develop a backbone.

Commercial Television and Radio would be a lot more worse off without the BBC Licence fee.

If the BBC had to fund itself via commercial advertising, I'm pretty sure some big national advertisers would go with BBC exclusive slots on TV/Radio simply because there are still more eyes and ears pointed towards BBC services (generally, I know some ITV programmes consistantly outrate the BBC in some timeslots) and if you are are buying slots for an advertisers - average critical mass is exactly where you want to head for.

Good point. Same issue as the last ITV franchise battle. All the cost cutting, studio closing and (sadly) experienced staff redundency was, at the time, said by the great and the good of the broadsheet media analysts, because once the shackles were off - ITV regionals would be picked off by overseas media giants.

So far. Nothing. Channel 5 to Viacom. Who were hardly new players to the UK Television market when Dirty Desmond flogged off 5 to them. And of course, Sky to Comcast.

But the great ITV sell off hasn't happened.

Radio. The same. Apart from Bauer, no-one else.
RTL had a stake in 'the old TalkRadio' (now Talksport) but sold that off - just before it posted its best ever Rajar survey which proved the mix of programmes and hosts has started to take root, and eat into BBC Local and Five Live's listening figures.

NRJ France had some minority stakes in one or two stationa, and Can West also had some low double digit share holding interests in some regional commerical stations. All soon sold up their shares and cleared off.