Posted on 07/03/2008 8:20:24 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Jeff Randall argues that a combination of corporate imperialism and institutional self-regard stops the broadcaster seeing where its future lies
Few British institutions are capable of generating more storm and stress than the BBC. Find someone who has no view at all on the corporation and I'll show you a caveman.
Auntie's salad days are long gone, yet she remains an aphrodisiac of debate. From alleged bias and method of funding, to presenters' pay-packets and quality of output, the BBC is a reliable energiser of lacklustre dinner-parties.
The blogosphere is clogged with comment about it, much of it from extremes. It doesn't matter whether postings are on the Guardian's website or The Daily Telegraph's, there is a juxtaposition of love/hate.
Books, television programmes, radio documentaries, discussion pamphlets and, of course, newspaper columns are devoted to salving, scrapping, denouncing and defending the BBC.
Having worked there full-time for nearly five years - a period of exhilaration and exasperation in equal measure - I am now a sad junkie of all this stuff.
When I was its business editor, and the management was trying to crank up support for a renewed licence settlement (on even more generous terms than those left behind by Sir John Birt), I was invited to a dinner for opinion formers by the then head of Radio 4, Helen Boaden. It was attended by business luminaries, such as Sir Stuart Rose (Marks & Spencer), Allan Leighton (Royal Mail) and Sly Bailey (Trinity Mirror).
Helen was one of the few BBC managers with whom I got on. She has a breezy charm that's not a distinguishing feature of most White City "suits". Unfortunately (for her) she assumed that I would be on-message and asked me to set out for our guests what the future of the BBC should be.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
As an ex-Canadian, I had the same feelings towards the CBC. They keep telling Parliament and the PM that they ‘DO NOT HAVE ANY MONEY”
Then someone (like clockwork) stands up :”so how about the revenue generated from HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA?”
Until this day, CBC doesn’t answer that question.
Canada’s Mother Corp and Britain’s Auntie are both cut from the same cloth.
Yes, they are.
Unlike the BBC, canadians have to fork over money to spend for FRENCH-LANGUAGE radio and tv programs, as MANDATED by the government.
That’s why you have more than 25 French-language TV stations that nobody AND no one cares about watching in Western Canada.
The BBC has excellent programming - my son is an independent documentary film director and makes some of the BBC serious documentaries. I’ve been in England many times over the past twenty-five years, and without the BBC, there would have been no TV in those early years. There was only one station and it was the BBC and they didn’t broadcast 24 hrs. a day and most of their programs were documentaries. It was more an educational channel, along with news and weather in the evening. TV there is still not like ours; their channels are still limited when conpaired to ours. England is not huge, doesn’t have many thousands of companies like ours does to buy commercials. When one buys a TV there, one has to pay a license fee to get it turned on. That money goes to the BBC to pay for programming. Sure, they are more liberal than Fox News, but their whole country is more liberal than our country. A true conservative wouldn’t be hired at any TV channel there, and, if hired, wouldn’t last long. And, if this person thought the US was great, and said so, he/she wouldn’t last a week. US bashing is the greatest sport there.
“my son is an independent documentary film director and makes some of the BBC serious documentaries” clarifies your whole point.
In my neck of the woods we call that a tax :)
And why Britain hasn't had itself a good ol' T(V)-party is beyond me.
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