Wealthier households should have to pay more for the BBC, the corporation's chairman has suggested.
Samir Shah has questioned the current system of a flat licence fee and appeared instead to favour a levy based on the value of the property.
In his first interview since becoming chairman last year, he told The Sunday Times: "Why should people who are poor pay the same as people in wealthy households?"
It comes as licence fee revenues have plummeted, with the number of households paying the £169-a-year levy to watch live television or use the BBC's iPlayer streaming service falling by half a million, to 23.9 million in the year to April 2024.
BBC executives are now being forced to consider alternative funding models to help plug the growing hole in the corporation's funding.
While Mr Shah, 73, stopped short of fully endorsing a household levy, he pointed to its benefits, claiming that it "gets rid of the enforcement issue" which has become "a problem".
The BBC has ramped up its enforcement of the licence fee, sending 41 million letters to British households between 2023 and 2024 urging them to pay the levy - a year-on-year increase of almost 13 percent.
Unlike the licence fee, the household levy could be collected with the council tax.
Mr Shah's views appear to echo those of Richard Sharp, the former BBC chairman, who told The Telegraph in 2023 that the current system of a flat licence fee is "regressive".
Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, was reported in September to be considering funding the BBC via general taxation instead of the licence fee and mutualising the broadcaster.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Sunday Times, Mr Shah, who is responsible for upholding and protecting the independence of the BBC, also said the broadcaster needs "more variety" and "diversity of thought" as well as more staff who are "northern working class".
Reflecting on claims the corporation has a liberal bias, he said: "The media recruits graduates from the arts, humanities, and they tend to be metropolitan and to have a point of view you could describe as Liberal Centre, Centre Left. We kind of reflect that."
The corporation has faced a backlash over its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict and it recently emerged that a documentary it aired about Gaza featured the son of a senior Hamas figure.
A protest was held outside Broadcasting House on Thursday, with demonstrators claiming the BBC had aired Hamas propaganda.
"We make mistakes in our journalism. We correct mistakes", Mr Shah said.
He added: "There needs to be greater accountability. People have to face the consequences of what they do."
On the importance of diversity, he said the BBC "needs to do a lot more to ensure our staff reflects the country as a whole. We need more variety and diversity - more diversity of thought. It's on, frankly, the northern working class where we're poor. That's where the focus should be."
Mr Shah has been in his role since March 2024 and said he was "surprised in my first year at having this procession of men" who have had allegations made against them.
These include former newsreader Huw Edwards and Russell Brand, who had a Radio 2 show in the 2000s.
"The theme that keeps coming through is that junior staff are vulnerable to being preyed on by people with power. We have to stop it," he said.
"I will not tolerate junior staff being scared to report what's happening or their managers looking the other way."
He added: "We need to have some way of preserving whistleblowers' anonymity, so we can throw people out and do it quickly. I'm absolutely determined. This is a cancer we need to cut out."