How to save the BBC from itself (and get its hand out of our pockets)

04/07/2008

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 me someone who has no view at all on the corporation and I'll show you a caveman.

Even the BBC's director-general, Mark Thompson,

admits the licence fee is 'a tax'

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 the BBC, 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 and 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.

A new dissection emerges today. Written by Sir Antony Jay, a corporation veteran and co-author of the Yes, Minister series, How To Save The BBC is published by the Centre for Policy Studies, a Right-of-centre think tank.

The BBC's director-general, Mark Thompson, should do a bulk deal on 25,000 copies and issue it free to every member of staff. This would cost a fraction of what the BBC spends on ludicrous awaydays, while jolting thousands of jobsworths who creep about the corporation's corridors, holding meetings, dodging accountability and hoping to survive long enough to collect a pension that is funded in part by people who never watch the BBC.

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.

I described a broadcaster that had been scaled back to high-quality news, current affairs and documentaries, including works of brilliance such as Blue Planet. This could be achieved, I suggested, with no more than two radio stations and two television channels - and for a much diminished fee.

Helen winced and quickly moved round the table. I was never again asked to attend a lobbying session for taxpayers' largesse. Inside the BBC, my views are regarded as a thought-crime, somewhere between treachery and heresy, even though I am a fan who believes less would deliver more. The idea of stopping expansion, reining back and, yes, cutting costs, including jobs, is still deeply offensive to the majority of staffers who hold a quasi-religious belief in the corporation as a force for enlightenment.

Many seem not to have noticed, or refuse to accept, that, as Jay points out: "There is no longer a case for taking £4 billion a year from the public to produce programmes they do not want or can obtain free elsewhere."

Jay's thesis, elegantly expressed, is not that the BBC is an evil empire in need of breaking up. Far from being an abolitionist, he is keen to protect it from destruction by a combination of new technology and a growing revulsion against the £139.50 licence fee, which even Thompson admits is "a tax".

As the BBC makes flagship programmes available online, viewers using PCs and lap-tops will not, technically, be receiving broadcasts. So why pay the licence fee? A court case to test this cannot be far away.

At the same time, there are millions who do not share Thompson's assessment of the BBC's "civic, social and cultural benefits". In short, they don't want to fund something which they find irrelevant or worse.

An online petition, Scrap the BBC Licence Fee, argues: "The world has moved on since the days when the BBC was central to British life… any modern government that fails to acknowledge this fact is quite simply defying the will of the people."

One reason why the BBC cannot reform itself is the assumption, buried deep in its soul, that it is obliged to provide a total broadcasting service. Once the corporation spots a new avenue of activity, its tanks flood into the space.

According to Jay: "Corporate gigantism and belief in a unique moral mission have made the BBC what it is today. And yet both are of vanishingly small concern to viewers and listeners." It's the high-handed moral rectitude that many outsiders find so infuriating.

In 2003, I was fighting an internal battle to bring more balance to the BBC's coverage of immigration. I felt that some of its reporters had been programmed to promote the benefits of cultural diversity as an incontrovertible fact.

Fed up with what he perceived to be my subversion, one of the BBC's most senior figures sent me an email: "The BBC internally is not neutral about multiculturalism. It believes in it and promotes diversity. Let's face up to that."

I was amazed that he felt unembarrassed to put this in a formal memo. It revealed an arrogant mindset at odds with millions of his customers. Impartiality was fine, but only if it confirmed the prejudices of the BBC's editorial elite, the self-appointed custodians of liberal values.

Jay says that in order to be rescued from itself, the BBC needs to undergo a "spiritual conversion". The corporate imperialism and institutional self-regard are a millstone. "It must seek respect not for what it is, but for what it does." This can best be achieved, he argues, by chopping out or selling off everything, except Radio 4, "a unique speech" station, and one television channel.

Despite its official bleating, the BBC is not underfunded. By comparison with rivals, it is, as Thompson once admitted, wallowing in a "Jacuzzi of cash". The problem is that it tries to do too much, spreading its resources too thinly.

I don't know if the very best of the BBC could be sustained were it to be cut back in line with Jay's plan, with an annual income of just £1.5 billion. But his conclusion is compelling: "The BBC's remit is to produce a volume of high-quality programmes. With much reduced output, its long tradition of producing fine programmes and a budget of £4 million a day, it should be able to achieve it triumphantly."

Jeff Randall was the BBC's business editor, 2001-05. He is currently making a documentary series, a history of the City, for Radio Four