BBC Braced For Government's Cuts Announcement

The BBC will find out how the Government sees its future later, amid warnings intervention from Downing Street would be "a big mistake".

Culture Secretary John Whittingdale is set to reveal the contents of a Green Paper in the House of Commons later.

It is expected to include plans to reduce the amount of light entertainment the BBC produces, alternatives to the licence fee to pay for programmes and scrapping the BBC Trust which oversees the organisation.

The current head of the trust, Rona Fairhead, has warned David Cameron telling the BBC what to do would be a "big mistake".

She said: "One of the critical parts of the BBC is it has to be an independent impartial organisation.

"It has to be allowed to make the programmes that the public say that they want, but it has to be able to do so without fear or favour."

On Tuesday stars of stage, screen, TV and radio, including actors Daniel Craig and Dame Judi Dench, as well as some of the BBC's own highest paid talent, put their names to a letter to the PM urging him to leave the BBC alone.

But Andrew Ellison, from the Freedom Association, thinks the licence fee has had its day.

He said: "We believe that the licence fee should be scrapped, we think an element of public service broadcasting , radio as well as television, should be maintained, but that can be funded from taxation."

Its 85 years since the corporation first put out TV programmes, but a lot has changed in the media landscape in the intervening decades.

The BBC now finds itself up against hundreds of broadcast channels and the internet competing for audience share.

Steve Hewlett, a former BBC editor who is now a media commentator, said the BBC has weathered similar storms before and will do so again.

He said: "Is it high noon for the BBC? Probably not quite really, it has all got rather overheated this.

"Last week there was the Government raid on the licence fee which took £750m that they'd been paying the BBC for over 75s' licence fees. They took that away.

"It left the BBC, a big proud organisation, looking like they'd been pushed around by the Government.

"This week the BBC is fighting back."

The BBC's charter is up for renewal at the end of next year and a panel of industry experts has been set up to decide what should be in it.

The corporation now faces some of the most testing months in its long history.