The BBC is an easy target. It’s huge, moves rather slowly, and has a tendency to stare mournfully at its aggressor as the latter reloads; but...
(we both knew there had to be a ‘but’ there, didn’t we?)
This has been a particularly Hebdomas Miserablis for the corporation. At any other time, there would be collective sniggering behind the hands at Isleworth, but Sky has seen better weeks too.
It all began rather badly on Monday when Erik Huggers, the BBC’s Director of Future Media and Technology, released an almost incomprehensible two thousand word blog post, which apart from the obligatory reference to Lord Reith, appeared to suggest that we listeners had little interest in radio through the iPlayer. Whilst there was no shortage of colourful charts to illustrate how more will be done with less, the detail of how we may listen to audio, away from a radio, was muddled and lost in a fog of stuff about ‘Putting Quality First’.
It didn’t take long for commentators, and simpletons like me on Twitter, to unify in seeking clarity where there was only corporate-speak and fudge.
Sensibly, the BBC has developed, in recent years, a kind of unspoken liberalism towards its staff and, rather than shutting up shop and hoping the questions would go away, it allowed its more sensible and articulate people to elucidate.
In my case, the value of Twitter was confirmed yet again, when a BBC friend pointed me to the well constructed explanation by Daniel Danker which not only referred to the previous day’s ‘bit of confusion’ but also shed pulsating beams of light onto the plans for the future.
In the twinkle of a moment there was cause for rejoicing all the way from Langham Place to White City. The BBC wasn’t taking a chainsaw to radio at all – they were making it better. A pity Erik Huggers didn’t restrict himself to fifty words simply telling us that.
It is often said of a big business or corporation, particularly in the public sector, that ‘the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing’. This week, rather in the manner of a Sky Sports presenter on his first date, the BBC didn’t seem to know what either of its hands was up to.
To agree that axing five foreign language services is a necessary solution to the need for substantial savings is a difficult argument to sustain on the day I write this column. With, it would seem, much of North Africa on the brink of social and political revolution, the desperate need for independent, reliable, unbiased news has never been greater. The BBC World Service has a masterful history of informing without inciting; communicating, yet not provoking.
To cut that link on this of all weeks is untimely to say the least, and potentially damaging to the welfare of those who rely on the BBC to bring truth where there is otherwise only propaganda.
There are reasonable ways of handling cuts and job losses and there are unreasonable ways. The BBC headed down the catastrophic latter road. For in addition to the rather terse farewell to the 3.4 million listeners to the African Portuguese, Caribbean English, Macedonian, Serbian and Albanian services, it was announced that the shortwave broadcasts to India, China and Russia (thirty million listeners) were to close.
How would you like to hear that your job was under threat? Well you wouldn’t, of course, but I imagine you would rather hear the news at first hand, perhaps explained to you by a fully briefed manager.
Unfortunately, most BBC World Service staff learned the news that 650 jobs (from 2,400) are going to be lost through leaks and extraordinarily accurate predictions by a host of media organisations, days before the staff received the ‘official’ briefing.
Peter Horrocks, the Director of the World Service, is a thoroughly decent and honest man who has made a significant and positive impact since taking on the role nearly two years ago, and he is something of a specialist at restructuring in broadcasting. So seeking blame is a wasted pursuit. Perhaps a whisper here, and a hint there, is inevitable in such volatile times, and with such an enormous employer.
I suppose it is only fair to note that I wave a flag for the BBC World Service. I had unhappy times in my early/mid teenage years and the World Service was my comfort in the darkness. This was the late sixties and early seventies and there was no commercial radio in the UK. Most of the BBC closed down when it thought you should be asleep, and I would have been alone but for the stentorian tones of the newsreaders, the reassurance of the rumbustious theme tune at the top of the hour, the sound of Big Ben, and the warmth of Alistair Cooke’s Letter From America.
The World Service on 648 mw was my friend after midnight, often through to dawn, and if it could have that effect on a sad boy, we can only imagine the impact it has for people with far greater troubles.
Terence Dackombe, January 2011
This week I have been:
Listening to Paul Simon songs with a passion bordering on obsession
Reading Cynthia Lennon’s revealing book ‘John’; in the foreword, Julian Lennon writes, "To me he wasn't a musician or peace icon, he was the father I loved and who let me down in so many ways"
Meandering around inside Wembley Arena as it was being prepared for Strictly Come Dancing. It feels much smaller when empty, I discovered.
Listening to Elton drop the ‘f’ word on the Radio Two Breakfast Show, and wondering why it isn’t normal procedure for all live radio shows to be transmitted with a built in seven second delay.
