Your editorial supporting the BBC World Service (3 November) recognises the difficulties it faces as a result of being brutally merged into the BBC administratively, editorially and financially. These should have been faced at the time of the charter renewal in 2010, but were not. The World Service was always an effective fighter over budgets with significant support in the Commons and Lords when it was free-standing within the BBC. Such campaigns are no longer possible, reduced as they are to a footnote in the BBC’s overall case for charter renewal. The post of the head of the World Service, now a mere director within a directorate, has been diminished for almost two decades. It will not be restored to its former authority. A loss of the World Service’s distinctive character and function is inevitable.
Put simply, the BBC covers international news some of the time; the World Service covers it all the time. That is why it is and must remain different, for listeners’ sake and for the BBC’s. There is a solution to the question of World Service needs in the face of growing international competition. If say, £100m annually were diverted from the significant development ministry annual underspend, it would do wonders for Britain’s international voice, reputation and for international development. But the BBC must argue for it.
John Tusa
Former managing director, BBC World Service
• Your editorial did not go far enough. The World Service has demonstrated our values by putting them into daily, fallible yet persuasive practice. Its carefully husbanded principles have let the UK punch way beyond its weight. In a hard-to-fathom global world it has sensitised us to how the world thinks and feels. But to go on doing this it needs money, independence and will. Detached from national purposes (by the casual inattention of ministers), will it become just another world commercial station? As part of a larger BBC, will it be held to the right kind of account? Fran Unsworth has BBC values in her DNA, but she needs our help. I feel a campaign coming on – the World Service may be too important to leave to the politicians and the BBC.
Professor Jean Seaton
Professor of media history, University of Westminster
• Do you actually listen to the World Service? The “romantic Bush House days” have certainly gone with the end of the cold war, but the English-language service has been replaced by a 24-hour diet of trivia and endless sport, with an almost total absence of expert analysis. The possibility that this pale shadow of what once was might be revived as a radio station worth listening to is, sadly, a pipedream.
Richard Gott
London
