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Jan Breslavsky's avatar

Good fun. Have instituted Dr Thompson's regime -- my God Chartreuse is filthy stuff. I'm afraid I don't think it will ever embrace the unique possibilities of public funding so I would now cut it loose -- having to earn a monthly sub (globally) instead of extorting an annual tribute from increasingly indifferent UK natives, it might produce some hits but would definitely stop being so universally banal and coercively nice. When Clive Myrie / Nick Robinson / Gary Lineker (Oh...) / Fiona Bruce start bossily insisting that it's 'our BBC' you know you are being shaken down -- for what? A smug and twee idea of Britain that no one outside of Soho House subscribes to... (but is forced to pay for on pain of imprisonment). Maybe fund refreshed / wilder radio out of general taxation. Let the website go. Let the licence fee (any young folk pay this?) go the way of the dog licence. Put £165 back in people's pockets (they need it) and stop stuffing 'presenters' mouths with gold.

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Rivaa's avatar

I think we must be psychically linked or something because I swear I've thought about a BBC produce show a million times and didn't know anyone else was haunted by such a specific missed potentiality??? Anyways I loved this article and greenlight all your reforms - you SHOULD be running the BBC xx

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nedemus grandage's avatar

That's a good basis for reforming the public service broadcaster. Both subversive and constructive. See you at the commissioners’ round-table meeting at Broadcasting House. Malcolm Muggeridge, originally a sharp commentator, had a lasting image in his book, The Thirties, when, incredibly, the BBC had only been in existence for less than two decades:

“The BBC came to pass silently, invisibly; like a coral reef, cells busily multiplying, until it was a vast structure … a society, with its king and lords and commoners, its laws and dossiers and revenue and easily suppressed insurrection …”

And on British Technicolor bizarrerie: do you know Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)? Here's a clip, for atmosphere:

https://youtu.be/FXdYNlkoSwg?si=H7iAfB8OyRPnXk1

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Glynne Williams's avatar

"It probably appears that the UK has five presenters and about ten living comedians." That would be ok if they didn't have the presenters cracking jokes and the comedians doing the presenting.

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