BBC DG Mark Thompson is right to frame the question as “what is the BBC for” as opposed to (the defensive) “is the BBC too big”, but are his cuts the right answer to that question?
As Lily Allen (swoon) points out in her Guardian op ed, without 6 Music we would be forced back on the blandness of much of the Radio 1 playlist. As for cutting an Asian news network in modern multi-cultural Britain?? I am told this was missing its audience in practice but surely that requires a rethink not just chopping it to satisfy anti-BBC, anti-multicultural jihadists. As a multi-cultural comms expert on my team says “If BBC is to invest in good quality radio for ethnic groups, they need to go back to the drawing board and think about what these listeners want, instead of presuming it’s all about bollywood and bhajis.”
The one that makes very little sense to me is cutting back on the BBC website. At a time when other media are expanding their digital channels, Murdoch and Brooks at NI are chewing over paid for access to digital content, and more of us are consuming news and entertainment online, this smacks of turning back the clock rather than reining in the spending.
I love it when the Beeb discusses itself on air. Always a diplomatic affair with BBC inner politics simmering away below the surface. On Today this morning they trotted out a bunch of highfalutin’ commentators including cultural elitist Charles Moore (who refused to pay his licence fee until Jonathan Ross was sacked – a bit like Lord Ashcroft saying he will only register to pay tax if a Tory Government is elected. For the record, Ross’ Radio 2 show was one of the most entertaining shows ever, for an organisation whose stated role is to entertain as well as educate and inform, even if his pay was ridiculously high.) who droned on about dumbing down, Strictly and chasing ratings (what a dreadful thing for folk in the entertaining and informing business to do).
A better move by Thompson would have been to share consumers’ credit crunch pain last year and go for a lower licence fee increase, rather than take the money, endure the media flack (Ross’ salary, taxi expenses etc) and then start cutting services that are bang on with a modern interpretation of its charter.
Let’s face it, this is the usual defensive posture organisations like the BBC feel compelled to take in the face of the ritual Murdoch-driven, Tory attack on it. Yes the BBC should be well managed, prudent and popular, but it should also stand up for itself and have us as brand ambassadors. At the moment poor Thompson faces the worst of all worlds. Cutting services is not going to buy off the Murdoch-Cameron unholy alliance. Meantime badvocates are lining up rather than advocates.
Meanwhile the other tax story rumbles on, while political anoraks like me try to work out what the negative fall out from the Lord Ashcroft story means for votes in the marginal seats that will decide the outcome of the forthcoming election and which Ashcroft is literally trying to buy for the Tories.
The media are right to point out that the Tories are not the only party that take money from nom doms, an act of breathtaking hypocrisy for any political party seeking to run a democracy based on citizens who neither seek to or have the means to withhold tax from the wider national benefit. The difference here is Ashcroft is a senior official of the Conservative Party who is unashamedly funding a key seats operation to decide the election outcome with scalpel-like efficiency. I will pay my taxes – and a stack more from next month – under a forthcoming Tory government. Why should he have the right to decide he will only pay taxes if the party he supports is in Government?
The Blair Government I enthusiastically supported in the past took money from people I really don’t like (though I assume Richard Desmond does pay his taxes) and one of the less appealing aspects of modern politics is the need to hold your nose occasionally around some of your rich friends. Obama showed there was another way.
