MID WEEK OPEN THREAD

262 Responses to MID WEEK OPEN THREAD

1. Old Timer says:

   July 4, 2014 at 10:59 am

   On BBC2 this morning the head of Ofcom, Ed Richards, was being questioned by The Media & Culture Select Committee. He spoke of the BBC as being a PSB, a Public Service Broadcaster. The MP’s on the committee then constantly repeated the PSB acronym, all with straight faces and not even a touch of irony.

   The BBC may well be a PFB, Public FUNDED Broadcaster, but is there anyone on this blog who seriously thinks that they provide a Public Service? Apart from the usual suspects who haunt these corridors using their computer generated random insults to try and wind us all up of course.

   Anyway, just to cheer you up, Ofcom’s remit will not include looking at how the BBC is funded.

   The MP’s and Ofcom clearly do not understand the depth of distrust and disgust there is with the BBC in this country. They all, and that includes the BBC, live in an insulated bubble of expense accounts and self-adulation, funded by students, decent working people and the pensioners of this land, under penalty of imprisonment if they refuse. La-la Land is carrying on as normal.

      3 likes
   • Guest Who says:

     July 4, 2014 at 12:11 pm

     The transcript will doubtless appear in due course.
     In seeing if it had yet, I notice a couple more have appeared since the last I shared. The next one:
     http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/culture-media-and-sport-committee/future-of-the-bbc/oral/8476.html
     ‘Q281 Mr Bradshaw: The reason I asked that question is we have heard from a number of other witnesses that what surprised them of what has happened since your report is that the fragmentation has not been as dramatic as they or the report envisaged and that an amazing number of people are still sitting down and watching the television in their living room in a traditional way, consuming television in that way, particularly in the context of the debates we are having on the licence fee.
     Is it perhaps possible that ‘the traditional way of watching TV’ has been maintained a fair bit by the threat of fine or jail for not doing so?
     if you have two organisations that are overlapping in perceptions and in terms of description and so on, as there are between a corporation and a trust, you constantly run up against ambiguity about people’s roles and relationships. We have seen over the course of the 10 years that problem has figured too often.
     Rather explaining, if not excusing, overpaid rats in a sack pointing at each other or feigning astounding uncuriosity and/or selective Alzheimers.
     ‘That speaks volumes about the ambiguity of a process that you can describe the chairman of the regulatory body as the chairman of the body that is regulated.’
     ‘Richard Hooper: Let us bring it up to date. The fact is, Lord Burns is completely right, you cannot be a regulator and a cheerleader at the same time.’
     No argument. However…
     ‘Currently, the BBC Trust does accuracy and impartiality and it is not done by Ofcom. Now, I think it is in the BBC’s interests for that to move to Ofcom because when the rightwing press say the BBC is full of lefties and the BBC Trust has to adjudicate that, there is always a difficulty because you have the Mandy Rice-Davies issue of, “They would say that, wouldn’t they?” Whereas if you give it to Ofcom, which does fairness and privacy and does harm and offence—those are the six horsemen of the Apocalypse: fairness and privacy, harm and offence, and accuracy and impartiality—then Ofcom’s judgment on whether the BBC is full of lefties would have some independent power.
     Nicely impartial. Not.
     I sense OFCOM in the frame for oversight again today.
     Also the means of funding vs. the fact it should be imposed other than by choice:
     ‘I am chairman of the Broadband Stakeholder Group so I know very well that the licence fee is used for the rollout of broadband.’
     At least they are less cool on loading it covertly on to our council taxes. Simply the means anyone communicates globally these days… plus UK ‘unique’ tax.
     All overseen by…
     ‘Lord Burns: I could easily envisage a situation where what is now the Trust becomes in a sense a part of Ofcom’
     …the same people? Uh-huh.
     ‘Philip Graf: It is funny, I would be slightly more concerned about the fact that the issues that you are going to be dealing with in many cases are hugely complicated, journalistic issues, for example, about impartiality in terms of the way BBC covers stuff like the Middle East, all that type of work.
     On current, ongoing evidence, not funny at all.
     ‘They are spending whatever it is, £3 billion a year’
     He got that, whatever it is, from a BBC press release?
     ‘Richard Hooper: I think there are three strands in the next two years. One is governance, which we have talked about. One is funding, which is an absolutely critical issue. The third one is this difficult issue of what constitutes public service broadcasting. The problem we have, and I do not think any of us have yet said it, is the BBC is a great, formidably wonderful institution, which we should in this country be proud of.
     Nicely objective panel they have here.
     Mr. Hooper, in his glorification of the BBC, suggests three core issues: governance, funding and what is PSB?
     What he rather neglects, as do they all so far, is what about the fourth option? Whether it needs to exist as a public funded model at all, because all governance to date has failed and it is not an honest, accurate or trustworthy organisation with all it it gets handed.
     ‘Philip Graf: I would just add that the people we have to be careful to get to exercise their view are the licence fee payers.’
     Yes, Phil, and about just more than how the BBC keeps its cash fountain. Having mentioned the poor punter, they then dive off into the smoke-filled room again…
     ‘Lord Burns: Could I just say my feeling is that the charter is a very, very useful device for avoiding political interference in the BBC between these periods, where you get a good run at it in terms of the design of the charter and then a period of when the BBC use it.
     Shame the BBC keeps breaking the thing with impunity then.
     Angie Bray (who was shut down before by the chair trying to go to actual performance, citing 28Gate) at last gets to chip in. She and Lord Burns conduct a merry old dance here, with the latter saying a lot by actually coming out with nothing.
     Richard Hooper then weighs in to cut across her again.
     ‘Philip Graf: The other question you have is the whole question of news plurality. This is an enormous, fantastically brilliant news machine, really good, very important.’
     Say it often enough, Bub…
     ‘Angie Bray: Final question—

     Chair: We are going to have to move on, I think, because we are running out of time.
     Now, when did I hear that before?
     Back to the how of funding vs. the ‘why at all’?
     ‘Philip Graf: It is an issue where subscription becomes part of the discussion as well, because it moves you more towards an optional world, away from a compulsory world by definition. Long-term sustainable funding for the BBC is important…’“The licence fee is the worst form of BBC funding except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” There is a serious issue in two years’ time—but I think subscription has to be looked at, voluntary subscriptions.’
     Phew… but… ‘looked at’… and..? Sounds like a Yes, Minister script in the making.
     ‘Q307 Mr Leech: You say that we should not rule out subscription, but do you think there are that many people who have a problem with paying the licence fee?

     Philip Graf: I think we have to find that out. The danger is that we sit here and we can say yes or no. That is why I think that is one of the pieces of work. We need to find that out. We need to understand that question and I don’t have the answer to that.’
     Half a million already have opted out, despite clear penalties to viewing options and uncertainty on law. Maybe there is an answer inherent in that number?
     ‘Lord Burns: I don’t want to go too deeply into it this time round..”
     I bet none of you do. Nicely kicked into the long, ‘too late’ grass, Good Lord.
     This gets interesting…
     ‘Lord Burns: You don’t have to have a licence to watch Netflix on your iPad. At the moment we say that you require a licence for whatever you watch on television, whether it is the BBC or whatever. When you start saying that the licence should cover your iPad, what does that include on the iPad? Is it just the BBC or is it also ITV or Netflix or the television that is now produced by some newspapers? This takes you into a world where it seems to me that if you want to go down the compulsory route, it is going to have to be a much wider charge that will more clearly be a general tax, and to me that opens a number of quite disturbing challenges.
     Not to me. Don’t like it; want it, don’t have to pay for it.
     But what’s this…. a disturbance in The Farce?
     ‘Q309 Mr Bradshaw: A household broadcasting tax?

     Lord Burns: It is not a broadcasting tax any more, is it? It is a—

     Chair: It could be a hypothecated tax.

     Lord Burns: It could easily be a hypothecated tax.

     Q310 Mr Bradshaw: Based on the household rather than the income?

     Lord Burns: Yes. Once you say it is a tax, of course—

     Mr Bradshaw: Levy.

     Lord Burns: —there are many different ways in which taxes can be constructed and people face income tests. The immediate challenge you have when it is a household tax—and those of us with not even that long memories remember the poll tax situation—is what happens to poor people. We have this with other utilities. There are people who won’t pay but there are also people for whom it is a struggle to pay. Do you have a separate level for them? This is a fun world that you enter.
     Eeeks! This looks less rosy! John…John…stop it…quick!
     ‘Chair: I think we are going to have to draw a halt.
     Phew!
     Well, maybe let’s not end quite there on not being a compelled fee at all, but rather how:
     ‘Q311 Mr Leech: Can I ask one more question? Assuming that the licence fee does not disappear, how should we calculate what the licence fee should be going forward?
     That was close.
     If I get time I’ll have a go at the rest , and the other transcripts later.
     This one does little to reassure me that a major stitch-up is not already in place, especially as Angie Bray has so far been the only one to question performance but gets shut down by the chair each time, and no public witnesses yet even in sight, despite submissions.
     Only old boys arguing how the club stays private and paid for by those excluded.

        2 likes
2. Guest Who says:

   July 4, 2014 at 11:06 am

   http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/biased-bbc-sending-journos-on-how-to-break-our-charter-courses/
   Of course the author is paraphrasing on the nature of guest the BBC thinks should not be given airtime.
   But the substance of the mindset in any selection process seems accurate, and rather at odds with senior management claiming they never meddle with editorial unless they do (when, FOI exempted).
   Going, again, to precedent, and who the the BBC very often does feel the need to wheel on to offer a view on things.
   Maybe if those not sharing the BBC’s unique worldview engaged in a few more extreme practices in pursuit of their passions, BBC researchers, producers and editors would be queuing up to understand their motivations.
   Possibly wheeling in the whole family for a bit of an emote too?

      1 likes