The recent BBC One drama Hard Sun depicted a dystopian world facing an apocalypse in five years caused by a mysterious and unstoppable cosmic force. According to the messages flowing from the upper ranks of BBC management, Britain’s national broadcaster finds itself in much the same predicament.

Panic is rising over the way mountains of cash from tech giants, and especially Netflix, are radically reshaping television. Last week as it published its annual plan, the BBC highlighted the fact that 16 to 24-year-olds are now spending more time watching Netflix than BBC channels and iPlayer.

“As the trend shifts towards on-demand viewing, the BBC risks being overtaken by competitors,” the document warned. “Maintaining the reach and time that audiences spend with our output is … difficult when they have so many other choices.”

Viewer behaviour is shifting rapidly, especially among the young, at a time when the BBC feels under siege from financial pressures. Its 2015 financial settlement with the Government requires it to fund free TV for over-75s and pay for the World Service, which had previously been part of the Foreign Office budget. The extra burden is equivalent to hundreds of millions of pounds per year from its licence fee income of around £3.8bn, and comes as Netflix is spending $8bn (£5.7bn) a year on programming alone.