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If you love Auntie, now is the time to save the old crock
Poor old Auntie. For such an august and well-meaning old girl, she is having rather a hard and humiliating time these days. The BBC is beset on all sides by criticism and underlying it all is the question of what the corporation is really for.
The Hutton report, to be published on January 28, will almost certainly contain serious criticisms of the way the BBC and its governors handled the Andrew Gilligan "sexing up" affair. Meanwhile, the Robert Kilroy-Silk "Arabs" affair has left unresolved questions about freedom of speech and BBC neutrality.
There was, too, the fuss last week about the BBC's decision to put an ambitious drama about Alan Clark on BBC4 when 50% of the population don't have digital television. There were also what the BBC called "misleading reports" about the "poor" performance of its digital channels.
Earlier this month Melvyn Bragg accused the BBC of "brochure broadcasting", hiding away its arts programmes on the little-watched digital BBC4 as a "fig leaf", in a gesture towards public service broadcasting.
A letter to The Guardian last week from an independent arts producer, referring to Bragg's criticisms, pointed out that his comments came at the end of a week when BBC1 and BBC2, together, devoted 30 minutes to the arts, but 43 hours and 35 minutes to darts.
Ofcom, the body set up to regulate the communications industry, is already conducting a review of public service broadcasting, led by Ed Richards, a former Downing Street policy adviser. Richards said last week that research passed to Ofcom showed viewers attached least value to regional programmes (excepting news) put out by public service broadcasting -hardly encouraging for the BBC public service empire in the "regions".
The Tories have an advisory committee on the BBC's role and funding, led by David Elstein. It is due to report next month and is likely to recommend scrapping the BBC's licence fee and replacing it with a subscription.
The Institute for Public Policy Research, the Blairite think tank, called last week for radical reform of the BBC, including abolishing the licence fee in favour of a hypothecated tax. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is conducting a review of the BBC's online services and will also review digital broadcast services.
Most importantly for the BBC, last month Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, launched her department's review of the BBC's charter, which is due to expire at the end of 2006. She has put out a leaflet entitled Your BBC, Your Say. Actually, people don't need to be encouraged to have their say about the BBC. It is a national sport.
Last autumn almost everybody who is anybody in television did just that, at the Royal Television Society jamboree in Cambridge. Most of them (59%) agreed with the motion at a debate that "the BBC is out of control".
Central to this debate was a discussion of the governance of the BBC; as Peter Bazalgette, the chairman of Endemol, an independent production company, said, the Hutton inquiry has revealed the impossible position of BBC governors, as both cheerleaders and regulators. At the same convention Patricia Hodgson, a former director of strategy at the BBC, said the corporation's campaign to renew its charter was "in deep trouble", because it has fallen foul of both Labour and the Conservatives.
Elsewhere the usual grumbles about waste and misguided management in the BBC continue to rumble. Last week a tabloid revived an old story that the BBC is spending £2m-£3m on sending 5,000 employees on residential management courses offering "action learning".
And one of the most successful comedy writers in television, Andy Hamilton, author of Drop the Dead Donkey, said he would no longer write for BBC1 because the channel has become obsessed by short-term ratings and is governed by focus groups.
(He said that "audience insight managers" who are marketing experts sit in on development meetings with writers.) Poor old Auntie. Now is the time for those who love her, faults and all, to stand up for her. I worked for the BBC for several years, beginning as a television trainee, and though I was often shocked by what I saw of waste and political correctness and an almost entirely unconscious political bias towards statism and the left, I was also deeply impressed by what is best. Britain led the world with the best in broadcasting, and still does, and that excellence was, and still is, fostered in the BBC.
It is worth answering Jowell's question about what you value most about the BBC.
For myself, I value not having advertisements on television. Everyone seems to agree that they inflame children's materialist lusts and drive us all to envy, crime and obesity. The advert-free universe of the BBC is worth preserving .
For another, I value the serious attempt at political objectivity, observed in the breach sometimes, we know, but a nice idea. The BBC website is outstandingly good and was an excellent, risk-taking use of public money. The creativity in comedy and in drama has been inspiring, as have educational television and some documentaries. I still love Radio 3 and 4 and the World Service, though not uncritically.
And, for another thing, huge numbers of the best people in commercial radio and television today were originally trained, extraordinarily well, in the BBC, in every aspect of the craft; the BBC was for years an unrecognised free university (or poly) of communications.
The real problem with the BBC is a central confusion about its role. It is entirely protected by public money yet it has for years been obsessed with competing in the marketplace. I've always suspected this had more to do with market machismo than with the usual argument about justifying the licence fee. For 25 years the BBC has been in a muddle, lurching between competition and privilege, constantly falling between both stools, infuriating everyone in the process and thereby threatening its own survival.
The BBC does not need to pursue -cannot pursue -huge audiences, to compete with commercial producers. For one thing, on state money that is unfair. For another it is unnecessary. The licence fee (or other public funding) does not need to depend on BBC audience sizes. Let someone else make money out of bread and circuses; the BBC can satisfy less universal tastes, especially in the coming era of narrow casting through multichannels.
Let the BBC make fewer programmes and cut back its bloated staff and management; it does not need to fill so many hours at our expense, when others do it just as well. What on earth is the point of BBC TV daytime drivel for instance? Or Radio 1? Or sport?
The role of a publicly protected provider is to pursue excellence and innovation and genuine objectivity, regardless of the competition, in a way that market-driven producers cannot usually afford. Drop a lot of programmes, people and initiatives and sort out the governors. Radical surgery would make Auntie look and feel as good as she used to. We need her.
The Sunday Times | Sunday, January 18, 2004
