Ms Celene Craig:

I will clarify that the support for a household charge was historically the view that the BAI took several years ago at the point at which that was being debated. I wanted to clarify that.

As I said, in our recent submissions to the Future of Media Commission, we did not specify the means necessarily by which the funding needs to be raised. We particularly did not do that because we recognised that the commission was precisely considering these issues and was going to make recommendations on them. Rather than confusing the issue, the point that we highlighted in our submission to the Future of Media Commission was the requirement that procedures and practices are in place that support public service broadcasters but, more widely, also support the future sustainability of public service content. We recognise that broadcasters are obviously very key in that space but we also recognise there are some other key players, such as our independent radio and television services and, though not within our remit, areas of print journalism, which are being very challenged by the migration of traditional forms of revenue, mostly advertising, onto the online space.