“I don’t like monopolies and we are facing a situation where the BBC has an increasing monopoly on creative matters.”
John Birt
Michael Grade calls for smaller BBC
Ex-Channel 4 chief says no one could be successful in role of director general and corporation must outsource business
Michael Grade has said the BBC has become “unmanageable” and called on licence fee money to be used to fund Channel 4.
The former BBC chairman and chief executive of Channel 4 told MPs on Tuesday there should be a radical shake-up of both broadcasters, with a smaller BBC – including the merger of BBC2 and BBC4 – and a publicly-funded Channel 4, which he said was commercially “unsustainable”.
If you believe as I do that the BBC should have some public-service competition to fill the gap, then I think Channel 4 could come into play as a competitor to the BBC for the licence fee.”
So two left wing publicly funded news organisations? Perhaps Grade could point out where the ‘competition’ will be exactly.
And Grade is a Conservative Peer. Jesus wept.
Look the best way to have competition is to abolish the licence fee. If he BBC and C4 want to go down the route of subscription or advertising ( a shrinking financial pool I suspect) so be it.
Broadcasting is not the NHS or Defence. Broadcasters should pay their way and live within their means.
As with all things centralised; the government, civil service, nhs, and the bbc; the best thing they could do is get out of the way and allow people to sink or swim under their own steam. The days of big is beautiful have, I believe, been well and truly shown to be wrong. The new mantra should be small is beautiful; that includes, for example, local tv stations, if they make money (by whatever innovative methods they can develop, including programming over the internet), local radio stations funded by whatever works best for them; and so on. The dross would wither on the vine and new ideas and methods would prosper. If that meant 99% of the bbc’s employees were signing on for job seekers allowance, then that sounds like a win-win situation all round.
*part of the license fee has always gone to the up keep of channel 4 along with many of there leftie journalists who seem to work there,i agree with mr grade that the bbc is to top heavy.look at the breakfast show at 6.am,your have nicky and croaky voiced racheal as 2 presenters,george reads out the sports news,michelle reads out the traffic news,simon reads out the weather news,you have 2 economic editors always in the studio and the resident piece of furniture john pienarr reading out the latest politacal news,also there always seems to be countless young sounding programme producers there controlling the editing output.phew,that is just to many people for one show i reckon.
Paul Mason will feel all his ships have come in at once if this one pans out.
As has been said many times on this site, state funding of broadcasters will inevitably lead to leftist bias from those organisations. Therefore, if you believe that democracy needs a pluralistic media with wide ranging views and debates being aired, you cannot have state funding providing the major source of income. I strongly believe that there is no way round this. No amount of regulation, oversight ,governance etc, can stop the leftward drift.
If you believe that state funding is required to keep up a good level of quality for minority interests, which I could be persuaded of, then the funding has to take the form of commissioning programmes from a wide range of providers, and these programmes should stay well clear of news and current affairs. Obviously the make up and remit of the commissioning agency needs careful thought out. But the amount of funding required to make these high quality minority interest programmes, is a fraction of the current cost of the entire BBC operation.
The basic message is Keep State Funding Out Of News and Current Affairs if you want a democracy.
Perhaps Grade thinks two lefts make a right?
Or perhaps even as a conservative he’s smart enough to recognise that the free market TV often fails to deliver anything but dross. The US is a prime example. Hundreds of channels and nothing to watch except adverts.
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