28 May 2015
Fading Icons: Tory Tanks on the BBC Lawn
by R J Thomas
It’s not been a good decade for the BBC. Leaving aside the embarrassment and trauma of the Jimmy Savile debacle, the searing competition from the satellite broadcasters who have got their acts together to produce very fine critically acclaimed drama and high quality news operations, and the flourishing of the Murdoch cheque book which has steadily sucked the nations’ major sporting events to Sky, the Beeb is suffering a major erosion of talent from both in front of and behind the camera. The many attacks on the Corporation for paying salaries that are too high has meant that for the jobs that matter the BBC does not pay enough, and that is inevitably starting to show in the quality of programming. The BBC Trust, which was intended to give a high level tone and guidance to the whole enterprise, to be an effective self-regulator, has not worked and continues to flap and flounder. And all that is sapping Auntie’s audience numbers and her traditional high standing as the nation’s broadcaster of choice .
Now the Beeb faces what may be its worst nightmare – a Conservative government with a working majority. And furthermore, a Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport , John Whittingdale, who has long taken a particular interest in the affairs of the BBC. Mr Whittingdale’s particular interest is of course not in spending evenings watching BBC1 and listening to Radio 2 in the bath. His concern is more over how the BBC is run, its commercial activities, the role of the BBC Trust, and, closest to home, its alleged bias against the Tory party and the right hand side of politics in general. In this latter, Mr Whittingdale has the enthusiastic (possibly dangerously over–enthusiastic) support of many Conservative back benchers and, more judiciously, many front benchers as well.
There can be little question that in the broadest terms there is a underlying, let us not call it bias, but perhaps orientation to the left around the august halls of Broadcasting House. It is the same as found in the hip Kings Cross offices of the Guardian, and also in those of the Times, the Independent, and probably even Sky and the Telegraph. Those who work in the media tend to a vaguely left liberal view of the world, in much the same way as the Metropolitan policeman on the beat has not been noted for his inclusive and ethnic minority-friendly views, and City bankers tend not to be socialists.
Of course, the BBC does not consciously promote a particular view of the world, indeed it takes great care not to, knowing how dangerous that could turn out to be. But it’s mindset shows through. It is not given to sympathise with the Conservative Party, let alone UKIP. Indeed, it was more than a little obvious during the election campaign that the BBC struggles to believe that any reasonable person would take UKIP seriously.
Mr Whittingdale is an intelligent man, who thinks before he speaks and is not out to wreck the present generally cross-party cultural regime. He knows that allegations of media bias will always be a touchstone of political life, and that attempts to de-liberalise the BBC could rebound on the press under a future leftist Labour government.
His concerns are much more the future of a state owned and controlled broadcaster in a time of intense and easy-access media. The BBC model and in particular the way in which it is financed is something which governments have failed to tackle for many years, seeing it as a problem to which the solution may well become more controversial than the problem. But the concept of having a compulsory levy on all persons who could watch the BBC, even if they chose never to do so, looks very odd when there are a hundred channels of TV which will show the eager viewer almost anything he should desire. That surely means the licence fee cannot last much longer. Easy to say, but not so easy to devise the alternative.The public retain a great affection for the BBC, to which we nearly all turn on occasions of great moment and national celebration or adversity. The thought of the state opening of Parliament interrupted by 15 minute advertising breaks is not likely to meet with approval, and the introduction of pay-as-you-view or subscription only BBC would create a firestorm equivalent to charging for the NHS, and lead inevitably to further dumbing down of the broadcast quality. Which leads to another issue.
The BBC has become enormous; it has not only the four main TV channels and their spin offs, but four main national radio stations, a number of specialist radio channels, and then a massive array of regional TV sub-networks and radio stations. Free to listen and view, these have decimated local competition not just in viewing and listening but also in local newspapers. The days of the well written daily or weekly regional newspaper – the Yorkshire Evening Press or Western Free Press – is drawing rapidly to a close, and those local newsgroups who own them bitterly blame the BBC’s free news broadcasting for their demise. That might have happened anyway, but it is certainly odd to have a corporation funded by compulsory public levy which has such a vigorous range of commercial activities. The Beeb has major businesses in retailing programme cd’s, in programme making, in music and book publishing, mostly very profitable (and, the BBC argues, significantly contributing to the core broadcasting mission). It is as if the National Trust had expanded its retail activities to compete head on with John Lewis and Debenhams by increasing its membership subscriptions to do it.
If any person should appear today, in 2015, and suggest that the government should establish a state owned media group, such a concept would be howled down in derision and dissent. But the UK already has one and, for all the muttering and grumbling, the BBC has worked and is still widely admired at home and around the world. The problem is the flab that it now carries around its core mission of being a public service broadcaster. And maybe that is how the whole problem might be best addressed. The commercial audience-number-driven popular channels can be hived off into a commercial for profit business with shareholders or stakeholders, and all the attendant localist and publishing empire also spun off and broken up. That would leave the BBC as it used to be, making the sort of programmes that are not commercially viable but which a civilised society ought to produce as a record of its higher aspirations and evidence of the continuing proof of striving for excellence. That would enable the licence fee to be cut to a modest amount which no doubt would produce grumblings about elitism, but hopefully only minor grumblings. And even the most wild eyed of Tory MPs would not worry about political bias on something which consisted mainly of BBC 2 and Radios 3 and 4.
