LICENCE FEE BID

In January 2006, the Board of Governors commissioned Professor Patrick Barwise of the London Business School to carry out further research to provide them with an independent and up-to-date view of what licence fee payers think about the BBC's proposals for the next Charter period. The Governors wanted to satisfy themselves that they had the best understanding of licence fee payers' opinions before the final stages of the licence fee settlement process.

Furthermore, the Governors wanted to understand licence fee payers' reaction to the Government's plan to fund targeted help via the licence fee.

The following report is entirely the work of Professor Patrick Barwise. His comments, conclusions and recommendations are his own and should be attributed only to him. See below for a short biography of Professor Barwise.

The BBC Licence Fee Bid: what does the public think?

The earlier research by Human Capital and MORI - referred to throughout this report - was first published in October 2004 and October 2005 respectively and can be read here.

Two further pieces of research were commissioned by the BBC Governance Unit on behalf of Professor Barwise which are also referred to throughout his report:

Citizen's forum conducted by Opinion Leader Research (OLR)

Omnibus survey conducted by BMRB

The following is a short biography of Professor Patrick Barwise.

Patrick Barwise is Professor of Management and Marketing at London Business School and coauthor (with Seán Meehan, IMD, Lausanne) of Simply Better (HBS Press, 2004: www.simply-better.biz), winner of the American Marketing Association’s 2005 Berry-AMA Prize for the best recent book in marketing. He joined London Business School in 1976, having spent his early career with IBM. His previous publications include books on Television and its Audience, Accounting for Brands, Strategic Decisions, Predictions: Media, and Advertising in a Recession, as well as numerous papers and articles on brands, consumer and audience behaviour, marketing expenditure trends, and new media. In 2004, he led an independent review for the UK government of the BBC’s digital television services. He is also a Fellow of the Sunningdale Institute, a government think tank and virtual academy on public service management, and a previous deputy chairman of the UK consumer organization Which?.