The irony is that we’re supposed to have voted for freedom, independence, a bonfire of the bureaucratic vanities. But meanwhile, over in Broadcasting House, the selfsame Conservative government that’s supposed to believe in all these liberating things is busy tying the BBC in more knots.
Here’s the much revised royal charter (fathered by John Whittingdale, mothered by Karen Bradley). Here’s Ofcom, in total charge of monitoring it now – with £250,000 fines up its sleeve. And here’s Sharon White, the ex-Treasury official who heads our supreme regulator, laying out her “operating licences”.
Sample some of the detail henceforth required. New minimum quotas for commissioning and producing programmes matched exactly to “each UK nation” – including “ensuring that at least half of all programmes shown nationally and produced in the UK are made outside of London”. Rules requiring CBBC to show at least 400 hours of brand new UK-commissioned programming each year.
New rules requiring Radio 2 to add hours of news and Radio 5 Live to cover “at least 20 sports, helping those that are not getting the attention they deserve”. A new code of practice detailing how the BBC must “commission programmes that authentically portray” the whole UK population – as measured by age, gender, disability and race “among other characteristics”.
How, you may wonder, does Ofcom know what Joe and Joanna Sofa really want? Where’s the cultural flame that lights this fire? Ah! “We have carried out in-depth research … We expect the BBC to focus on things audiences have told us they value most”, including “news, children’s programmes, and programmes made specifically for UK audiences which reflect the full diversity of the UK”.
The spectre of opinion pollsters asking assorted samples whether they want a staple diet of shows “specifically” reflecting this and that lurks large – especially when grafted atop a new BBC board charged with running this big buffet of restrictions. Of course White says: “Ofcom’s job is not to assess the merits of individual programmes. We will not surround the BBC in red tape, hamper its creative freedom or interfere in its commissioning, scheduling or programme-making.” But words are cheap and really creative new programming is an expensive gamble.
Perhaps the BBC, used to strangulation by charter, will find a way of coping as its income shrinks. Perhaps this Whitehall-hardened enterprise has the experience to stagger through. But what – White’s next target – about Channel 4, that curious hybrid, a state-owned industry which has to make its own commercial and cultural way? Which it does, often triumphantly.
Even residual fans of nationalisation might gag over the fiddling, temporising mess that the department of culture is making of C4’s future. For two long years HMG has been openly hinting at selling off the entire channel. Hints now scrapped. Or of requiring it to move its headquarters to Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff … or anywhere that’s not Victoria. Hints now officially embraced in a new DCMS 12-week “consultation”.
You might, of course, reckon such an upheaval – involving at most the 800 people on C4’s books – was more political game-playing than serious management. You might wonder how actual independent programme-making – already more than half of it outside London, as scattered as indie production companies – would be helped. This isn’t Salford Quays and critical mass. It’s mere gesture politics.
Does Whitehall understand the theory and practice of C4 devolution? Or the necessity of close contact with ad agencies? No more, it would seem, than it understands how to leave a competent board alone to get on with it.
But here’s Bradley again. “We want C4 to have a media presence outside London ... to build an economy that works for everyone and not just the privileged few.”
- This article was amended on 2 April 2017. A quote in the final paragraph was originally misattributed to Sharon White.
