The BBC’s commercial activities provide a way to offset declining licence fee income, with BBC Commercial through BBC Studios, reporting turnover growth that it attributes to its ability to generate and monetise intellectual property.43 The BBC told us that commercial revenue had doubled since the start of the Charter period to around £2.2 billion, underlining why the BBC viewed IP as central to sustaining longterm returns. The BBC said that owning IP materially improved margins compared with producing for others, and therefore increasing the proportion of BBCowned programming was important for durable revenue streams.44