The temptation is to see the latest BBC charter melodramatics as merely St George (or maybe St Beeb) and the Dragon. Monstrous Whitto, a garrulous beast from the Whitehall jungle, threatens gallant worshippers of the great gods Truth and Independence. But lo! Here come thousands of innocent licence-fee payers, outraged luvvies and defiant journalists (including yours truly). Do King Dave and his chancellor, masters of dragons, want another steaming row on their doorsteps? They do not. So, at the last moment, Whitto gets a good hosing down and his fire-breathing plans turn to cold porridge. We may all rejoice. The BBC, in particular, issues a stream of joyful statements. Crisis over. The good guys won.
Except that Broadcasting House life, like Downing Street life, is never that simple. Forget St George for a moment. Think, rather, of defunct BBC drama series Hustle, in which lovable conmen waged eternal war against the forces of lumpen malignity. Spin, with an added twist. By such lights, was Mr culture secretary Whittingdale ever going to top slice the corporation and tie it in a thousand regulatory knots, throttling the life out of Strictly Come Dancing? Perhaps not. In which case, was Thursday’s supposed triumph for St Beeb quite what it seemed? Same answer.
There are things to make Portland Place cheer: an 11-year charter, the five-year revival of an indexed and rising licence fee, some funding certainty. The show, in short, trundles on. Come back in 2027 and see whether any subscription replacement for the fee has begun to find favour. Keep repeating the ancient injunctions of Reith – educate, inform, entertain – as though David Attenborough, aged 101, was the man for all seasons.
But real life isn’t so simple. Take the rancorous issue that has dogged negotiations between BBC and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport: who will sit on the new unitary board that supplants the trust regime, and how they will be appointed.
It’s a dodgy time to raise the problem of “independent” Whitehall appointments because the current commissioner for great and good job-filling, Sir David Normington, is heading for retirement – and manifestly unhappy about the Cameron government’s wily ways. He thinks covert patronage is seeping back. Once upon a recent time, when politicians needed a job filling, you advertised it, held interviews and selected a favourite and second favourite to send upstairs. Either candidate is qualified, minister: you choose.
Such ways and means weren’t exactly pristine. They still depended on job descriptions, remuneration, taps on shoulders and words in ears. Difficult, but not impossible. Now it’s not difficult at all. Ministers will be able to choose between a preferred candidate and a whole basket of “qualified” ones. The person No 10 wants is bound to be there somewhere. Which is why the Whittingdale board solution is so lethal – and so divisive.
Currently, HMG appoints the doomed trust, just as it appointed the doomed governors before it. But at least the trust had a primary regulatory role to give it common purpose. The new single board is responsible for many things: finance, governance, complaints, promotions and “strategy”. It won’t make programmes – or kill them. It’s not editorial in that sense. But it’s bound to have an editorial influence as it charts the dynamic ways of a BBC future. It needs to be expert, balanced and dynamic as well as wise and reflective. It needs to be led.
Can a non-executive chairman imposed by Cameron and Whittingdale do that? Can a deputy chair, chosen by the same system? Or four more non-execs from the nations and regions beyond Watford Gap? Will they find common cause with the four or so non-execs allegedly chosen by the BBC board itself, though – more killer detail – with the government’s designated chairman as master of selection revels?
How do Tony Hall and one or two actual executives drive the corporation through this non-executive mud? The new board is supposed to bring new purpose and new horizons. But, with Rona Fairhead, the current trust chairman and chief regulator, dropped into place already, the signals are all about regulation, not innovation. Fairhead is a lively, sympathetic operator. She offers reassuring continuity. But this is a unitary board, not a trust. This is long-term change, not short-term continuity.
Meanwhile, belt and braces, Ofcom becomes the supreme regulator of last resort. In the snug little world of media regulation that means a community of experts shifting from chair to chair. It also means an Ofcom board, appointed by Whittingdale, will regulate every aspect of BBC life through a secondary board with its own appointed chairman and members. That’s double the appointment opportunities: on the BBC board, on the Ofcom board, on the BBC Ofcom outfit board, replacing a single appointed trust. With the full National Audit Office works thrown in for bad luck.
So instead of the opportunity for fresh thinking and fast reaction that Hall wanted to make continuing reality out of all the adulatory adjectives about BBC performance that clog the white paper, we’re being sold governance by regulator with the DCMS pulling strings – and adding enough new hurdles to turn Brussels bureaucrats green with envy. Not fewer sticky fingers feeling collars, but more. Not more investment in new technologies, but much less. Not more true independence, but less. Plus a distinctive Whitehall impartiality that keeps the men from the ministry in charge.
The clamour at charter-renewal time is always about politicians of every persuasion trying to get the spirit of BBC independence under control. It is about the surface independence of he says/she says that never makes a secretary of state screech in fury. It is public service that often tries to leave the public out. And it utterly forgets the creative and imaginative urge that doesn’t just make good drama or good news, but responds to technological and social change.
Yet remember that in 11 years’ time, on present trends, TV audiences will be down by some 30%. Television has contracted the newspaper disease and, on Reuters Institute estimates, in a still more crippling form. You can’t freeze-frame the next 11 years. Nor, within the now bubbling pot of interests, can you leave Ofcom to mastermind revolution.
There are reasons to welcome Whittingdale’s alleged conversion. Ten months of thrashing threats and anxious obeisances are over. But yet more regulation is only part of a BBC future, and by no means the most important part. Can governments, fiddling at second hand, run a broadcasting company? Can an artificially balanced board, some beholden to politicians, some more truly independent, do it? Hustle, bustle, toil and trouble.
