A phone call to Auntie - time to diet, old girl!

I was working on the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News one evening in the early ‘90s when a phone rang at an empty desk just as I was passing. Not thinking – it was late, as the bulletin had been delayed to make way for an England football international, and I probably wasn’t fully compos mentis – I answered it.

“Is that the BBC?”

My heart sank. I’d worked there for a few years and could recognize an angry license-payer when I heard one: I’d often been one myself, but, like most of us, had been too lazy to phone and complain. 

“Why are you showing a football match when it should be the News? This is disgraceful. What is the BBC coming to?”

I tried to explain that talking to me was about as useful as complaining to his dog (which I could hear in the background). “I’m a humble producer. I’d love there to be no football, because then I’d already be home. I have no power over the schedules. And I don’t have time to  pass on your complaint.”  This just made him angrier.

I kept trying to give him the number for the Duty Office, where his complaint would have been logged and passed on the next day, but he really just wanted to vent. 

Eventually I had to cut him off, as I had work to do. And yes, I did feel guilty: after all, this man was paying my salary.

For the first time, I realized what a nightmare it must be to have to justify the BBC’s every scheduling and commissioning decision; and, as this was well before the days of eye-wateringly inflated senior executive salaries, I didn’t see much incentive for becoming one of the people paid to catch flak.

And I succeeded. Largely. I worked for the BBC for eighteen years, but it was a long time before I reached a position where I had even vaguely to justify the corporation’s funding, range of services, or, indeed, its programming. (I wish I could claim that these years of utter as to opposed to almost total obscurity  were purely the  result of choice.)

When I found myself running Interactive TV – a relatively expensive but unproven offering – and various Video On Demand services , I resorted to a rather cowardly set of responses to the standard “why is the BBC wasting license-payers’ money on something that only a fraction of the population can receive?” question. These boiled down to (1) the BBC has a remit to undertake pioneering technical R&D work (well, sort of) (2) the rest of the broadcasting industry is keen for us to develop these services (strange, but true in this instance), (3) eventually, everyone in the UK will be able to access interactive TV and Video On Demand, and (4) I only work here, guv – my job is to spend my budget wisely, not to decide whether I get one in the first place.

Poor old Mark Thompson (well, not poor in the financial sense, obviously, and not that old) doesn’t have the luxury of that last, somewhat pantywaist excuse. Like the England Football Manager, everyone knows better than he does how much should be spent by the BBC, and on what. But unlike Fabio, Thompson has no agreed measure of success to justify his own performance, or that of his “lads” at TV Centre. 

Ratings? Too high, and the BBC is misusing its unique funding system to steal bread from  commercial companies. Too low, and it’s failing to serve the bulk of license-fee payers,  be they tower-block Scousers or Tudorbethan Middle Englanders. Too much costume drama, and it’s playing safe; too much “edgy” comedy – i.e. smug, left-wing and potty-mouthed – and it’s gone too far. Go populist, and it’s  ignoring Reith’s legacy. Go upmarket, and Thompson is making programmes for his hoity-toity Oxbridge coterie at the expense of ordinary folk. Too much local coverage and it’s killing off the regional press: too little and it’s too maddeningly London-centric.  

The BBC simply can’t win any of these arguments.

However, there are certain mollifying steps it could take whose popularity would far outweigh any resulting criticism. Here are my Top 12:

1. 1. Get rid of vast swathes of the web offering, but leave News alone: don’t  wait till 2012 – do it now! Simple rule: if a site or service isn’t attached to a recognised TV or radio brand,  kill it. There shouldn’t be any stand-alone brands online. BBC Online grew exponentially during a triumphalist, expansionist era and needs to be cut down to size.

2. 2. Only ever buy foreign programmes which are better than anything being offered on British TV, and will either not be shown on commercial channels, or won’t be watched on them – for instance, showing The Wire after it had been on the somewhat obscure FX channel made perfect sense, but paying £400,000 per episode for Heroes was an utter nonsense. The SwedishWallander and the French cop series, Spiral, were both better than any equivalent this country had to offer, and, because they were subtitled, probably wouldn’t have been carried by any other broadcaster: it made perfect sense for the BBC to showcase them.

3. 3. Leaving aside the World Service, which the license fee doesn’t fund, don’t make any programmes in any language other than English. We really shouldn’t be encouraging immigrants not to speak the language of their adopted country. Gaelic and Welsh speakers all speak English, so they can already enjoy everything the BBC has to offer; if the people of Wales and Scotland want to subsidise such services, let them – as long as it doesn’t come out of my taxes. 

4. 4.Teenagers? Sod ‘em. They don’t pay the license fee, and they don’t use the BBC anyway (apart from GCSE Bitesize). 

5. 5. Terminate BBC Three without delay – today, preferably. A grotesque waste of money, and almost entirely dependent on spin-off shows from BBC One or Two. Of course, this will mean depriving the nation of Dancing on Wheels,Hotter Than My Daughter and F*** Off, I’m a Hairy Woman, but I’m sure we’ll get over it in time.

6. 6.Shut down BBC Two, and give BBC Four a new name – I know! Why not call it BBC Two? Then transfer the handful of decent, distinctive programmes - e.g. Top Gear and University Challenge - across from the old BBC Two to BBC One, where they belong, and where they will thrive, and where their presence will prevent many expensive but crappy programmes from appearing. Allow the new BBC Two to ignore ratings entirely in favour of eclectic, intellectually-challenging domestic fare, supplemented by landmark offerings from abroad.Sorted!

7. 7.Keep covering the sort of events that, in a symbolic sense, bring the Nation together – whatever the viewing figures: no one else can do Festivals of Remembrance, Royal Military Tattoos, State Openings of Parliament, PMQs, Royal Weddings, State Funerals, Trooping the Colour, FA Cup Finals, Wimbledons and Chelsea Flower Shows (and, yes, Crufts as well), and, without them, there’s actually very little justification for the BBC in its present form, apart from... 

8. 8.…output which celebrates rather than undermine this country’s stupendous history, including its glorious contributions to art, music, sculpture, literature, poetry, the stage, cinema and architecture. With the state education system seemingly determined to favour other cultures at the expense of our own, and to render school-leavers as ignorant as possible regarding their heritage (and, let’s face it,  everything else worth knowing), the BBC’s role here is genuinely vital. More of this stuff, please – there can never be enough, and you’re pretty damned good at it, especially when you’re not bothering about accessibility or social engineering.

9. 9. Appoint a Champion for the Over-55s (you may already have one, but, if you do, they’re drooling behind locked doors in a TV Centre attic). Given that barely any BBC employees are over 50, one imagines that, as a group, us oldsters are now as much of a mystery to you as teenagers have proved to be. We represent a huge and growing section of your audience and we’re big TV watchers and radio listeners – so the occasional bone would be appreciated: and try not to see us all as either fun-loving, super-active “young at heart” types or lonely, bewildered “would you like someone to sit with you dear?” crumblies. We don’t want special programming – but we want our sensibilities reflected in what you produce: the next time you think of handing six million pounds a year to some foul-mouthed creep like Jonathan Ross in a desperate bid to appear all cutting edge and “with it”, just imagine, for a second, how we’ll react. (But whatever action you take, don’t appoint Esther Bleeding Rantzen – we’ve suffered enough!)

10. 10.Sell off Radio 1 and let the private sector reap a profit out of this rubbish. Simple questions: does it add to our culture in any positive or meaningful way? – and is there anything it does that couldn’t be done just as successfully by the private sector? (The very fact that it features an unpleasant oaf like Chris Moyles surely make it ripe for urgent defenestration.)

11. 11.Employ more self-confessed right-wingers in senior editorial positions. Roughly 30% of your audience will be right-wing. At least another 20% will be small “c” conservatives – probably more. Their views and sensibilities are often entirely ignored in news reports and in much of the rest of your output. On subjects such as the Middle East, colonialism, the economy, the British Empire, welfare provision, multiculturalism, public spending, immigration, Christianity, the importance of traditional education methods, “climate change”, the Monarchy, modern art, Europe, sex education and swearing on TV, you treat the views of at least half your audience with blithe contempt. You don’t really know the extent to which you’re doing it because you employ so few people whose views match those of, at the very least, half of the people who are compelled to pay your wages. True, over the years, views on these issues have generally softened – but not because they’re intrinsically wrong, but because of your naked propagandizing on behalf of a “progressive”, left-wing, multicultural, pro-EU, dirigiste, Big State view of the world: and you’ve done this because almost every senior editorial position at the BBC is occupied by someone for whom any other belief-system is quite alien. 

12. 12.Now, onto comedy - or what passes for it. The presence of programmes such as Mock the Week on TV and the News Quiz on Radio 4 besmirches the BBC: can you honestly not find writers or performers who don’t automatically detest the opinions and standards of half of all license-payers? Is every right-wing comic a dead ringer for Bernard Manning or Jim Davidson, and therefore beyond the pale? Despite the stunningly ignorant view of that dreary pipsqueak Jeremy Hardy that all satire is left-wing, the truth is pretty much the exact opposite.  Swift? Gilray? Evelyn and Auberon Waugh? Peter Cook? Richard Ingrams? P.J. O’Rourke? Craig Brown? Do me a favour! So where are their modern counterparts? We’ve had 12 years of truly abysmal left-wing government. Are Labour simply beyond parody? Or maybe right-wing satirists and performers just know they won’t be commissioned.

13. 13.Finally (yes, I know – a baker’s dozen) what is it with the BBC and Lenny Henry? Is it enshrined in the corporation’s charter that this seemingly amiable but unfunny has-been must be provided with continual employment by the BBC, no matter how little we appreciate his endless attempts to “extend his range” (or, more accurately, to fully explore how many things he can do badly)? No sooner did we finally get rid of him from our TV screens - trebles all round -  than he becomes a  permanent fixture on Radio 4. Is this just to keep Dawn French on board? (In which case, for God’s sake, don’t bother!) Or is somebody high up in the BBC actually deluded enough to believe this man has any talent? The door’s over there – will somebodyplease point him towards it.  

   

In case I come across as a turncoat  who wants to see the BBC destroyed and the license fee abolished - nothing could be further from the truth. I’d pay the license fee for BBC Four alone, and I simply can’t imaging Britain without the BBC. I am a huge supporter, not just because it offered me such interesting, gainful employment for so many years, but because my life would be so much poorer without it, and this would undoubtedly be a more ignorant, less cultured country if we had to rely on the likes of Sky, ITV and the execrable Channel 4.  But the BBC is a great broadcaster not because of it’s political bias – but despite it.

By the way, thanks for picking up the phone – I bet you wished you hadn’t!