My favourite aunt

I owe a great deal to the BBC. My late father worked there for 35 years (that's him, behind the camera). I was brought up in a BBC household, rarely ever watching ITV (remember, kids, there was a time when there were just three - THREE! - channels...) appreciating what the corporation provided the nation and even the world, via its television and radio output. There was also its authority. It’s journalism was beyond question, its presenters peerless. And, best of all, you could watch a film at Christmas without interruption from adverts. As a child, I was able to visit Television Centre often, thanks to my dad. I’ve sat ‘in’ Daleks, been on the Blue Peter set, met the legend that was Brian Cant and still is Johnny Ball, Crackerjack presenters and Roy Castle, and was able to get precious tickets to be in the studio audience of Top Of The Pops. OK, all that was privilege, but they still emboldened my appreciation for the institution that is the BBC.

So, I’m naturally biased towards Auntie. However, within that very nickname lies the reason it, today, comes under attack from every direction like never before. Just look at the last six weeks: politicians from both sides have accused the BBC of editorial bias towards one side or another and, now Boris has landslid into No.10, the murmurings and mutterings have begun again about the sanctity of the TV licence fee, which funds everything from the Beeb’s television output to five of the UK’s 13 symphony orchestras. Paying for a licence is therefore considered to be a contribution to the national cultural fabric.

The inescapable truth, however, is whether this is still relevant. The days when the ever-cheerful Christmas Day episode of EastEnders drew audience figures of more than 20 million - somewhere close to a third of the population - are long gone. Ditto big-budget dramas and variety shows. Even a big draw like the Strictly Come Dancing final this year lost a million viewers from 2018. Thishas nothing to do with the quality of the BBC’s output (as the profoundly anti-Beeb Daily Mail would have you believe) but, simply, the continuing drain on so-called “terrestrial” audiences (an anachronistic phrase given the availability of most terrestrial programming on catch-up services) from other places. Kids, in particular, are just as likely to be consuming television in bite-sized chunks from YouTube, mainlining Jack Whitehall box sets on Netflix, or glued to TikTok*. And with that particular service commissioning ever more ambitious series and co-investing in semi-theatrical films like The Irishman, plus the inroads made by Amazon Prime to original programming of its own, the television landscape has shifted further than I think many people with a traditional view of it realise.
*A teenager reliably informs me

30 years ago I was involved in the last great revolution in British broadcasting, the launch of Sky TV. Then, on 5th February 1989, five new TV channels were added to that landscape on a single day, just seven years after the UK had gone from three to four. Today there are around 460. Something - quite a lot, actually - has to give: if you’re watching Lisa Snowdon’s Jewellery Collection on QVC you won’t be watching Pointless on BBC1. And yet you still need to have a TV licence to watch La Snowdon flogging her sparkly wares. No wonder there have long been Tory murmurings about the licence fee (most recently, the idea of decriminalising non-payment, a thin end of the wedge), but while inevitably some of that will be down to vindictive intent, some will also be the result of free market thinking. The topic of the BBC’s funding comes up periodically, and it is always regarded by noted beard scratchers as an “existential threat”. But with the return of a weaponised Conservative government, empowered like never before and driven by belligerent strategists like Dominic Cummings, that threat is actually, now, looking very real.

Picture: BBC

The argument over the TV licence’s relevance in an age of streamed entertainment is a strong one. I’m relatively happy at paying for one, and between Sir David Attenborough documentaries, Countryfile, Mock The Week, Gavin & Stacey, Rick Stein’s foodie travelogues, Radio 5 Live and my mate Gary Crowley’s shows on Radio London (plus of course, much, much, more), I couldn’t be any happier at effectively paying a subscription fee to the BBC. Given one option in the future, with a licence fee replaced by a pic’n’mix model, I would continue to pay for BBC programming, such is the quality of its output. But with the arrival of Netflix as a producer, not just a rebroadcaster, and Sky planning to invest millions in new original productions at its forthcoming new studio complex in Elstree, programming choice to dilute BBC viewing figures is only going to increase.

Daring to mention the general election just gone, those with an agenda against the BBC have been gifted a fresh grinding wheel for their bilious axes. The accusation of editorial bias is one that I’ll defend any broadcaster from. Generally the rule is that if both left and right are accusing you of political bias, you’re getting it right. The online and even institutional bullying that broadcasters like the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg and Sky’s Kay Burley received during the election campaign was at times beyond toxic. The far left accused Kuenssberg of being a shill for the Tories, and I’d accept that her comment about postal votes looking “grim” for Labour in a live report was ill-advised. Interestingly, though, both Labour and the Conservatives have had a pop at the BBC’s election coverage, something robustly defended by election night anchor Huw Edwards in a LinkedIn blog post: “You are expected to deliver a results programme which upholds the BBC's reputation for quality and fairness,” he wrote, “but you're doing so in a world where toxic cynicism and accusations of bias (from all sides) are adding to the pressures on the entire team. And you realise yet again that the real purpose of many of the attacks is to undermine trust in institutions which have been sources of stability over many decades. The apparent purpose, in short, is to cause chaos and confusion.”

Edwards pointed out, validly, that unlike journalists working for certain newspaper and website proprietors (“where regulation is risibly weak and blatant propaganda can be passed off as 'news’”), broadcast journalists are obliged to adhere to strict laws on impartiality. Political interests might not always like that - such as the Tories’ petulant complaint to Ofcom over Channel 4 replacing the absent Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage with melting ice statues during a televised leaders’ debate on climate change - but on balance, the BBC in particular gets it right. Occasionally, it will get it wrong, or appear to do so, such as Kuenssberg’s gaffe and that by political correspondent Alex Forsyth, who referred to Boris Johnson winning “the majority that he so deserves” during a live broadcast. This prompted shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald to say the BBC was partly to blame for Labour’s defeat last Thursday. “I’m very worried about our public service broadcaster,” he told the Today programme on Radio 4. “I’m really worried about the drift. You’ve seen the catalogue of criticisms that [Labour is] making,” adding, “if the BBC are going to hold themselves out as somehow having conducted themselves in an impartial manner, I think they’ve really got to have a look in the mirror. We’ve got a lot to say about this.”

Labour, of course, have other things to consider when it comes to their “period of reflection” on the election defeat and, frankly, the BBC should be the least of their considerations. The Conservatives, too, should lay off the BBC. Their victory had nothing to do with the BBC and, in what was most certainly a clear strategy, in spite of the BBC. I’m as uncomfortable with Boris Johnson evading scrutiny as anyone else, but swerving Andrew Neil in favour of doing selfies with Phil and Holly on This Morning was as belligerent a dismissal of the BBC as Jacob Rees-Mogg’s “disappearance” from the election campaign was a deliberate policy. Time will tell whether Johnson’s media performances in the election will come back to haunt him (hiding in a fridge to avoid an ITV reporter is not a good look, and despite his permanent ‘bumbling oaf’ comedy persona - honed on Have I Got News For You - he is as terrible a communicator as his predecessor, Theresa May). The Fourth Estate exists for a reason. The trick is how you engage it. Refusing it is counter-productive.

Picture courtesy of Huw Edwards/LinkedIn/Jeff Overs, BBC

At the weekend Lord Grade - Michael Grade, the former BBC chairman and scion of one of British entertainment’s most influential families - wrote that Neil’s rant-to-camera, goading Boris to come on his leaders' interview show, was petulant. “The situation appears to be bordering on open warfare – in which case I’d advise all concerned to take a step back and remember that it’s normal for governments and independent broadcasters to be at loggerheads.” Grade, writing in the Mail On Sunday, reminded readers that government enmity towards the BBC is nothing new, citing Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell “declaring war” on it over the ‘dodgy dossier’ row, and Margaret Thatcher’s attempt to appoint sympathetic governors to the BBC’s board following alleged negativity towards her over the Falklands War and the miners’ strike. During this election, however, Grade said that the BBC got things wrong. “I’m a huge fan of Mr Neil’s intellectually rigorous style,” he wrote, “and have been for 40 years, ever since I oversaw his selection as an unknown presenter on a London Weekend Television current affairs show. I am not a fan, however, of the way journalists such as Neil hijacked the airwaves, using humiliation tactics in a bid to force the Prime Minister to face their questions. This was a serious abuse of one’s position, and I have written to Ofcom requesting an urgent review to ensure it does not happen again.”

“The issue here is impartiality, and broadcasters have a statutory duty to respect that,” Grade continued. “It is not their job to use the airwaves to cajole and try to coerce politicians into interviews – or to shame them publicly if they exercise their right to refuse. British viewers do not want to see blatantly biased political reporting on mainstream television such as the Americans get with the Right-wing Fox News. But I fear that’s the way we are going.”

Senior Tories are now said to be staying away from Radio 4’s Today, too, ironically now that John Humphrys, and his uncompromising approach to interviewing, has retired. Nick Robinson, one of Today’s presenters, was even president of the Oxford University Conservative Association while a student. But he is still one of the most capable of political interviewers. Avoiding him is not the answer. If I had one criticism of the Tory election campaign (and I’m not going to get into lies and deceit here), it was the flimsy nature of some of the people they put up for broadcast interviews. With Rees-Mogg benched after five minutes of play over his awful Grenfell Tower remarks, the likes of Nicky Morgan and Matt Hancock were deployed, both lightweights. In fact, on one day of media campaigning, Morgan had to be augmented by Hancock. Where were the heavyweights, like Michael Gove and Sajid Javid? (I’d include Dominic Raab here, but he, too, was clearly - and correctly - judged to be too cold and toxic an Alan B’Stard to go anywhere near any broadcast outlet of influence).

But back to the BBC’s future: Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rishi Sunak, has said that the BBC’s funding model is something the government “should look at”, targeting the iPlayer service as one particular area of focus. He has also said there would be wider consideration of licence fee when the BBC’s current Royal Charter ends in December 2027. “The media industry is changing,” Sunak has said. “How people consume media is changing and it’s of course right that we continue to look at those things over time.” For once, I agree with someone from this government, up to a point. That point is where a government - any government - adopts frankly dystopian tones about the BBC. Funding is one thing, but censoring by stealth is something else entirely.

In another piece for the Daily Mail, John Humphrys has also weighed in on the darkening skies gathering over the BBC. “Much more worrying are the threats emanating from Number 10,” he wrote pointing out - as Grade did - that Downing Street leaning on the media is nothing new. “I can't think of a single prime minister in the past half century who would not, at some point in their career, have despatched the BBC director-general to Devil's Island if they'd thought they could get away with it.” But, he ended, senior BBC executives come and go, but the corporation “tends to sail on regardless. When Mr. Johnson raises the question of the licence fee, though, we are entering infinitely more dangerous waters. Make no mistake, this is an existential threat to the BBC.”

In the short term, it is something that the ‘temporary’ Minister for Culture, Digital & Sport, the newly ennobled Nicky Morgan, will no doubt be looking at as she arrives back at the desk she vacated to stand down as an MP at the election. Some on the left will regard any threat to the BBC from this government as karma for the supposed bias during the campaign. But politics aside, by 2027 when the BBC’s charter is renewed, the media landscape will have changed even further. 5G, for example, will have arrived (and even, according to the wonks at my old employer Nokia, 6G), transforming how and, notably, where media is consumed ubiquitously. Even with the BBC’s embrace of online technology, it is still largely a construct of the broadcast industry it invented almost 100 years ago. It is still, though, whether hawks like it or not, a national institution like few others, save for perhaps the Royal Family. It’s motto “nation shall speak peace unto nation”, adopted on 1 January 1927 by the newly formed Corporation to signify its purpose, was a latent symbol of a decaying empire, an empire that itself would come under existential threat 12 years later and the outbreak of war. The BBC’s purpose has clearly shifted since then, and even if people who dress up in red, white and blue to wave flags at royal weddings still see the BBC as a projection of Britain and British values, that function has long since ceased to be relevant. At the end of the day, we should just want Auntie to keep producing the best of British television and radio. We just need to figure out how to pay for it, first.