Whoever replaces Tony Hall as director general of the BBC will have to hit the ground running as the corporation braces for another fight with the government over licence fee funding, the still-unfolding scandal over unequal pay and the exodus of young viewers in the Netflix-era of streaming TV.

1. The future of the licence fee

During the general election campaign, Boris Johnson threatened to take the BBC’s licence fee away as he called into question its status as a publicly funded broadcaster. After the election, No 10 announced a boycott of Radio 4’s Today programme due to the broadcaster’s supposed anti-Tory bias during the campaign .

Johnson, who has also suggested that non-payment of the £154.50 annual fee could be decriminalised, has said the licence fee is a general tax that is no longer justified when other organisations have found other ways to fund themselves. Culture secretary Nicky Morgan has also said that she is “open-minded” about replacing the licence fee with a Netflix-style subscription service.

The licence fee is secure until at least 2027, when the BBC’s royal charter is up for renewal. It would require parliament to pass new legislation to scrap it, which would prove difficult. However, the bigger risk for the BBC is the cost of the licence fee between 2022 and 2027, which comes up for discussion at the mid-term review of the royal charter set for spring 2022.

2. Unequal pay

Journalist Samira Ahmed’s landmark £700,000 employment tribunal victory against the BBC continues to keep the issue of unequal pay at the corporation in the spotlight. The unanimous decision by the tribunal that the only reason she was paid less than colleague Jeremy Vine for hosting a similar show was gender discrimination has opened the door to a flood of claims.

During the hearings the BBC inadvertently revealed the names of 120 female employees who had pursued gender pay complaints against the corporation. It has also emerged that radio presenter Sarah Montague won a £400,000 settlement and apology from the BBC over unequal pay on the Today programme. The BBC has been embroiled in a row over its gender pay gap since 2017, when it was forced to publish a list of its on-air staff earning £150,000 or more – only a third were women.

The BBC reported a median gender pay gap of 6.7% across its almost 20,000 employees last year, down from 9.3% in 2017. Hall has pledged to close the gap completely by the end of 2020. This compares to the national average of 17.9%.

3. Netflix

As with other broadcasters the BBC is facing a crisis in the streaming era as audiences turn to well-funded rivals such as Netflix and Amazon to watch shows and films. The issue is particularly acute among younger audiences, with the BBC admitting that under-24-year-olds spend more time on Netflix in a week than all of BBC TV, including iPlayer, despite the latter’s relative popularity with younger viewers.

Similarly, younger generations are listening to more music on streaming services such as Spotify than BBC radio stations. The corporation is making moves to secure its future, such as gaining approval from regulator Ofcom to keep shows on the iPlayer for a year, up from just 30 days, and joining forces with ITV to launch domestic Netflix rival BritBox late last year.

4. Over-75s and licence fee payment

In 2015, the government announced that the BBC would take over the £745m annual cost of providing free licences for over-75s in June 2020 as part of the licence fee deal. The corporation warned that shouldering that cost would result in “unprecedented closures” of services, including TV channels and radio stations such as BBC2 and Radio 5 Live.

The BBC has moved to make most over-75s pay the TV licence, with only those that can provide evidence they claim pension credit still eligible to get it free. In August Boris Johnson reignited the row, urging the BBC to “cough up” and pay the licence fee for all over-75s. In October, a report from the House of Commons culture select committee urged the government to find a way to help ensure that all over-75s continue to receive a free TV licence.

The 2017 Conservative manifesto unexpectedly pledged to ensure TV licences continued to be free for over-75s, although Tory sources have since suggested this was due to a copy-and-paste error made during the rushed general election campaign.