IN the BBC drama Years and Years, set in a dystopian Britain, the final episode began in 2029 with a newsreader announcing that the BBC’s royal charter had been withdrawn. “The BBC is now closed,” said the presenter, signing off with a Murrowesque, “Thank you, good night, and good luck.”

2029, eh? Following the publication of its annual report, does anyone seriously think it will take that long for patience with the BBC to run dry?

Every year it is the same. The BBC coughs up the numbers, and much outrage ensues. Then everyone calms down and business as usual resumes.

This time it is different. Although the number of licences remains at a very healthy 25.9 million, the total fell last year for the first time in ten years. Some 37,000 fewer households are handing over their annual £154.50. As more viewers switch to streaming services, and if a threatened boycott by pensioners losing their free licences takes hold, that 37,000 figure can only increase.

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It is now time for all of those who care about the BBC to come to the aid of this struggling party. Having worked for the BBC in the past, I continue to appear on it occasionally and should include myself in those ranks.

Tough love needs to be dispensed because those at the top of the corporation are clearly not getting the message. It is time, dear Auntie, to get your act together or get your coat.

The corporation’s defence can be split into three parts. First, it is not to blame for 3.7 million pensioners losing their free licences. Correct. A Labour government introduced the measure, a Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne, then dumped the bill in the BBC’s lap after barely any public consultation.

Next defence: the BBC has to pay talent what it is worth otherwise the stars will go elsewhere. Nonsense. Certainly, the BBC has had some of its better known names quit for the private sector, among them Chris Evans, Eddie Mair, and Simon Mayo. But there are only so many Evans-size salaries out there, and only one Chris Evans. The idea that private enterprises are ready to splurge vast reserves of cash on an exodus of BBC talent is laughable. What would their shareholders say for a start?

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As for the old L’oreal defence – the stars are worth it – really? Gary Lineker is worth more than a Prime Minister, a First Minister, a surgeon, a teacher, almost any profession you care to mention? Steve Wright, for pressing buttons and singing over the music, merits a £469,999 pay packet?As for Huw Edwards, almost half a million pounds for anchoring the news, a skill that can be summed up as “reading aloud”? It is not just on-screen individuals either. More than 100 managers earn over £150,000.

Meanwhile, the poor bloody infantry, the ones who put in the night shifts and the weekends, the ones who make the talent shine, are stuck on low pay and rolling contracts that offer little in the way of job security. Never mind, they can at least comfort themselves with the knowledge that the gender pay gap between well paid men at the corporation and well paid women is closing, with three women now in the top ten earners. As for everyone else, good luck with the claims, now inching along like tipsy slugs.

The last of the BBC’s defences is that it costs a lot of money to provide what it does, but it still provides great value. The answer to that is simple: stop doing so much. No one asked for BBC Sounds. No one asked the BBC to build a vast online news empire, paid for by the state, that took jobs, readers, and advertisers from newspapers.

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The new BBC Scotland channel is a case in point of the corporation trying and failing to deliver what it thinks viewers want.

Take, for example, The Nine, the channel’s flagship news show. Just the blend of local, national and international news required, all of it from a Scottish perspective. You see reports on here you never would on the Six or the Ten, which fulfils the remit exactly. It is the kind and quality of show that if it had been on at six o’clock would be hauling in the viewers. But it is on at nine o’clock, right up against the mainstream channels’ big hitter dramas and documentaries, so its viewing figures are ridiculously low.

The Nine languishes where it is because the BBC in London was terrified of a Scottish Six, fearing it would be a sop to nationalism. To disguise that lack of courage a whole new channel was constructed at greater cost. While some of the new channel’s offerings have been well worth watching, Yes/No: Inside the Indyref chief among them, they could have easily found a home on the existing BBC1/2 Scotland. As for the rest, the stale soup of repeats and shows that should never have been made in the first place – who needed another quiz show? – are dragging the channel down. When it comes time to make cuts, as it inevitably will, which programme will go: the relatively expensive The Nine or the cheap as chips fare?

The corporation might tell itself it is catering for a new, younger viewer who watches television in a different way, but there it goes again, looking in the wrong place for answers. Instead of trying to please a generation that won’t pay for anything if it can get away with it, the BBC should be satisfying its existing customers more.

The BBC will never have pockets deep enough to match Netflix or Amazon. What it does have is the ability to do certain things very well, such as drama. More Bodyguard and Killing Eve and less dross would be just the thing for the discerning viewer. People do not want an endless choice. Just scrolling through the Netflix menu is becoming exhausting.

By cutting back the big wages, and building on the success of Studios, the corporation’s profitable production and distribution division, the BBC can start to get serious about reducing its dependence on a licence fee that is not going to be around forever.

In Years and Years there was a happy ending, normal civilised society was restored and the BBC came back. Auntie should not bet on that happening for real.