Hard Pressed
The license fee may not be the best way to fund the BBC, but those who are first to criticise the organisation are usually the last to realise what we stand to lose through its demise. Television Centre in London, the home of the British Broadcasting Corporation, is typically an exciting, frenzied place to be. Yet on Monday, it was anything but. Over 3,000 workers walked out in a dispute over the future of the oldest broadcaster in the country. Storm clouds are gathering over White City.
Mark Thompson has made an inauspicious start as Director-General of the BBC. One of his first moves was to introduce savage job cuts that will, and of this there can be no doubt, affect the quality of service that the corporation provides. Yet, and we must be realistic here. Gone are the days of lavish and wasteful expenditure by what is, to all intense and purposes, an extension of the civil service.
With charter renewal granted this time around, but in a way that has effectively left Auntie neutered, the next ten years promise to be the most turbulent in the corporation’s history. On grounds of jealousy, it’s perhaps no surprise that the print press clamber over themselves to take shots at the Beeb. We all know the sphere of commercial media is a far more difficult world in which to operate than one in which funding is delivered on a plate and by legislative force.
Not only that, but the owner of The Times, noted for its strident anti-BBC stance, is also, and this may of course be an improbable coincidence, the owner of the BSkyB corporation. The license fee issue is a difficult nut to crack. Some may feel that the BBC do not provide them with value for money; that their license fee is wasted on services that aren’t used. Yet their perception is misplaced. Around 98 per cent of the UK population used the BBC every month last year.
The BBC’s website is one of the most popular in the UK, and the BBC’s flagship news programmes remain the most popular both on terrestrial and satellite. The BBC offers something for everyone.
For a small monthly fee, we enjoy a state broadcaster whose remit places audience figures near the bottom of its list of priorities; a state broadcaster which helps fledgling independent production companies; and a state broadcaster that can provide a range of services to suit the plurality of interests. And we shouldn’t forget that state media in this country is markedly less pro-establishment than in other parts of the globe.
Like other national treasures such as the monarchy and the House of Lords, reform is a better way forward than abolition. The license fee, and the BBC aren’t all that bad. Those that demand radical change for commercial reasons do not properly understand the consequences of such action. And if you’re not convinced, then watch ITV for a while.
26th May 2005