As the FT notes this morning:
Ministers will explore mutualising the BBC as part of a review of funding options for the UK national broadcaster ahead of licence fee talks expected to begin next year, culture secretary Lisa Nandy said.
During her campaign for the Labour leadership in 2020, Nandy called for the corporation to be mutualised in order to give direct ownership and control to licence-fee payers who fund its work.
I am sure the story is very well-sourced.
I suspect that this is very firmly on the agenda.
So let's not, for one moment, be taken in by any of this. The aim here is not mutualisation to give people control of the BBC. It is to turn the BBC into a corporation where, in due course, every licence fee payer can be offered a lump sum to sell their share to a company wanting to take it over (let's assume it's a Murdoch enterprise) with Labour then hugging themselves in glee that they will have done a privatisation that will send a bung in the direction of millions of grateful people at no cost to themselves, whilst achieving their aim of providing an opportunity to one of their sponsors.
Please forgive my cynicism, but I cannot conceive of any other way to respond to this.
Do they really think we are stupid enough not to see what is going on here?
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who cares..the BBC as a news broadcast is terrible
It could get even worse
“Do they really think we are stupid enough not to see what is going on here?”
YES! THEY! DO!
BBC News is a small part of its output. Other things they make can be very good, and it isn’t subject to advertiser needs or what will be most popular.
“it isn’t subject to advertiser needs or what will be most popular.”
No, it is subject to what they can sell overseas to the highest bidder.
Doctor Who is no longer broadcast on BBC America. Doctor Who was sold to the highest bidder; Disney+
Do not think, for one moment, that the BBC is not a money making machine with outside influences (Disney+ and BritBox for the USA/Canadian market) affecting its product.
The BBC gets about £3.4 billion in licence fees.
That’s a lot of money private “enterprise” has its eyes on.
The same happened to the water companies, and we ended up with raw sewage in our rivers.
The same happened with the energy companies, and we now have the highest energy prices in Europe.
The same happened with the train companies, and we have the highest rail fares in Europe (and now they are nationalising the unprofitable bits).
Neo-liberal capitalism is selling off the country. Thatcher started it, Starmer may finish it, because there is nothing more to sell.
The BBC is a currently incorporated by royal charter. It has no shares or shareholders. The members of its board are the members of the corporation. In effect it is owned by the UK government. That is, it is already a mutual company owned by the 60-odd million people of the UK.
There are about 24 million licence fee payers. How are they supposed to exercise “direct ownership and control” of a mutualised BBC? There will be a board which will remain in control. So what exactly would change under a “mutualised” structure?
And what about the other 40+ million people of the UK who don’t pay a licence fee? Will the BBC ignore them?
Hence my cynicism as to the real reason for this
The BBC is three quarters of the way to being something that it is not anymore, so riven as it is with political appointments and its programming is increasingly more like that which attracts advertising. So they might as well finish the job. Cherish the memories I say. It’s finished.
I watched an episode of Sherwood last night – a supposedly dour drama set in a post industrial town that is highly rated. All I saw was the crime murder franchise giving it an extended lease of life. Sherwood is not Chicago. I’m from Nottingham and we use our mouths and fists to sort things out – not guns. The writers on these things must think we are stupid. Maybe some of us are.
The BBC gave us Little Britain didn’t it and the character Mrs Emery an old lady whose incontinence we were encouraged to laugh at and find amusing?
I ask you…………….
Let it go maybe? The BBC is done I think.
@Pilgrim Slight Return
“The BBC is three quarters of the way to being something that it is not anymore, so riven as it is with political appointments and its programming is increasingly more like that which attracts advertising.”
See my comment posted above, early in this thread, which directly relates to your statement.
As an independence supporting Scot, it’s difficult for me to feel any sense of concern about the possibility of the Union’s propoganda channels being privatised. They’ve already failed their Scottish audience with the clear bias on show during every single Scottish news segment.
They could be worse – and leave no national channel for Scotland when independent
Post independence, the infrastructure and technical skills to operate it will still exist, so a national broadcaster for Scotland will still be possible. I would like to see a scenario where a Scottish broadcasting organisation existed that would be honest with the audience, reporting truthfully the good and bad of Scottish politics without a (barely) hidden agenda.
I’m fairly certain that could not achieved using a single member of BBC Scotland’s current editorial staff.
“…when independent”!!!
I love your optimism!
I have to be
I am also a long way from naive
I know how hard that will be
“They could be worse”.
It is very, very bad. The experienced, incisive and penetrating journalists like Bateman or Isabel Fraser have all long gone. What we have are ill-trained apprentices, or biddable hacks. It is not an accident. BBC Scotland produces virtually nothing of interest or merit. We have the skill-set (save in journalism, which is totally politicised and manipulated), but neither the financial resources, nor the intention to give Scottish talent the required showcase to demonstrate what can be done; because success may give people the wrong idea about Scotland; save as a second-rate, provincial backwater. And that is precisely the best description of BBC Scotland I can think of. It is a national embarrassment.
I feel a poll coming on…..
@ Alex F
I know several BBC Scotland staff who are not unionists and look forward to Independence.
I think the notion they are all as unionist as Gers supporters is just wrong. They reflect Scottish opinion across the full range.
The SLabs have/had quite a few supporters in BBC Scotland though ScotsTories are more like the living dead these days. (Weren’t they ever?)
I suspect that at middle ranking and senior editorial level they are as Conservative and Union biassed as London based staff, and sadly are mostly directed from London based managers anyway.
I recall various arch unionists being parachuted in 2014 from London because BBC editors couldn’t trust Scottish correspondents to stick to the unionist line.
I gave up on the Blatantly Biased Corporation years ago. Scotland will lose nothing if it’s wrapped and sold to the highest bidder. Better news, politics and economics coverage is available elsewhere.
I must declare an interest here as a former employee of the BBC.
Despite the many valid criticisms of the BBC there are two points would like to emphasise.
Firstly, many, I would judge most, of the employees have a public service ethic. Many people, myself included, joined explicitly (at least in part) because we wanted to serve the public good. Consequently many employees are prepared to accept below market salaries for the privilege of working for the BBC. How do I know that salaries in the BBC are below market rates? Because when I, and numerous other former colleagues have left the BBC for commercial companies we have been paid very substantially more, approaching twice the BBC remuneration. This includes the pension offered by the corporation. That pension is now no longer defined benefit and is broadly in line with commercial companies.
If the BBC should be privatised many of the employees would look elsewhere. This would cause a very serious problem for the new private company.
Secondly, in my view, the BBC provides a bulwark against monopoly and cartels of media providers. This is vitally important when we increasingly need reliable sources of news. It does this by providing a standard that commercial companies have to meet or become uncompetitive. I have heard many complaints about the licence fee because, some claim, they never watch BBC. But, even if they don’t watch directly they still benefit from the standards the BBC imposes simply by existing. Furthermore, I never heard complaints about the costs that commercial media imposes on everyone irrespective of whether they consume commercial media or not. This cost is the increase price of branded goods that pays for advertising, and it is significantly more, on average, than the cost of the licence fee.
People also forget the direct public service benefits the BBC provides in addition to its media output. Two things spring to mind. First is the training it provides for the whole UK media industry. In any commercial production company you will find many people trained by the BBC. I would argue this is a significant contribution to the creative industries in the UK. Secondly is the huge, invisible, contribution that the BBC makes to creating standards, both technical and creative, that are used throughout the industry. For example, it creates technical standards through bodies such as the European Broadcasting Union, the International Telecommunications Union (part of the UN) and many others. Commercial companies do not contribute to standards to anything like the same extent and, when they do contribute it is to further their narrow commercial interests. There is no-one else in the UK, and few worldwide, who can undertake the role of setting standards. Already the repeated reduction in BBC revenue is damaging these important roles; commercialisation will completely stop them.
I am not blind to the shortcomings of the BBC. I voice many of them myself (for example their lack of proper presentation of economics). Clearly their revenue model needs updating; they have stuck their head in the sand and ignored the increasing unviability of the licence fee for years. But to privatise the BBC would destroy the many public goods that it, still, provides.
Thanks, Tim
Appreciated
I think understand your perspective Mr Kent, and I do not challenge the worthy people with good intent in the BBC. It is, however not enough in my view. I maintain the position set out in my comments made elsewhere on this thread, and will not rehearse them again here.
Your criticism of the advertising business model overlooks the negative impact the BBC’s powerful market position, particularly historically, but a remaining goodwill that I would argue that its determined falls from grace does not deserve (I do not understand the brand loyalty; it has not been earned, given the scale of failure). The BBC advantage was compounded by a supertax on ITV profits that effectively restricted the capacity of the smaller ITV companies especially, to compete with the BBC. During the duopoly it was not a competitively level playing field between BBC and ITV (which was not a single company), and it held back innovation on the production side.
I consider the BBC licence fee to be a subscription.
I choose not to subscribe to Netflix, Sky, etc., so why should I be forced to subscribe to the BBC
Because it is an advertising free national broadcaster
The problem is not with the fee, it is woth the content and lack of questioning
The advertising free national broadcaster was designed and built for only two worlds; the world of monopoly (pre-ITV), and the world of duopoly (BBC and ITV). It doesn’t work in the hydra-headed monster of the digital age. I know. I worked in television (in an ITV company, at one time in my career). Alasdair Milne was the last Director-General who believed the BBC could be all things to all men. It was impossible. DBS destroyed him. The BBC has lost an Empire, and still has not found a role. It is sinking in rough seas in an unserviceable boat. If PSB is to survive in this world it requires a complete metamorphosis (and that is very, very tough).
Since I found myself trawling the old memory banks and discarding various TLAs of DBS I eventualy did a web search to arrive at an appropriate answer.
I shall leave it here for others to happen upon, should they also be left guessing at the inscrutable TLA. 😉
Direct Broadcasting by Satellite (DBS)
https://transdiffusion.org/2017/01/16/direct-broadcasting-by-satellite/
“Do they really think we are stupid enough not to see what is going on here?”
If by “we” you mean the Uk population, then, I’d suggest that the 2024 election answered that question with a resounding “yes” –
the UK pop really is that stupid/gullible etc (aided by the UK media of which the BBC is part).
Margaret Thatcher carried out the same wheeze to the whole Mutual Fund industry. It was more or less destroyed.
And the result? Look at the Pension Industry today. An opportunity to make big fees and profits and drive pensions into the transformation into risk-taking industry (an oxymoron, but hey, this is Britain, the Apotheosis of the oxymoron); and had to be rescued in the LDI fiasco, from complete collapse. Risk-taking pension funds? Really?
We are being governed, literally – by morons. Somebody will no doubt complain that I am going too far. But really; in the midst of this utter devastation of the economy? Really? Really?
And just to nail this one. I have no sympathy for the BBC. It should have lost its Charter after Saville, et.al. But no. Given another chance for who knows what moral reason, the Dame Janet Smith Report recommended there should be published audits on progress in ensuring there were no relapses. Where are the published audits? I haven’t seen one, or read a news report on them. And now we have the Huw Edwards disaster, out of the blue. Explanation came there none. You want a public service broadcaster? I understand you. Build a new one; one that actually possesses the standards claimed for it, or is this all just fine?
Thanks
@ John S Warren
“…governed, literally – by morons. Somebody will no doubt complain that I am going too far.”
Not guilty. I agree wholeheartedly, John.
BBC world wide is a commercial organisation
Licence fees are unnecessary.
Public figures need no would be fairer.
It makes millions. Hundreds.
It has a massive library that is probably the primary asset that global media barons desire.
That should be free forever.
It has some property assets.
Spooks use it as cover. It s full of Mockingbirds.
The grandees and connected upper middle class families have always used it as a personal job center for their otherwise unemployable scions.
They didn’t have any report on the massive Palestine protest n London on Saturday.
Yet people think it is good???
Who are they trying to gaslight?
As a mass propaganda platform, paid for unwillingly by anyone with a tv – even if they never consume any of its output, it is an envy of the Collective Wastes Fascist Overlords.
They wants it! They demands it, their precious!
BBC One suffers record drop as audiences turn to social media for news
“BBC One has suffered a record drop in audiences for its news bulletins, with increasing numbers of people reading headlines via social media platforms.
For the first time, online sites overtook television as the UK’s main source of news.” The Telegraph via MSN
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/tv/bbc-one-suffers-record-drop-as-audiences-turn-to-social-media-for-news/ar-AA1qh3ti
I am surprised it has taken this long
I rarely use the BBC for any news
Some sport (Test Match special every night please) and now Ipswich are getting weekly (painful) coverage that’s good, but otherwise I watch it little
And even Springwatch is dumbed dowm. Packham is better on Youtube
Q. Why do they want to put the BBC into the private sector?
A. The BBC Archive. “One of the world’s largest multimedia archives”
True
Yes, and they must have to employ someone full time to weed-out all the programmes they can no longer use because of the reputational damage impact, flowing from employing so many of the wrong people as leading “talent” for so long (people so important nobody ever looks close enough; the core problem with television particularly is, it is run by too many natural fans; and that isn’t wise). They need sceptics.
There are some sad elements about this – for example I remember The Mighty Boosh in the early 2000’s – one of the best things to come out of the BBC for long time in my opinion along with ‘How Not to Live Your Life’ plus Wolf Hall was superb but……………..I don’t know – the BCC is much reduced and John Warren is right to mention Salville and as well as a certain Welshman who has gone off the rails.
It’s all rather sad – but many here are right about the back catalog as rich pickings for the privateers.
I have to say that iPlayer has been very successful indeed too.
Terrestrial broadcasting worked when Government controlled the available spectrum, and the technology was limited. Nobody thinks in sufficient depth, why the terrestrial broadcasters are there. It was a way for the Parliament and Government to manage the spectrum in their interests, and allow a new industry it could not stop, to develop. Their time has now gone. It cannot be retrieved. What is left is goodwill, programme archives, and a somewhat tarnished (in one case) culture.
There is your starting point. It is not the blurred, vague nostalgia an set piece arguments; they have no purchase on reality. Terrestrial broadcasting will stagger to a slow death if there is not a drastic overhaul; a metamorphosis into something new. It will require an original idea, or consolidation.
Interesting
You are ahead of me
Richard,
Think of it this way. The BBC was set up by Charter in 1927. This was a very carefully chosen set-up, with a long and much adapted business model. This makes the BBC, effectively the last great, public Corporation*. In other words, it is the last surviving example of mercantilism; and is therefore a very odd, anachronistic anomaly in the modern world; familiarity, long custom and habit has inured us to the bizarre nature of the operation.
(*You may protest the City of London Corporation, Chartered 1067 establishes the precedent; but the BBC is far, far more like the specialised model established by the seventeenth century Chartered Monopolies, of which the EIC was the genesis).
Lord Reith, the first BBC Director General asserted that the BBC’s purposes should be ‘to educate,
inform and entertain’. Since sport is essentially entertainment, the overwhelming proportion of BBC output at present is entertainment.
Disregard this post if you will, Richard, but extending your topic, leads me to grieve that, as things stand, the BBC is not being used adequately to ‘educate and inform’. Heaven forbid that it should be further commercialised to the detriment of Reith’s far-sighted vision.
With global overheating threatening the very existence of a huge proportion of humanity, it is paramount that the public should know the crucial aspects of our predicament – and the BBC should be playing a much more significant part.
For decades we have known that carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut immediately and drastically. Is it a fantasy to suppose that the BBC could play a vital role in communicating the facts?
Our children, and our children’s children, need us to take action to make massive changes to our way or life. Flying from holidays must be forbidden. Private motoring needs to end very soon – which means a huge reorganisation of where we live and how far we travel to our work.
Everyone needs a home. As building houses requires vast inputs of energy, nobody should be allowed to possess more than one home or more than a reasonable amount of floor space.
During World War Two, the nation benefited from its role in providing ‘information’. Recorded speeches by, for example, the Prime Minister and the King, helped to maintain morale. As well as the progress of the war, output included ‘education’ about health and lifestyle from ‘The Radio Doctor’. There were campaigns such as ‘make do and mend’, ‘dig for victory’, ‘Don’t take the Squander Bug’ (to discourage wasteful spending), and to encourage what was called ‘salvage’ (recycling).
During the pandemic the broadcast media where able to provide the public with some of the essential information that was needed. It can be done.
Sadly, too many people with influence seek to enrich themselves. They allow themselves the comfort of not bothering to find out what is in store for our country and for almost all of humanity.
The BBC should be free of commercial considerations.
“During World War Two, the nation benefited from its role in providing ‘information’. Recorded speeches by, for example, the Prime Minister and the King, helped to maintain morale. As well as the progress of the war, output included ‘education’ about health and lifestyle from ‘The Radio Doctor’. There were campaigns such as ‘make do and mend’, ‘dig for victory’, ‘Don’t take the Squander Bug’ (to discourage wasteful spending), and to encourage what was called ‘salvage’ (recycling)”.
All of that served a noble purpose; to win the war. But you used inverted commas: ‘information’. The emphasis was on providing the message the Government wanted the public to hear. That wasn’t always information. Often it was propaganda, and often by what information was not communicated because it didn’t serve the required morale purpose. Delivered by the BBC in a way that you could not tell where information ended, and ‘information’ began. My point is not a criticism about how to fight a World War (but the fact is, dispassionate news information stops in a war), but rather to show that your argument does not actually make your case, but points to the underlying, treacherous problem; your argument just shows how easily such activities can be manipulated by the BBC or Government; without most people noticing.
I have not read or watched BBC news or political output for years due to their pro-right-wing bias and anti social programs.
Reading virtually all of these posts one might think the BBC was only television. I virtully never watch BBC (or any other) television. I would be dismayed if BBC radio became collatoral damage in hostile or rightly critical reaction to its television output and organisation – though I am far from lacking in adverse criticsm of some of its radio ,there is much on it that I value and do not see as being provided under any other regime. And of course there is other non-television BBC output, including its website.
What do those who appear willing to welcome the demise of the BBC think should happen to its radio?
I listen only occasionally
Radios 4 and sometimes 6
I prefer Spotify for most music these days
Most radio is just annoying
re Richard Murphyat 9.30pm 10 Sep
It would appear from this that you would be content to see BBC radio disappear.
I agree there is plenty that is annoying there but I also find much of interest and value, especially on Radios 3 and 4. Spotify is all very well but it does something different,
.
I could live without them
That does not mean I think everyone should
Mr Dyson,
I argue for the demise of the BBC, not PSB. I have elsewhere on this thread twice argued that terrestrial broadcasting requires a transformation to survive and flourish (and that includes radio, they need not be corporately separated). The original 1927 Charter was for a radio broadcaster; the BBC was a testbed broadcaster for a sceptical Government, most concerned to protect its absolute control of the technically accessible spectrum. Television came along quickly, as technological change often arrives; uprating in quick succession. Reith never really understood television, which complicated matters (and the early competing TV systems both had drawbacks – the electronic system eventually won, but the eventual winner could not even satisfactorily record programmes, while Baird’s system could record and even potentially develop colour faster, but had other disadvantages; but at the time of a more longterm nature).
Mr Warren,
How in practice would one replace BBC radio with a new PSR organisation whilst preserving the particular people amd programmes one values on the BBC?
Mr Dyson,
I am not going to attempt to write a franchise, ‘on the hoof’; but the programmes can be made much as they are, with different management, and different management structures in charge. The management, however cannot be led by over indulgence of what the BBC chooses to term the “talent”; and promptly swoons.
But you insist on the existence of special BBC “values”. This is unsustainable. Bluntly, it isn’t true. Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall. This was not one isolated case. I read the Dame Janet Smith Report. It is shocking. Have you read it? What happened to the regular public audits of progress that Dame Janet Smith recommended? I at least, have not seen any, or read of their public presentation.
Then there was Martin Bashir. Then there was Huw Edwards. Do you see my problem? I challenge your proposition of BBC “values”. The BBC has failed to maintain standards. Liking programmes is not evidence of standards.
BBC Radio 3 and the BBC orchestras and BBC Singers, who only just survived to their 100th birthday, will also eventually disappear; which will be a great loss to our artistic life and our musicians who already suffer post brexit. We will be the “island without music” again as the Germans called us.
I agree
But when the bbc can’t even be bothered to televise most of the Proms I despair
I recall (though I didn’t personally hear it at the time) Winston (bloody) Churchill, (patron saint off all that is Briddish-and-proud-of-it) said that Democracy was the worst form of government……except all the others.
Same applies to the BBC. It’s shite and gets worse, but the alternatives… (I know you can literally only have one alternative, but this is not the time for pedantry) ….the alternatives actually DO have to be worse.
Well they don’t, but they are. Because those who have the power to influence are ….stupid? craven? bought? I don’t know. I wouldn’t pay the license fee. Never have. My wife does and watches the output online and feeds me news in the form of ‘human interest stories’ for which I don’t give a toss. If that’s the ‘news’ I’m missing nowt. Celebrity gossip and prurience. I can live without these. The drama used to be worth paying for, but I don’t get the impression from anywhere that it currently is. Tory cuts have done their work.
In my perfect world then BBC would be owned by the people. One share each. And it would be a total digital platform. Not just streaming news and programmes but music and programmes by the people. A people’s YouTube. Skill sharing. History sharing.
But more, it would provide digital support to associations and provide a digital platform for discussion and voting. It would be a safety warning channel, weather, a load of health advive, offer the open university, education, and some kind of monitoring facility of the effectiveness of policy to hold parliament to account. For the people by the people. I’m a dreamer I know.
Why not?
BBC privatised? Well, maybe that’s one way to be rid of it. Personally, If I was anywhere near the big three-pin plug that supplies its power, I’d yank it out in a minute!
To see why it is so deeply unpopular in Scotland, I need only direct you to the (privately produced) documentary ‘London Calling’ which documents its Unionist bias around the 2014 referendum, also available as a book. The trailer is here (while the BBC’s ‘Scotland is rubbish’ narrative continues)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl3_UyuFv4E
Completely off topic (or maybe not since the BBC seems not to have reported any of this), Craig Murray, the British ex-ambassador, has fled the UK to Greece in the wake of several other journalist being arrested, and wished to avoid the same treatment. You might remember, it was Murray who was jailed during the Salmond trial for revealing information that was common knowledge on the internet – his crime, seemingly, was that he was not an actual card-carrying accredited official journalist!
He is now, but has decided to leg it anyway, just in case.
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2024/09/10/craig-murray/?__s=6da4f10xx0h2sueo22kf
I am not sure Craig Murray is a good barometer on this. I am not convinced of his wise judgement. Sorry.
No need for apologies, I agree with you – e.g. his behaviour when he wasn’t selected as an SNP candidate was an egotistical toys-out-the pram flounce, and I still have a suspicion (on no evidence whatsoever) that he’d been an establishment plant. However, perhaps its his name being better known as an Independence supporter in Scotland that brought this to our attention –
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2024/08/29/sarah-wilkinson/
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/08/20/richard-medhurst/
Just the heavy-handed police state in action. I suppose we must get used to it as a form of intimidation to silence dissenters.