Category Archives: BBC funding and purpose

I wonder is it FEAR that makes the Conservatives seem so mild-mannered about the BBC?

Did you see the BBC is revealed as voters’ number one area for money-saving measures, followed by the Culture, Media and Sport department, the £6billion annual overseas aid budget and benefits and tax credits? I hope the BBC will pick up on this and allow those who see it as a vast bloated parasite to have their say. At a time of economic recession, the State Broadcaster needs the axe taken to it and I hope Mr Cameron will do what is necessary when he is elected PM next June.

Former BBC employee and NuLabour talking head Ben Bradshaw believes the License tax should be cut a little and the BBC trust scrapped. I disagree. The License tax should be scrapped and then they can do whatever they want with their management team, they’ll be paying for it, not me. There was a debate on this earlier this morning on Today with John Whittingdale MP and the thing that struck me was Humphyrs recantation that regardless of changes to the Trust and “top-slicing” the essential structure of the BBC would stay the same. That’s the problem. Sir Michael Lyons is on later but I have better things to do than listen to him.

Wonder what you all make of the news The BBC is preparing to drop popular American shows such as Heroes, Mad Men and The Wire as part of a strategic review to combat criticism that it is stifling commercial rivals.

Wonder what you make of the news that Gary Rogers, who previously edited BBC One’s Six O’Clock News, set up GR Media in 2006, and it won a contract with the Corporation just months later. The contract awarded to GR Media in 2006 involved setting up an Arabic service for the BBC. Nice money, eh? A self perpetuating hypocrisy.

Did you read that one of the BBC’s most senior executives is involved in running a media training company that makes thousands of pounds a year by teaching the Corporation’s own presenters how to perform in front of the cameras? Jay Hunt, who earns up to £280,000 a year as the Controller of BBC1, is company secretary of the firm, which is owned by her husband. Perhaps I am being cynical in seeing a slight a conflict of interests here but surely all this does is reinforcce the very special relationship between the State Broadcaster and the taxpayer. They loot us for revenue, we pay.

I think that Stephen Glover has quite a perspicacious article here on the subject of how the BBC operates as a multimedia more powerful version of the Guardian.

As a publicly owned broadcaster funded by the licence payer, it is supposed
to eschew partisan or biased stories with a political agenda. In this case,
the newspaper lobbed a grenade into David Cameron’s back yard by targeting
Andy Coulson. The BBC blindly followed suit. But then the Corporation
often takes its cue from the Guardian. The two organisations share the same
values. Day after day, week after week, the BBC adopts the Guardian’s Leftist
preoccupations and prejudices. The relatively low-selling newspaper serves as
the Corporation’s brain, and many of the progressive causes it
promulgates are taken up by the BBC with its far wider reach.

I think this is about right. And because the BBC is so profoundly institutionally biased that there can be no salvation for it, I’m afraid. It has to be axed and the license tax burden removed. If it wants to push a leftist (or even a right wing) point of view, fine. Let it fund this itself.

Making predictions in the world of politics is to make yourself a hostage to fortune but I believe that David Cameron will shy away from doing what is necessary to the BBC. I believe that he will try to ameliorate the worst excesses of the BBC whilst remaining continually wary of the malign power of the State Broadcaster. He may even think that being nice to them will make things better. It won’t. The values of conservatism are incompatible with the BBC and it will continue to undermine these which is why the only viable option is the complete and utter destruction of the BBC as we know it.

Did you see that two BBC bosses have racked up the biggest pensions in the public sector, together worth more than £14m?

Mark Byford, 51, the deputy director general, is to receive a pension of at least £229,500 a year from a pot valued at almost £8m. This could rise to more than £10m if he works at the BBC until the age of 60. Alan Yentob, 62, the arts presenter and creative director of the BBC, has accumulated a pension worth £6.3m, giving an annual retirement income of £216,667 for the rest of his life, according to new research. Until now it was thought that Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, had Britain’s largest public sector pension. His pension pot is valued at £5.7m, paying a retirement income of £198,613 a year.

And you thought that Fred Goodwin was a supertrougher?