Katie Razzall: BBC annual report is a call to arms for a new funding model

YouTube is first choice for that age group. The positive for the BBC is that it is the only UK media brand to make it into the top five brands used by young people – 69% of under-16s and 63% of 16-34-year-olds access the BBC weekly.

The other brands being accessed by young people are – unsurprisingly – all big streamers and social media platforms.

It’s not total doom and gloom. Internationally, the BBC is now reaching more than half a billion people for the first time.

Nationally, 94% of UK adults use the BBC on average every month. Whether it’s Celebrity Traitors or the World Cup, Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday celebrations or the provision of fact-checked, accurate reporting, the BBC is to be celebrated – and is being consumed, often in huge numbers.

But in this report there is – again – an acknowledgement that recent editorial mistakes and scandals damaged the BBC’s reputation last year.

These include the Gaza documentary narrated by the son of a Hamas official; a documentary about medics in Gaza, which the BBC decided not to show and was later broadcast on Channel 4; and the Panorama about Donald Trump, which has prompted the US president to sue.

He’s demanding $10bn (£7.45bn), but the BBC is fighting the case and his claim that he was damaged by the broadcast of a documentary that it says was never shown in the US.

Trump is only mentioned nine times in the 256-page report, with a reiteration that the BBC apologised for splicing two parts of his speech ahead of the Capitol Hill riots.

The BBC’s annual income is £3.88bn from the licence fee and another £2.15bn from its commercial operations. To say that $10bn would blow a hole in the accounts is an understatement. The report makes clear “no provision” has been made for footing the bill.