The Future of the BBC
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Written by Joe McDonald / June 30th, 2015, 3:21pm
In a deal that may come as a surprise to many of us, the BBC have lost the rights to the Olympic Games which they have held since the dawn of time. In the aftermath of this announcement, many questions have been asked in the last 24 hours, some regarding what people were seemingly taking for granted; where and how can we watch the Olympics now? Is the coverage going to be as good? Those are all very pertinent questions and no doubt they will be answered in the coming weeks and months. However there’s another disturbing underlying question hiding under this latest situation.
As I wrote in my last post, licence fee cuts are a possible reason for a predicted lack of investment in fantasy dramas with ratings proving to be a key choice in whether programmes should be renewed or cancelled. In sports, the BBC already lost control of the football league highlights to Channel 5 who were able to guarantee sponsors a primetime place from next season.
Most worrying of all perhaps for the corporation are the renewed calls on social media for the licence fee to be scrapped altogether. Granted, this isn’t exactly a new subject. The issue has been tabled for at least five years. But you know when something might happen and it’s at the back of your mind but you think it probably won’t anyway? I bet anything that will be the reaction Tony Hall exhibits if the day comes when the licence fee is abolished.
I’m one of those people who don’t think the licence fee should be scrapped though. Sure it is too expensive and there’s a case where the people who earn more money could give a bit more to the BBC but surely wouldn’t scrapping the licence fee be a bit drastic? In an age where national institutions are being privatised, I for one am proud that we can still invest in a corporation, and in return expect (mostly) unbiased news and the commissions of intelligent and engaging programmes that not only seek to entertain but also to educate. With C4 the only possible exception, the other big networks don’t invest enough in programming of this kind.
If the licence fee is scrapped then big questions about the BBC need to be asked and time must be given for the best answer to be considered. The BBC has been around over 90 years since 1922, when television was a dream of over-imaginative children and radio (or wirelesses as they were then called) were all the rage. The corporation have seen us through the turbulent and sometimes tough events of the 20th Century, from the dawn of the Second World War to the end of the Cold War. I’ve been brought up to watch all major events on the BBC and I was born in the mid 1990s. Through the information that the corporation have provided, I was able to grasp the severity of 9/11 at a tender age and appreciate the significance of royal occasions on the country. So maybe I’m looking at this through rose-tinted glasses.
After all, it isn’t as if the BBC is perfect. For me personally, there seems to be a slight bias towards the establishment. The lack of reporting on the impact of the austerity measures that have hit the country concern me but that’s an issue for another post. And there still seems to be a very chauvinistic 19th Century attitude lingering among the higher ups and some of the top performers linked to the BBC that is harming both the Corporation and the people’s trust in the network. The rule brought in that at least one woman must sit on every episode of the panel shows shown by the BBC have been seen as tokenism. Most worrying of all perhaps are the revelations that keep on giving: the fact that once-esteemed celebrities with close links to the BBC such as Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris are only now having their reputations destroyed for the heinous unspeakable crimes they committed so brazenly back in the mid-to-late 20th Century.
No doubt then that change is needed at the BBC before it becomes stagnant. I remain thoroughly unconvinced though that scrapping the licence fee and cutting the corporation loose before it does any more damage is the right way to go.
Instead what’s needed are younger more liberal voices working their way up to the top. This generation of under 30s are very different to those over 30 without generalising too much. They believe in equality and strive for a better world for everyone while they condemn evil. I’m not saying that the previous generation have failed to do that at all but maybe the executives at the BBC, most I’m guessing are at least over 40 if not over 50, set out to do just that once and lost their way and their goal while getting richer and richer. What we need are those younger voices working together with more experienced ones to deliver a diverse cutting-edge model that can attract big business like the Olympic Games and avoid controversy like the awful scandals we’ve seen. Maybe it won’t work but I think it’s worth a try. Because if it does work, not only will the licence fee payments suddenly be worth every penny, it’ll also enrich our lives in other ways as well as we return to the value the BBC have always held at its core: to entertain, inform and educate.