Midlands television licence fee payers are sending £826 million to London every year.
That’s the difference between the amount television viewers pay, and the amount the BBC actually spends in the region.
Meanwhile, the broadcaster spends almost £2 billion more in London than it actually raises in the capital city.
Figures were published by the Campaign for Regional Broadcasting Midlands, which is calling for the BBC to give the Midlands a fair deal at last.
The national broadcaster spends nearly £4 billion a year and is a major part of the economy, creating jobs and providing work for independent production companies and other businesses in the creative industries.
But it revealed last week it has actually cut the amount it spends on television produced in the Midlands - despite promising to increase its investment in the region.
The new annual report showed the BBC spent just 1.5% of its programming budget in the Midlands in 2016, down from 1.8% the year previously.
Campaigners calculated the amount raised in each part of the country, based on the total cash the BBC receives from licence fees and the population in each region.
And they compared the figure to the amount the BBC spends, based on the annual report.
Licence fee payers in the wider Midlands region pay £961 million a year.
But the broadcaster spends just £135 million a year here.
In other words, for every £7 raised in the Midlands, just £1 is spent in the region.
Meanwhile, the BBC raises £507 million in London, and spends £2.49 billion there.
The broadcaster spends £480 million a year in the North of England, including at its regional headquarters in Salford, Greater Manchester. However, this is still significantly less than the £881 million it raises from licence fee payers in the North.
Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood (Lab Perry Barr) said: “It is absolutely disgraceful that they invest a lot more in London.
“There is a huge capability for doing a lot more work here, and what they have done is shifted a lot of work from the West Midlands to Greater Manchester.
“This is taxpayers’ money and they are ignoring Midlands taxpayers.
“We have a huge arts sector, a huge current affairs sector. We have a lot of potential here and lot of work that could be done here.”
In a statement last week following the publication of its annual report, the BBC highlighted production taking place in the West Midlands.
A BBC spokesperson said: “We have a renewed commitment to Birmingham and have been growing our activity in the city and the rest of the West Midlands. There are now more than 700 people working from our Birmingham base at The Mailbox, making network content such as The Archers and Home Front. They will shortly be joined by a significant number of BBC Three staff when the channel relocates much of its operations to Birmingham.
“Meanwhile the BBC’s Drama Village in Selly Oak produces more than 130 hours of network TV drama every year.
"It is home to BBC One soap Doctors and international hit Father Brown. Later this year BBC Two will broadcast The Boy With The Top Knot, a drama filmed in the West Midlands, and Peaky Blinders will return. Much of the world-famous show is made in Birmingham and the Black Country.”
