How to save the BBC? Privatise it.

[Guest]

I haven't seen a reference to the editorial in the current Spectator, with the above title. Fraser Nelson (presumably) has some interesting suggestions which many members here will hate - but ideas advocated in this magazine (such as free schools) often appear in later Tory manifestos.

I agree with him when he says that many things have been privatised over the last decades, while the BBC has hardly been mentioned. I would consider the Royal Mail to be far more sacrosanct than the BBC in providing an essential public service. I believe that only Spectator subscribers can read the online version, so I am copying a few crucial lines:

Why does the BBC expand? Because this is what bureaucracies do. Like old imperial armies, they conquer because they feel the only alternative is defeat. The result is a sprawling portfolio of interests, which are very far removed from Lord Reith’s values.

A reckoning is long overdue. The BBC may not know the value of money, but those prosecuted for not paying its fines certainly do. Many of them struggle to make ends meet and would not dream of paying £145.50 for BBC services that they could happily go without. Sky now produces some of the best arts coverage in Britain. The market for drama is now global, and British living rooms are filled with American (and even Danish) DVD box sets.

The BBC can easily compete in such a market, its programmes have a global appeal. It could easily find people willing to pay to watch or listen. But if it wants to be tax-funded, it should restrict itself to a public service remit and focus on reducing the license fee — and the fancy salaries must go for good. There is no possible excuse for paying the head of the state broadcasting service more than the Prime Minister.

The pointless BBC Trust should be abolished, but this will not guarantee the corporation a stable future. On current trends, the BBC’s enforcers will soon end up prosecuting more people than read the Guardian. This is simply not sustainable. An organisation of such quality and global reputation has the potential to become a great, truly independent British institution — and one that does not need to rely on magistrates’ courts for funding. It is odd in many ways that in 30 years of privatisations, many of them very successful, the BBC has hardly been mentioned as a candidate. It is high time this option was properly discussed.

[french frank]

I can read it all without a subscription: http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/...aving-the-bbc/

He has a persuasive argument, but there is more sensitivity about privatising a state broadcaster than a carrier of letters and parcels. And, of course, once privatised how do you guarantee that it will stick to these 'Reithian principles'?

[johnb]

Just one point - I do wish pundits would stop using the PM's salary as a benchmark when they want to make a point about other earnings. It is both lazy and crude.

The PM earns £142,500 pa (including his parliamentary salary of £66,396). Whilst this is a sizeable amount, senior managers in the public sector have to be recruited and, unless the aim is to attract people that the private sector doesn't want, they have to be paid somewhere around the market rate.

Yes, I know that talking about the "market rate" opens up a whole bag of worms, but nevertheless the use of the PM's salary as a benchmark us spurious and misleading.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Just one point - I do wish pundits would stop using the PM's salary as a benchmark when they want to make a point about other earnings. It is both lazy and crude.

The PM earns £142,500 pa (including his parliamentary salary of £66,396). Whilst this is a sizeable amount, senior managers in the public sector have to be recruited and, unless the aim is to attract people that the private sector doesn't want, they have to be paid somewhere around the market rate.

Yes, I know that talking about the "market rate" opens up a whole bag of worms, but nevertheless the use of the PM's salary as a benchmark us spurious and misleading.

yes i agree, the pols since at least Thatcher have been craven about paying themselves a rate for the job ....perhaps a factor in their corrupt behaviours in recent years....

the major drawback with privatisation is that big sponsorship fuels innovation .... very little, if any, major innovations come from market organisations .... if you want innovation you have to pay people and let them get on with it .... the market dynamics drive differences away .... 1000 radio stations all playing the hit parade ...

he does have a point about people being prosecuted to fund Byford's and Abramsky's pension pots ... [amongst other disgraces]

but the present British state is not capable of reforming anything successfully so caveat elector!

[french frank]

unless the aim is to attract people that the private sector doesn't want, they have to be paid somewhere around the market rate.

I agree that it isn't sensible to make a comparison with the PM's salary, since there is only one vacancy and it's highly sought after by people within the area of interest. Demand outstrips supply.

It is a difficult business when top salaries are everywhere so obscenely inflated. I think it was Hodge who said at the PAC meeting that it was a 'privilege' to work for the BBC and, again, I don't think there would be a shortage of applicants, even at the very bottom for traineeships, where it would be up to the BBC to train the people they wanted. People want to work for the BBC.

The Trustees themselves get a fair whack when it's considered that these are not full-time appointments, and, at the risk of being branded 'ageist' again, Patten is an OAP, so £110,000 isn't bad going. Someone I know who works for English Heritage was surprised to learn that the BBC Trustees were paid at all.

I'd rather see the BBC doing less. The problem, though, is that as long as it relies on the licence fee for funding it can't be independent. See, for example, the Government freeze on the licence fee, the shifting of support for the World Service from the FCO to the BBC, and dumping the costs of new technologies on the Beeb. The last settlement was a complete disaster, as it turns out, along with the new governance framework.

[antongould]

I worked as a manager in a public owned industry where we served the public, IMHO, very well. We were privatised my salary and pension pot went up in leaps and bounds and we got things called share options and bonuses. I still work for the new private owners the service to the public is appalling and we charge the aforementioned as much as we please. We are run by outsiders who do not understand the mechanics of the business - I regularly cry.

Believe me there are parallels..........

[eighthobstruction]

Privatisation leads to LCD....the innovation is to put bums on seats in the end....leads to repeats....leads to squalid degradation and depraved hot spots....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I thought Radio 3 had already become CFM.

Privatisation can work well in a few instances.
If you exclude British Gas, British Steel, British Motor Corporation, Free Schools,Water, British Rail, British Coal...

[aeolium]

What the Spectator article doesn't state, since it does not fit in with its argument, is that much of what has been excellent and distinctive about the BBC in its history has sprung from a public service ethos and not a commercial one. That risk-taking with drama and comedy, rather than the formulaic nature of so much TV drama; the creation of an entirely new art form - radio drama - which inspired some of the best dramatists of the day to write for it; documentaries on science, the arts, history, politics; all came from an essentially public service idea that the best of information, culture, and knowledge should not be reserved to those who can afford to pay for it. It is hard to see a privatised institution recapturing any of that quality, rather than going for the shortest, easiest route to ratings that can sustain the commercial operation.

But while privatisation is not the solution, it's much harder to see what is. The problem is that the commercial mindset now entirely dominates the BBC executive and managerial approach, so that a public service now behaves more and more like a commercial entity concerned about ratings and accessibility. The old flag-bearers of the public service approach - people like David Attenborough and John Tusa - are either dying out or have left. There is more concern now about selling the product than what the product is.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What the Spectator article doesn't state, since it does not fit in with its argument, is that much of what has been excellent and distinctive about the BBC in its history has sprung from a public service ethos and not a commercial one. That risk-taking with drama and comedy, rather than the formulaic nature of so much TV drama; the creation of an entirely new art form - radio drama - which inspired some of the best dramatists of the day to write for it; documentaries on science, the arts, history, politics; all came from an essentially public service idea that the best of information, culture, and knowledge should not be reserved to those who can afford to pay for it. It is hard to see a privatised institution recapturing any of that quality, rather than going for the shortest, easiest route to ratings that can sustain the commercial operation.

But while privatisation is not the solution, it's much harder to see what is. The problem is that the commercial mindset now entirely dominates the BBC executive and managerial approach, so that a public service now behaves more and more like a commercial entity concerned about ratings and accessibility. The old flag-bearers of the public service approach - people like David Attenborough and John Tusa - are either dying out or have left. There is more concern now about selling the product than what the product is.

Bravo, aeolie! So much of what is most despicable about what the Beeb does today stems from its neglecting its origins. The timidity of its own vision of itself, its helpless chase for popularity, its inability to defend these truly democratic principles against crass charges of elitism; these are what infect the Corporation's sense of identity, corrupt its values and end up making public funding indefensible.

[antongould]

Bravo, aeolie! So much of what is most despicable about what the Beeb does today stems from its neglecting its origins. The timidity of its own vision of itself, its helpless chase for popularity, its inability to defend these truly democratic principles against crass charges of elitism; these are what infect the Corporation's sense of identity, corrupt its values and end up making public funding indefensible.

Very well said both....

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Bravo, aeolie! So much of what is most despicable about what the Beeb does today stems from its neglecting its origins. The timidity of its own vision of itself, its helpless chase for popularity, its inability to defend these truly democratic principles against crass charges of elitism; these are what infect the Corporation's sense of identity, corrupt its values and end up making public funding indefensible.

"It is a short step from the pulpit to the lampost" - Jacques Hubert, leader of the (left) Herberists, French Revolution, 1790.

So, step forward Cmrds Patten, Birt, Thompson, Bypass, and Lucy the £300k Airhead.

Or, we could et SHOULD move to a subscription PBS system. The BBC is coughing its last. Blood on the pillow.

[vinteuil]

"It is a short step from the pulpit to the lampost" - Jacques Hubert, leader of the (left) Herberists, French Revolution, 1790.

.

... or Hébertists. The late, great, Richard Cobb * was the authority on them : after his years of research he found them a pretty unpleasant lot **....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hébertists

* https://www.independent.co.uk/news/p...b-1324236.html

** "Ideologically, their violent, anti-intellectual, and ultra-populist views centered chiefly on what historian Simon Schama describes as "an anarchic notion of popular government, always armed to impose the will of the people on its mandatories," and took the form of support for "unrelenting surveillance, denunciation, indictment, humiliation, and death."

[french frank]

all came from an essentially public service idea that the best of information, culture, and knowledge should not be reserved to those who can afford to pay for it.

The overwhelming "problem" - as the BBC seems to see it - is that the huge appetite among 'the public' for popular entertainment eclipses the appetite for 'information, culture and knowledge', and that as long as an expanded commercial industry is supplying that entertainment they (the BBC) will lose the big audiences and be unable to justify taking the entire licence fee revenue.

I think they reason (!?) that if they follow the popular entertainment route to compete with the commercials, they'll be able to justify their public funding by providing the 'improving Reithian content' for that same audience. But:

a) they provide less and less of the public service content and

b) in any case they embrace the fashionable argument that the provision of popular culture is just as important because it's 'relevant' to people's lives and that's what the public wants; and you can't be 'Reithian' about these 'worthy' ideals any longer.

And, of course, they can outspend their commercial rivals and claim to be 'high quality' and 'distinctive'.

If there's one thing that the 3-week film music 'celebration' on Radio 3 shows is that the BBC has already lost its justification to keep the public funding - which funds large salaries and irresponsible expenditure of other kinds.

[eighthobstruction]

The overwhelming "problem" - as the BBC seems to see it - is that the huge appetite among 'the public' for popular entertainment eclipses the appetite for 'information, culture and knowledge', and that as long as an expanded commercial industry is supplying that entertainment they (the BBC) will lose the big audiences and be unable to justify taking the entire licence fee revenue.

I think they reason (!?) that if they follow the popular entertainment route to compete with the commercials, they'll be able to justify their public funding by providing the 'improving Reithian content' for that same audience. But:

a) they provide less and less of the public service content and

b) in any case they embrace the fashionable argument that the provision of popular culture is just as important because it's 'relevant' to people's lives and that's what the public wants; and you can't be 'Reithian' about these 'worthy' ideals any longer.

And, of course, they can outspend their commercial rivals and claim to be 'high quality' and 'distinctive'.

If there's one thing that the 3-week film music 'celebration' on Radio 3 shows is that the BBC has already lost its justification to keep the public funding - which funds large salaries and irresponsible expenditure of other kinds.

....in a nutshell ff, yes....good stuff ....you are all getting to the essence of it....it has taken that word 'privatisation' to bring out stark truths....