Trust chair on negotiating the BBC’s fresh deal,how more cost cutting is on the cards – and why she won’t resignIn the second of just two tall speeches since becoming chair of the BBC Trust, Rona Fairhead said the future of the BBC warranted a “proper public debate, and not one conducted by a small elite”. Yet just five months later,Fairhead agreed a five-year funding settlement for the BBC that had been hammered out in secret and in the space of less than a week.final Monday’s surprise announcement that the BBC had agreed to pay for free television licences for people aged over 75 has been roundly criticised: the former acting chair of the trust, Diane Coyle, and called it “unconstitutional” and a “massive attack on the BBC’s independence”.
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Source: theguardian.com