It looks certain that the BBC as we know it will change dramatically in the coming years.

The government has announced that the licence fee will be frozen until 2024 – an effective £285million budget cut – and there are plans afoot to change the way the Beeb is funded more dramatically.

Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, said there is “no doubt” the licence fee freeze will affect at least some of the broadcaster’s many different arms of frontline output which currently span the whole world.

Picture the scene: you’ve just got off a plane, you’re tired and in a foreign country. In just about any hotel, you can flick on the TV and among the teleshopping and low-quality chat shows there will probably only be two channels in English.

One, filled with all-too-white smiles and overly Brylcreemed hair, is likely to be CNN. The other will be BBC World News.

At the same time as being broadcast across the world, the Beeb is paying for a journalist to be sat at the back of local council meetings – making sure that nothing dodgy happens to your bin collections.

For nearly 100 years, the BBC has been known all across the world for telling the truth in an impartial and balanced way.

It has built its formidable reputation on this.

During the Second World War, the phrase “this is London calling” preceded accurate information broadcast across Nazi held Europe, winning the BBC and Britain friends and admirers in occupied countries.

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century the BBC continued to have a similar role for those living under repressive regimes.

It, quite literally, spans the whole of the globe and the lives of everyone on it.

But according to Robert Jones, professor of branding at UEA, the BBC’s image as an authoritative global voice is now on the wane – both here and abroad.

He explained: “The BBC undoubtedly is a very strong brand, but I think we should also be careful not to overstate it.

“I think it's less strong than it was, and there's a risk that it's declining further.

“10 or 20 years ago, the BBC would fairly universally have been associated with impartiality and authoritativeness that's clearly being questioned in Britain now – but interestingly, talking to my foreign students, it's being questioned around the world as well.”

It is, he said, still well-known but for different things.

The global brand that was once built on the news is now being built on prestigious dramas.

Killing Eve, The Night Manager and David Attenborough are now the BBC’s key exports.

This, according to Professor Jones, is both a blessing and a curse.

“It does have that kind of incredibly broad reach, but the danger of that means that it's something for everybody,” he said.

“But the danger of that is it makes what it distinctively stands for a bit less clear.”

He believes that the BBC’s lies with “creativity” and producing and selling high-quality drama around the world, in a similar manner to HBO – the American TV powerhouse which made Game of Thrones.

The hope is that by producing brilliant content and flogging it to streaming services around the world, it will continue to be able to wash the many faces of its UK content.

But the question is, how to do that in a crowded marketplace against heavy hitters like Netflix, Amazon and Apple?

These giants had far more cash than the BBC, even before the proposed licence fee cut. And have none of the expensive and onerous responsibilities of public broadcasting that the Beeb does.

Now the BBC is trying to outdo them while cutting back elsewhere.

The amount of money BBC Studios – one of the corporation’s many arms that produces its highly marketable dramas – can borrow has already been dramatically increased.

This perhaps hints at the future of the BBC.

If it works, the corporation could stand a chance of making up some of the budget shortfall.

But if it doesn't, the global gamble could force the Beeb into leaving some audiences on the home front behind.