Exactly my feelings. They've* turned on their natural allies, so why on earth should they expect to be defended when their time inevitably came? Frog and scorpion, fellas, ya picked your side, and them's the breaks.
Commercials are awful, but they're awful everywhere. Most of the best drama comes from America. Yes, prestige shows are a tiny proportion of U.S. TV, but they're a tiny proportion of British TV too (or any nation's TV: most French TV isn't Engrenages/Spiral; most German TV isn't Babylon Berlin, and so on).
Because it will be harder to rebuild than repair. If not impossible
And their outsourced enforcers are so profit-driven that they target the easy, petty cases, snaring those hapless enough to panic and blurt out incriminating statements, while dedicated evaders make a game of goading the "goons," withdrawing implied rights of access, and usually hoping in vain that a squad of 'em will turn up with a court order. It's justice flipped on its head.I can choose whether to have a pint in a pub. The BBC demands money with menaces.
Fair point. What would you say to sweeping reforms such as the board, channel controllers and major editorial positions being elected by license payers? Even at this late stage, the BBC could win people back by taking a lead on this, and showing they're willing to change.Because it will be harder to rebuild than repair. If not impossible
How would this work?
I expect much like, say, National Trust internal elections work: members / license payers get given a leaflet of the various candidates and their platforms, then vote, either electronically or by paper ballot. Being the BBC, televised debates could also be aired.
Yeah, I'm the same. At least the BBC bias is now widely recognised by people who perhaps used to miss it.
That sounds bloody awful, tbh. The ideal for many parts of the BBC is not to maximise viewers/listeners - it is to provide value for all viewers/listeners somewhere in the output. As an example, R3's Late Junction isn't listened to by many people, but because of what it is, those that do listen to it often really really value it while finding most of the rest of the BBC's more expensive output of no interest. The BBC's remit is to provide for everyone, and that requires a strategic overview of things that cannot be captured by public votes.
What I believe actually happens, at least for DG, and at least notionally, is they interview applicants with a standardised set of assessment criteria tailored around the role and then decide based on a marking scheme as to who's performed best. This should operate the same way as how recruitment or promotion works at lower levels. Any BBC employee can physically apply for the job, which is internally advertised, and no doubt it's externally advertised too, though I haven't looked.
While I don't view internal democracy as any kinda panacea, it would at least inject a sense of legitimacy to the role, and set up another firewall between government and state broadcaster. Given some of the godawful appointments lately (the Twitter stream of the former head of BBC Westminster speaks for itself, then there's the unlamented editor of Today), any new process would struggle to do a worse job!
Ah, an unbiased, balanced recruitment policy.
It sounds about as good as any appointment process, but with a political hot potato like the BBC, public perceptions are just as important as its actual functioning (and even there, as noted above, there's been some shockingly bad appointments lately).
Generalising, in my experience of public service recruitment it sort of is, within its specific context, except it may also produce ridiculous, self-destructive outcomes in a broader context.Ah, an unbiased, balanced recruitment policy.
| Is Downing Street gearing up for all-out-war on the BBC? A senior source has told the Sunday Times' Tim Shipman that the government's forthcoming consultation will recommend the abolition of the licence fee, a reduction in the number of BBC TV and radio channels, and a scaling back of the BBC's website. As Katy Balls pointed out recently, Boris Johnson has long believed that reforming the BBC was a vital first step for the British right, writing in 2012 that if they couldn't change the Beeb, they couldn't change the country. So we should take Johnson's commitment seriously, rather than seeing it as part of a psychodrama about which of his advisors he is listening to. But just because the Prime Minister is committed to something, doesn't mean they have the ability to make it happen. Johnson starts with a fairly broad coalition at Westminster around the position that, whatever you may think of its value in the 20th Century, a compulsory licence fee is not an enduring way to fund the BBC in the 21st. But when you add onto that various political demands, like axing Radio 2, or BBC 6Music, or BBC Four, then you are, inevitably narrowing that coalition. For some people, because commissioning decisions should rest in the hands of the BBC, for others, for the simple reason that their voters quite like Radio 2. As far as the BBC is concerned, for them, the government is at its most dangerous when the political argument around the BBC is about what the BBC does - rather than how it is funded. And that's Johnson's biggest problem as far as the BBC goes: he wants to use the argument over the licence fee to change the BBC. But not everyone who agrees with him on the licence fee, even on the Conservative benches, will sign up to a broad programme of reform to its output. Changing the BBC might yet prove more difficult than changing the country. |
