The good people of Birmingham complain openly (and often privately to me) that they get a raw deal from the BBC. Not enough programme-making, not enough investment, not enough of anything. Are you listening, London? Somehow there seem to be extra helpings of flim-flam tomorrow as the corporation announces that the Genting Arena, Brum – “a city with a rich sporting heritage, birthplace of the English football league” – will hold the “most eagerly anticipated awards night” of this “extraordinary” year. The director of BBC Birmingham hymns Edgbaston Test matches and Ryder Cups at the Belfry as he “rolls out the red carpet” for Sports Personality of the Year.
Only a diehard West Midlands cynic, perhaps, would note that the BBC doesn’t do Test cricket or Ryder Cups any longer: and that this brave PR proclamation of Birmingham hegemony comes to us courtesy of Karen Williams, “publicist, England”, in BBC Quay House, Media City, Salford. “Please note I only work Mon-Wed”.
■ A few statistics from last weekend tell the story. Newspaper sales, in the midst of political crisis, were up an average of 7% overall. The Guardian added 80,000 on Saturday, the Times 100,000. The Guardian broke all previous web records with 17.2 million unique visitors and 77 million page views on Leave Friday. The FT, which briefly knocked down its paywall, recruited six times the normal number of subscriptions in a trice.
That doesn’t mean that broadcasters missed out. The Marr show on Sunday notched 2.7 million viewers. But it does, perhaps, illustrate the fact that democracy is a platform for many voices – and that when it’s in crisis we want to hear them all.
