'Bloated' BBC must be broken up

chris

Two damning reports on Friday were amongst the most critical ever on UK public broadcaster, the BBC. One, by former BBC producer and writer Sir Anthony Jay (he co-wrote the wonderful Yes, Minister series), and the other by the BBC’s pugnacious former business editor Jeff Randall. Both in their different ways come to much the same conclusion: the BBC is “bloated, biased” and needs “rescuing from itself”.

Sir Anthony’s thoughts, in the shape of a report from the Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies, says the BBC, born in the idealism of the first half of the 20th Century, is now weighed down by its grandiose ethos and bloated organisation. “For decades [the BBC] has regarded itself as the world’s finest broadcaster,” says Sir Anthony, a concept he says he was once happy to agree with, but now feels is totally outdated. He condemns the BBC’s “sprawling bureaucracy” as well as its dependence on a “ruthlessly enforced levy” and “determination to dominate every field of broadcasting”.

He argues that the BBC should be broken up so that it is left with one pay-TV funded TV channel with a £1.5bn budget which would be adequate funding for a channel that would return the BBC to its glory days with high-quality drama, comedies, documentaries, news and current affairs. “The only way forward is for the BBC to be transformed from a fading national treasure into a real treasure house,” Sir Anthony says.

Jeff Randall was for almost five years the BBC’s highly visible business editor, following a successful career in Fleet Street (he now writes for The Daily Telegraph). He suggests that the BBC director-general buy every member of the BBC’s 25,000 staff a copy of Sir Anthony Jay’s book, as this would cost a fraction of what the BBC spends “on ludicrous awaydays, while jolting thousands of jobsworths who creep about the corporation’s corridors, holding meetings, dodging accountability and hoping to survive long enough to collect a pension funded in part by people who never watch the BBC.”


Source: RapidTVNews

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