Category: BBC

Charles Allen, Chairman of Granada, tells the Royal Television Society that the BBC should be required to hand over 10% of its licence fee revenue to fund public service output on the commercial networks. This is presumably Allen’s opening shot in the charter renewal debate. Not a bad idea – certainly a very direct way of increasing the diversity of public service programming – but I can’t see it lasting more than about ten minutes once the BBC’s super-efficient charter renewal mincer is running at full speed. From Ray Snoddy in The Times.

The Guardian confirms that the BBC has responded quickly and seriously to Tessa Jowell’s announcement that Charter renewal won’t be a cake walk. They’ve rolled out two top executives to lead the defense of the licence fee.

Jana Bennet, the BBC’s new Director of Television, comes out fighting in Media Guardian.

Barry Cox, commercial TV old-timer, says we should get started on the long slog to an open market for television now:

“Does a mature liberal democracy such as the UK really still need an institution such as the BBC in its present form? It is, in effect, a self-perpetuating department of state but without an elected politician at its head. Like other departments of state, it is funded by taxpayers’ money, but unlike them it is guaranteed more money than it needs to do the job for which it has been created.”

(from Media Guardian)

Emily Bell in The Guardian greets Ofcom’s new boss and wonders if the BBC might have been excluded from Ofcom’s scope in order to provide a PR win for the new regulator when the Ministry does a tactical U-turn. Sounds a bit baroque to me.

The Observer’s profile of Stephen Carter as he prepares to assume the role of Chief Executive of Ofcom. Most interesting is the ballooning payroll. The first estimate I can remember is 500 staff. At the Oxford Media Convention a couple of weeks ago some were prepared to venture 600. Here, in the same article, 900 and 1000 are given an airing. Do I hear 1100?

Labour MP and DCMS Select Committee member Derek Wyatt has laid out the case for radical reform of the BBC – cutting it back to Radio 2, Radio 4 and BBC2 and scrapping or privatising everything else. He says “it is outrageous how much the BBC spends, unchecked by its pathetic board of governors, on its internet sites.” Charter renewal really is hotting up. From Media Guardian.