Fry warns against ghettoisation of the BBC

Broadcaster and writer Stephen Fry launched a passionate defence of the BBC last night, warning that "top slicing" the licence fee and "ghetto-ising" its programming could fatally undermine it. He also sounded a warning for BBC executives, accusing them of "incredible naivety" in believing they could control the distribution of programmes online.

Programmes distributed via the BBC's increasingly popular online iPlayer service are supposed to be viewable for a week only, and can be stored on a PC for up to 30 days. But Fry said that large numbers of viewers were bypassing the corporation's digital rights management software, and more would follow.

"There is this marvellous idea the iPlayer is secure. It's anything but secure," said Fry, host of the TV quiz show QI. His recent documentary on the Gutenberg printing press was one of the most popular programmes on the iPlayer catch-up service. "The BBC is throwing out really valuable content for free. It shows an incredible naivety about how the internet and digital devices work."

Fry admitted to bypassing the copy protection to transfer programmes to his Apple iPhone, and said the corporation's iPlayer was hurting its commercial rivals. "The BBC is making a lot of enemies giving away free programmes to an internet that everyone else is trying to monetise; at the moment it's relying on the fact you have to be slightly dorky to record from the iPlayer; but, believe me, that will change," he said. "It will soon be the work of a moment for my mother to get an iPlayer programme off her computer and on to her iPod, iPhone, or whatever device she chooses."

Fry, a self-confessed gadget fanatic, warned MPs and regulators against handing a percentage of the licence fee to Channel 4 to plug its claimed funding gap. Media regulator Ofcom recently proposed top slicing the licence fee as one possible way to keep plurality in public service broadcasting. But Fry said it was only by maintaining funding at current levels that the BBC could keep the breadth and reach to reach the entire population. He pointed to examples from his career, from Blackadder to his lauded documentary on manic depression, which would not have been made or had such an impact with any other broadcaster.

"I genuinely cannot see that the nation would benefit from a diminution of any part of the BBC's great whole." He warned of the alternative: "a ghetto-ised, balkanised electronic bookshop of the home; no stations, no network, just a narrowcast provider spitting out content on channels that fulfil some ghastly and wholly insulting demographic profile." He said his plea was "personal not professional". "Yes, I want to see Channel 4 secure, but I don't believe that the only way to save it is to reduce the BBC. We can afford what we decide we can afford."

Earlier this month Sir David Attenborough warned the BBC against squeezing out public service television by flooding the schedules with lifestyle shows and celebrity chefs. Fry called for a new remit for Channel 4, saying the broadcaster was "finding it hard not to descend to freak show documentaries"; it recently unveiled a vision it hopes will secure public money to plug a £150m funding gap. Fry was speaking in a series of lectures organised by the BBC to inform the debate over public service broadcasting, expected to result in a Communications Act before 2010.