Lord Hall’s main defence of the BBC is that it is the central prop for the creative industries in the UK and without the BBC they would wither and die.
You might object to the idea that the BBC has such a dominant role in the media and its programming and that Hall thinks this should be maintained, and you would not be alone in objecting….ITV is objecting strongly to Hall’s plans to mobilise the BBC and move its tanks onto the commercial companies’ lawns….
A subsidised BBC Studios “would undermine incentives to invest in this sector and as a result reduce diversity and the drivers of creativity”.
So the BBC’s dominance would in fact ‘reduce diversity and the drivers of creativity‘, the opposite of what Hall claims.
ITV says that the power of the BBC and its established reputation would steamroller the competition…
“The BBC brand has been built-up throughout the BBC’s entire history as a public service broadcaster; it is a distinctive and well-recognised badge of quality that would be likely to open doors for [BBC Studios] to pitch on any project, either domestic or international.”
Having the BBC invade your territory and claim that it is doing so in order to save you is kind of reminiscent of the Iraq War….maybe an insurgent Media ‘ISIS’ will wipe them both out in future.
And if a lack of the BBC largesse wipes out the creative industry surely a ‘creative’ industry would just recreate itself….being reliant on a single benefactor cannot be good and leads to an uncritical attachment to that source of funding, particularly dangerous if that source is also a source of a partisan highly political narrative.
Having artists, film makers and writers scavenge for the scraps from the BBC feast cannot be good for the creativity, originality or independence of the creative industries.
Hard to reconcile Lord Hall (and others) tell it often enough attempts at pitching the BBC as the sole beacon of creative production when even its own staff have bemoaned the crushing process of seeing innovation denuded by the queue of ‘ity’ departments who get to have a crack at anything in Frankie Howard before being signed off by Lord Hall Hall’s vetting team.
If Whittingdale, Norman, and ultimately Dave are seduced by this they deserve all the voting public doesn’t.
I would be happy to see the ‘creative arts’ brigade being bought off with a billion or so of tax payers money, if, in return, they attacked the BBC for being too dominant and called for its closure. Divide and rule may cost us a bit but if we can prize the arty types away from the BBC we are a step closer to ridding the country of the BBC, and that is worth a great deal of loot and trouble to achieve..
The other thing that Hall seemed to suggest was that a subscription model would be more expensive than the alternative.
I beg to differ. A subscription model would by necessity have to be based upon what people would actually pay, ie market forces. It would need to be aligned to competitor pricing and some elements of the service provided (news for instance) would be provided free, in the same way that other news channels are now.
Choice is what people will have, and it is what BBC seems anxious to deprive them of. The BBC seems genuinely terrified of where the discussion might be going. “The Licence Fee has 10 years left in it at least” he said… well hopefully not.
He seems to be hoping that no one does the maths on what choice actually means.
Of course if folk opt out, those that remain will need to make up the shortfall to maintain service levels (assuming staffing, pensions and other BBC sacred cows remain ring-fenced). Which they are welcome to do.
However propping up entertainment indulgences is not the same as the NHS, no matter how desperate the vital comparisons being attempted.
Most grasp this.
“The other thing that Hall seemed to suggest was that a subscription model would be more expensive than the alternative.”
Under the Licence Fee system we, through general taxation, pay the costs of the time the courts and prisons waste enforcing the BBC’s unique funding arrangement. This is a hidden subsidy to the BBC that it never acknowledges – probably because it prefers to ignore the suffering it inflicts on poor people. If these hidden costs were billed to the BBC it would make the subscription alternative more attractive to Hall and his fellow troughers.
As an add on , a small but indicative thing is how much carbon footprint is added to the world by BBC goons driving around harassing folks ?
The real problem is the BBC’s definition of ‘creativity’ which has resulted in the creation and promotion of such media greats as Janet Street-Porter, Jo Brand, Owen Jones, Chris Evans, Russell Brand, Sandi Toksvig, James Saville OBE, Rolf Harris OBE etc, etc….
So lets look at what Whittingdale has actually said on the subject (according to Guido)
http://order-order.com/2015/05…
1/bye-bye-telly-tax-whitto-in-at-culture/#_@/qeqMNHerEiGE0A
.” It’s actually worse than a poll tax because under the poll tax, if you were on a very low income you would get a considerable subsidy”
“I think there’s quite an attractive option of linking it to a specific household tax – maybe council tax.”
So to summarise his position the licence fee is unfair to poor people (which it might be)
and he wants to fund the BBC from the rates, so every household will be forced to subsidise the Bourgeois Broadcasting Collective whether they watch it or not and no exception
Some ‘conservative’ you Tories voted for
(No apology for reposting as some still don’t get it-Next time your up the golf club essexman you might have a word with your mates in the local tory party – about the rates )
At least the poorest get most of their council tax paid for them, so if the TV tax is added to council tax the BBC will cost them much less.
Plus such a system would end the BBC’s persecution of the poor via the criminal law system.
Obviously voluntary subscription is the best way forward, but it seems even the allegedly free market, small state Conservatives can see the advantages a nationalised broadcaster with which to control and influence the masses.
Like Beltane, I am struggling to think of some examples of this ‘creativity’ Hall speaks of. Cookery programmes, Leftie snearthon ‘comedy’, C-list sports, endless ‘reality’ schlock…
Hall must have extremely low standards.
That’s another of the ironies. What are in effect abysmally low standards are seen by those who regard themselves as the final arbiters – and imagine that only they are sufficiently gifted to fully appreciate what amounts to true ‘creativity’ – resulting in the majesty of Tracy Emin’s bed, Robert Peston’s mode of delivery and the rapier-like wit of Danny Baker.
I agree. There is no way I want to exclusively fund the BBC via the council tax.I already pay enough and get little in return.
I hardly watch or listen to it and want the choice to pay or not.Its absolute rubbish and a cop out if the BBC gets any form of tax payer funding.
As far as artistic issues go,the BBC produces nothing that the other companies don’t produce.in some instances they copy the output and most things are dumbed down or politically correct.
Witness a programme on BBC 2 over the weekend about La Traviata reduced to an hours bleating about feminist issues and the break up of the nasty controlling Victorian family.But what about the music? tumbleweed…..
I subscribe to Sky and they have a growing output of home grown programmes as well as decent American programmes.if I decide I don’t like the output I can cancel my subscription.
“Roger Mosey, a former editorial director, said that the corporation had failed to reflect the concerns of its audience over asylum and immigration and had adopted a “liberal-defensive” position on the issues. In his memoirs, serialised in The Times today, he explains how the Ten O’Clock News “sanitised” a report on an area with high immigration by leaving out interviews with members of the white community who made “hard” comments. He also mocks a leaflet sent to local BBC radio stations identifying target listeners as a middle-aged couple named Dave and Sue who socialise with people from different ethnic backgrounds and are open-minded about adopting aspects of other cultures.”
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4476635.ece
I don’t understand why any BBC output has a “target audience”, particularly one that barely exists. If it’s supposed to provide a public service by filling in the gaps of market failure surely it should just do that and whoever listens, listens.
Would like to read but ironically cant get past ‘pay wall’
More on that (for free)
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/06/22/the-bbc-really-is-a-lefty-luvvie-club-despairs-one-of-its-own-after-he-has-gone/
I don’t see the problem of downsizing the BBC. There is no reason to have multiple ‘yoof’ Radio channels or trendy ‘ethnics’ which are largely pointless and expensive multicultural displays of BBC wealth. TV ditto. The BBC is three times bigger than it needs to be and is three three times less efficient than more nimble Commercial operators (like Classic FM) that it tries to ‘copy’ and then ‘cripple’ in a ratings war that seeks to ‘dominate’ at every level. One TV station and one Radio station is enough. It can be part sponsored by the Guardian if they so wish. The convergence of digital video channels means that ‘broadcasting’ as we know it is already dead. The TV license is dead and the BBC iPlayer service is the only channel competing with all the other channels and is not sustainable on its own. The EU has decided (the BBC) cannot charge for the iPlayer service (abroad) and charge again for a TV license fee back home (UK). Nor can it make a profit (or ever will thanks to its sky high costs and executive salaries.)
John Redwood has a good take on the BBC which is worth noting as it is ‘unfair competition’ to other broadcasters. He makes a good point that the BBC is immune from ‘competition’ and its only competition that keeps prices down.
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2015/05/16/a-modern-bbc/
Mr Redwood is usually right about most things and this is no exception. Except he doesn’t seem to have listened to the World Service recently or indeed in the past decade. The image of Britain served up on the WS is even more leftist and metropolitan than the rubbish put out by the BBC for home consumption. It is truly dreadful and must be doing untold harm to the UK. I suspect that in the wee small hours GMT they probably run adverts for boat people to come to the UK on assisted passages and take free health care, homes and a living allowance and while they are at it bring their extended family as well !
The argument that the BBC is an important source for the arts industry holds some water. As a musician, I found that the local BBC station was probably one of the most receptive to new bands and artists, whereas the local commercial station was anything but truly local, receiving its playlist from a central computerised system.
That said, neither station had much freedom during the day.
And this has become one of the basic corruptions of the system. Radio 1/2 and the BBC playlist.
Why do you think it costs £10K a week to plug a record? Record pluggers are making good money sure, but not the bulk of that. No, it’s going into the industry, and the leading list to be on is the Radio 1 playlist. This, because of the dominance of the BBC, becomes the precursor to a hit. If you don’t get on, you don’t get heard on radio. So it’s triples all round. Not payola per se (though I’m sure it happens in some cases), but a lot of expensive lunches. Being part of the inner circle is a dream ticket to a nice lifestyle.
BBC local radio bucks that trend (nobody gets anything, it’s the poor relation and it’s straight as a die), as does commercial local radio – but never during peak listening hours. And commercial radio is no longer truly independent.
So how does this tie in? Well because the BBC dominates, it reduces the available revenue and listenership for commercial local radio, mainly because all the prime frequencies and the strongest signals belong to the state. Commercial radio simply cannot afford the reach, therefore they cannot really compete. Even on digital, where signals should be fairly even, the BBC has a signal strength way beyond the commercial sector.
So for artists, their main source of exposure is BBC local radio, and some of it is excellent once you get outside peak listening hours. But because of the commercial dominance of Radio 1/2, it finds itself as a form of imitation with a local flavour during the day, and more often now taking non peak radio 2 playthrough out of hours, neutering it’s only real selling point, which just offers R2 more bandwidth in the evening.
And that’s what happens when you have a publicly funded service, which doesn’t really know what its objective is, but has huge power in an unbalanced market place.
Used to listen to Radio 2 all day in the car, can’t stand most of it now, in fact most radio is the same these days, no presenters with personality. Like everything else political correctness has sucked the life out of it.
R2 new playlists seem to exist purely to tout bland Adele-esque (5 notes where one would do) waling female singers offering little in creative songs or song writing.
Radio 1 is a shadow of its former self, not what it was when I listened as a kid, just dumbed down DJs with made up names dumbing down the kids with shite urban music.
It must be galling to the managers and workers in British Steel , British Leyland , the mines , British shipping and shipbuilders , that they ultimately didn’t have the clout of the BBC .
Tony Hall quote. Fantastic ‘value for money at just 33p per day’. Presumably based on every man woman and child in the country which is not a choice at all. The fact that it has to be paid even when you rarely watch it and disagree with the content is never examined. In fact it is very expensive and has grossly over inflated importance that in the real world is public sector unsustainable and grossly unfair burden on those who are forced to pay for something they don’t want. It also distorts commercial operations that are often cheaper and cost the taxpayer nothing at all and they must comply with OFCOM – that the BBC routinely ignores and carries on regardless as it refuses to change it’s ways.