British Broadcasting Clearout?

Here’s a health warning for Guardian haters: I’m about to reference yet another one of their stories. And, for good measure, it’s about another deeply subversive organisation, the BBC. In this article, Marina Hyde looks across the Atlantic at Fox TV, a creation that could only happen in a land where there is no equivalent to the Beeb, and isn’t going to be.

It’s all too relevant: so many across the political spectrum, as well as commentators in the print and other broadcast media, and especially the blogosphere, don’t like the Beeb. They want it to be at least smaller, and often to be either broken up or simply removed. Following such an act, there would be an awfully big void to fill. So what would be put in its place?

If Ms Hyde’s article is broadly accurate, then the phrase “dumbing down” would be an understatement of some scale. More, we know the political direction of anything called Fox. Way to go, Rupe!

I don’t concur totally with the detail, though: the Beeb needs to stop any recurrence of the Brand/Ross business, not through being cowed by outside pressure, but because effing and blinding, and phone pranks, are not “edgy”, “pushing the envelope” or even necessarily funny. Such actions merely allow the likes of the Daily Mail, where effing and blinding is an ambiguous area, to kick the BBC to its own advantage.

And one final thought, for those who oppose the licence fee: the income of Sky is far greater than that of the BBC. So where is the original programming coming from?