Sunday, August 10, 2008

Guest Blog: The BBC - Anachronism or National Treasure?

By Gerard Eastick*

In a couple of weeks’ time I shall board the Caledonian Sleeper in Edinburgh, sit in the lounge car and stare disconsolately at the miniature bottle of Gordon’s gin, wondering whether any of my fellow travellers secretly harbour the wish to buy two miniatures and thus enjoy a nightcap just like the one you would expect to have in the comfort of your own home. On the journey, I shall probably be reminded that the trains of a bygone age, The Coronation, in particular, carried its own Cocktail Bar, a ladies “retiring room” and a hairdressing salon.

Of course, it is no good lamenting the passing of a bygone era; those rose tinted glasses disguise the tinge of yellow-brown, not just on trains, but everywhere, due to the universal habit of smoking in public. We conveniently forget that in order to provide this degree of liveried, linen-lined chic, a dozen railway employees laboured, on slum-dweller wages to maintain the upper classes in passable, if not, dignified, comfort. The cocktail bar was added in 1923, coincidentally, or perhaps not, the same year that the BBC started broadcasting from Scotland.

On my way, ostensibly cocooned in my bunk I shall unconsciously pass over something that is going to form the main purpose of my visit to London. It is Hadrian’s Wall. I am going to the British Museum to see an exhibition entitled “Hadrian: Empire and Conflict”. The Wall fascinates me. I have walked along it. I have studied it. I have visited the ruins and imagined it in the days of the Roman Empire. And yet, the wall was almost an anachronism from the day the first stone was laid, leaving it to spend the majority of its operational life as a job creation scheme for soldiers who may otherwise have mutinied out of sheer boredom and dismay at filthy locals.

The monolith that is the BBC is today facing the challenge of being outmanoeuvred in an explosion of media innovation. But Mark Thompson its Director General has plans. A while ago, he came up with something called “Creative Future”. I am not going to attempt to explain it. To me it sounds as if two buzz words have been stuck together. He said, during the course of his talk to the assembled BBC staff, “We need 360 degree commissioning in knowledge content”. I mention it in passing because I am afraid I do not know what that means.

I have said before that the BBC’s major sins are, I think, sins of omission. The Thompson speech is morally neutral and not surprisingly liberal in tenor but bereft of humility and to me, vaguely sinister: “We're going to take diversity, onscreen and off-screen, far more seriously than we have,” he says. But nowhere in this (and you wouldn’t really expect it) does he respond to external criticism of bias.

The first Director General, John Reith, was a dour, brooding Scot. You may be familiar with the type. He was however, a man of principle. He told us that the BBC was to be “a drawn sword parting the darkness of ignorance”. Publius Aelius Hadrianus, I am certain, would have approved of the analogy. It has the tone of command and the military confidence needed to render shock and awe.

Today, Hadrian’s wall is a ruin. But it is also a major heritage site; a testimony to a bygone age. It is both an anachronism and a national treasure. I am inclined to ask if the same can be said of the BBC, and leave it at that.

* Gerard Eastick is better known on this blog as Wrinkled Weasel.

22 comments:

  1. The BBC is over funded is involved in too many things and should be shrunk back to its core business. I resent paying for a left wing organisation that represents everyone except the vast majority that pay for it.It days are over.

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  2. We need to distinguish 'the BBC' and 'funding the BBC'.
    What is definitely obsolete is the licence fee funding the BBC as it stands. There may be a case for some taxpayer-funded generation of material or its distribution, but that needs to be made afresh.
    If the BBC is as wonderful as its DG says, then it can stand on its merits in the commercial world e.g. subscription funding. It may of couse be eligible for taxpayer-funded generation or distribution of material, but not as of right.
    From my perspective, the bias has become quite intolerable and I don't listen to or watch the BBC.

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  3. The BBC, with its all faults, costs £139.50 per year.
    Sky costs £357.00 per year minimum, from (1st sept) and for that you get churned repeats and very few new programmes.
    So don't knock your dear old auntie too hard because compared to sky it's great value for money especially when you consider all the extra's it provides. i.e. orchestras, arts, world services,news etc.
    And bye the way I have absolutely no connection with auntie.

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  4. "He was however, a man of principle."

    He was an anti-Semite, a Nazi sympathiser, and loathed Churchill; doing everything he could to keep him off the BBC. Principles mean very little when they are such despicable ones. The BBC has since continued his legacy of bias - just different ones.

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  5. Too right! There seems to be an excess amount of people for every news job - just how many staff does it need? There are far too many dumbing down shows for the chav vote - for the money we pay, there should be a far better service, less chiefs on eye-watering bonuses and less schedule rearranging for enforced viewing of whatever sport is being rammed down everyone's throats in all aspects of the media - be like Sky etc and have a sports channel. We can't get half the channels (too many mountains in the way and I can't afford to upgrade AND get HD ready as well) and resent regular favourite skipping about like fleas.

    I see Woss has just bought a £40K bath made out of one piece of marble - I just wish I could earn that in a year to pay ever increasing bills!! Maybe there should be a Freedom of Information item from the Tories on the increase of staff/bonuses etc at Auntie.

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  6. Rex
    Exactly. What is the fear associated with it being a subscription service?

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  7. briansj.....

    If you think the BBC is left wing biased then who did all the dirty work during the "Blairaqi amBush"?
    Rupert Murdoch and Sky!

    And who blew the story?
    Andrew Gillighan working for the BBC

    So much for free enterprise when it comes to neutral reporting.

    Wouldn't the city just love to get their hands on the BBC!
    Think BT, British Gas, Water and Electric supply and then you might get to realise just what merits the commercial sector has on to offer public services!

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  8. I agree with BrianSJ, the way the BBC is funded isn't the same as the nature of the organisation itself. Its standards are so much higher than that of its rivals, it'd survive if we paid for it via subscription. In fact if we subscribed to the BBC, that would get rid of Sky as they can't compete with a much better brand like the BBC. That would have to be a good thing.
    The licence fee can't continue. The BBC has just been fined for scamming people, and the people scammed would have to pay up through the licence fee. That can't be right.
    Subscription would get rid of rubbish channels like BBC 3 and would remove the PC drivel in some programmes, while maintaining the very high standards of the brand. Bias is not unique to the BBC, and it's rather subtle. Has anyone actually watched Fox News? Thank God for the BBC actually.

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  9. I don't really care what Murdoch spends on Sky per head of the UK population even if it is possible to disentangle a guesstimate (which I would need more details to believe anyway) from all the other things the Murdoch enterprise does. The point is that I don't have to pay a license fee to watch it and if some of the things I do buy, voluntarily, contribute to Sky's production costs I'm not too bothered.

    I do mind very much being forced to pay a license fee to the BBC as I have no choice in the matter which is really the whole point. I do, as it happens, feel altogether out of sympathy with the BBC's political point of view, but that's another story.

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  10. Anachronism without doubt. The very idea of collecting a listening and watching poll tax ( prosecuting those who do not pay and do not want to watch BBC but would like to watch ITV) to sustain an outdated edifice with billions and where chattering pinkos act as extended mouth piece of Labour is nothing short of collective shame. We seem to cling to original precepts and models like NHS and BBC which are not fit for purpose in 21st century.

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  11. The real problem with the BBC is not that it's biased to the left or right (it isn't) but that it's biased to metropolitan Big Government. It does more than any other institution to establish the lie that it's the State's job to 'do something' about everything.

    Just once, please God just once, I want to hear a minister reply to a question about cheese-rolling injuries in Somerset or whatever with the words "Well, John, the government is going to do absolutely nothing about this; it's a local matter, and not one that we have an opinion on. I suggest you interview the Chairman of the Parish Council".

    Personally, I'll pay for (1) the World Service (2) the shipping forecast and (3) a news agency on a par with PA and Reuters. That's about £3.50 a year. All the rest can compete in the market.

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  12. I enjoyed that but on the BBC it was a bit more of a feather duster than a scalpel

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  13. "a dozen railway employees laboured, on slum-dweller wages to maintain the upper classes in passable if not, dignified, comfort."
    Happy days! At least the trains were clean and the slum-dwellers had jobs. Now they hang around outside the Co-op in their Burberry baseball caps drinking 75p lager!

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  14. Read Guido on the 472 BBC staff going to cover the US elections.
    And a similar number covering the Olympics.
    The they don't speak properly and they don't even look smart.
    Give me Sky News every time - in spite of the adverts.
    The Tories should make a firm commitment to sell off everything except Radio 4 and BBC 1 and 2

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  15. The licence fee has had its day - and so has the BBC in its present form. Make it a subscription only service, then if you love the BBC - which it keeps telling us we do - you can subscribe to it, and if you don't, you won't.

    As I'm back to the usual one BBC programme per week (New Tricks, if anyone cares) and never watch BBC news because they can't be trusted to tell the truth, I wouldn't be subscribing.

    Let's see how much cash they can generate without the threat of legal action to back up their demands..........

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  16. This is the best guest blog I have read. Shorter and better written than most of the others.

    I enjoyed it and moreover I agreed with what you say.

    Thanks :-)

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  17. What amazes me is how many of the well known presenters and senior executives live in million pound houses in North Oxford and send their kids to private school there.

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  18. The Police, the NHS, the BBC, the Post Office, the railways - all used to be much loved public institutions that delivered public service at a decent price. They also used to be admired across the world.

    All are now universally regarded as doing a bad job and hoovering up public money. What went wrong?

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  19. Why does it take two news presenters to present the news on BBC?

    When I was a kid we Gordon Honeycombe on ITV and Richard Baker on the BBC sitting behind a desk on their own with a cardboard globe going round on the front of it. A Foreign news report came in via dodgy phone line from somewhere like Vietnam with real gunfire and helicopter sounds in the background.

    Now all we get is 'news media moppets' reading autocue soundbites and telephoto shots from off the roof of some hotel miles away from any action..

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  20. why would anyone in England want to pay the licence fee when there is no bbc England anyway?.
    The bbc constantly mistake England for britain

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  21. rex: Utter nonsense. A basic Sky package cost about £16 a month (and you get free broadband)

    I don't have the movies or sports channels as I'm not that bothered.

    What I do like on Sky are the channels like Discovery, National Geographic and History. Free from the influence of the leftie green mafia of the BBC.

    So you see it's called choice. Something a leftie BBC lover wouldn't understand.

    The BBC is only £140 a year because EVERYONE has to pay for it.

    If those of you who want the BBC had to fund it you'd be paying out a lot more than a £140 a year.

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  22. The BBC should be smashed beyond repair and its 'broadcasters' arrested and punished, in a deeply permanent way, for their treacherous Commie propaganda.

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