Is this proposed BBC trimming a bad sign for Aunties future?

In the Rupert Murdoch owned Times, there has been an article apparently leaked to the paper that outlines a proposed budgetary shake up of the BBC by its director general, Mark Thompson. He will be undertaking a strategic review of the entire corporation next month, and the Times article suggests that he will largely be focusing on budget allocation, and attempting to bring costs down, a priority he believes is all the more urgent due to the licence fee being frozen in 2013 (there is a good chance the Tories will be in power then, and that brings perhaps extra worries to a BBC director general. More on this later.). The - I must emphasise: proposed cuts can be boiled down to the following:

1. HALVING THE SIZE OF THE BBC's WEBSITES.

2. CLOSING RADIO 6 AND THE ASIAN NETWORK

3. POSSIBLY AUCTIONING OFF BBC WORLDWIDE MAGAZINES (i.e Top Gear and Radio Times.)

4. CUTTING THE BUDGETS OF SPORTS AND IMPORTED PROGRAMMING

5. A SHIFT TOWARD MORE "QUALITY FOCUSED" TV AT THE EXPENSE OF "RATING PULLERS"






The Times article and the Big, Bloated and Cunning comment piece (I wonder how much influence Murdoch had in the wording of the editorial? Hmmmm.) is typical "News International" fayre where Auntie is concerned, and with all these types of commentary, there is more half said, than actually said aloud. Murdoch seems to have an obsessive, almost pathological hatred of the BBC. Perhaps for such a profound control freak, the fact that the BBC and its licence fee are ring fenced (for now) from News Internationals grasps on the UK media market is too much to bear. It also makes his attacks so brazenly hypocritical. Attacks like these:-

"In times of uncertainty, of maxed-out credit cards and job cuts, we all seek the comforting embrace of Auntie Beeb."

"The real giveaway in the proposals is that the BBC seems to have no plans to give anything back to licence-fee payers."

"The best way to make that happen would be to make a substantial cut to the licence fee and give money back to people to spend as they like."

The problem with this argument is it is a "how long is a piece of string?" argument. Like any sort of publicly funded thing that, it can seem too rapacious if you don't approve of it. The problem for the BBC is, if they do fall into the trap of cutting back, their enemies can always say cut more.

"It is an empire that schedules TV programmes to wrong-foot its rivals. Proposals seen by The Times look like a welcome recognition that the empire has gone too far,"

This is a bit rich from a news paper group that tried to undercut it's broadsheet opponents in the 90's with a cut price Times, that nearly brought down the Independent, threatened the Guardian, and even created ripples for the Telegraph.

"The BBC ought to be a creative force for entrepreneurship. In reality it stifles innovation. It has planned to expand local news services when local papers are struggling to survive."

The only thing being stifled that News Media really cares about is Murdochs profits. As for the second half of the quote, read the above paragraph.

"The new proposals were written to serve the best interests of the BBC, not the public. The next government will need to take on what Channel 4’s chairman last year described as “the most powerful lobbying and effective organisation in Britain”. Until then, Auntie Beeb’s warm embrace will simultaneously be a stranglehold that is unpleasant and untenable."

It's a typical piece by the Murdoch media. Attack the BBC as a bloated out of touch, cash guzzling black hole that stifles all it's opponents in it's wake. Suggest that the government (presumably David Cameron's Tories) do something to reign it in. It is essentially a call to arms to hack the BBC down to size, (I'd imagine Murdoch thinks that it should be a non-existent size.), and it looks like they are only too willing to oblige.

"Conservatives wanted "a smaller BBC", but did not want "to beat up the BBC". He added that proposals to close digital stations 6 Music and the Asian Network and cut back the BBC website, reported in today's Times, were "intelligent and sensible"."



"We want a smaller BBC because it is doing down its commercial rivals and this seems to have addressed a number of issues".

However, Vaizey called for greater "transparency" on BBC spending."

I don't know if that a tacit admission of a conflict of interest between Murdoch and the BBC by the shadow culture minister, but a potential Tory government cool to the BBC doesn't look promising to those of us like myself who think the BBC is a valuable asset to both quality broadcasting and the nation as a whole and needs preserving.

Now I'm all for responsible monitoring of budgets, but a lot of qualms about the BBC that are often bandied about are ones about it having to reach niche audiences (see BBC6 and Asian Network) (who incidentally pay the licence fee like everyone else.) The BBC by the virtue of its diverse licence payers will always have to be a mixed bag, and this point has to be emphasised, not perhaps to the critics of the BBC, who don't want to know, but perhaps hammered home a bit more, and I think that this is what Thompson doesn't want to do, by the proposed axing of the aforementioned radio stations. I'm not entirely enamoured with Mark Thompson as D.G, and think he may be setting up the BBC for bigger falls - by shedding the types of networks he thinks the BBC critics might like to see go. BBC 6 and the Asian Network are seen as "the trendy pet projects of an out of touch media elite" and "PC" by many of the more vocal (and largely middle aged, middle English pub bore variety) critics, that are (unintentionally I admit) summed up by the prize plank and I'm sure as night follows day, a dead cert for a future repeat offender on here, MP for Shipley Philip Davies, who describes BBC3, which he wanted to be axed in an interview in 2007 as:

"They don't serve a purpose and nobody watches them."

It seems that Mark Thompson appears to be planning a two pronged defence against a hostile Murdoch media, allied to a possible Tory government, that will freeze the licence fee, or worse will place the fee at a lower rate than the the relative levels of inflation. I can assume he; on the one hand wants to stave off attacks of dumbing down with licence payers money, by looking into increasing "quality broadcasting", and then trying to quell the critics by reducing or strimming "niche and unrepresentative" BBC outlets like R6. I have sympathy for him, it's a rock and a hard place to be really. I just feel that like throwing lambs to a hungry wolf, in the hope that it will get full up and lose interest. It will just encourage the attacks on the BBC, get rid of some of the less popular stuff, why not get rid of more? Not showing popular viewing figure boosters? How can you claim to be representing licence fee payers then? I don't think that most of the low level grumblers about the BBC, want to see it abolished totally. It does on some level seem to permeate into the national psyche. (notice how Radio 4, a very costly radio station, seems to escape criticism. This absolutely not dumbed down station does seem "out of bounds" to the low level critics.) It would be a real tragedy if we let short term grumbles about the BBC allow its more determined enemies to use them to hack it away to long term oblivion.


PS. If you do think as some have suggested that privately owned media, and profit based viewing figures make for better quality news programmes, than BBC news, then I put this to you. I once saw two news broadcasters commentating on the appallingly gruesome murder of a 5 year old girl by a relative. The grandparents of the child wanted the details of the post -mortem, for the sake of their dead grandchild's dignity, and the respect of the family in their grief to be spared from having them made public, on the news broadcasts. The news reporters disagreed, saying it was in the public interest that the warts and all account of the post mortem be divulged on the news (the evening news I might add) for all to see. Now I ask, which of the two outlets; BBC or private news network, do you think that was broadcast on? I think we all know.