All hail to Team GB. A gold medal to Clare Balding as best, and best-paid, presenter. She’s the Laura Trott of Olympics broadcasting. Another gold to Hazel Irvine, the calmest, best-informed anchor going. And – amid the usual cacophony of carping – a silver endurance medal for the BBC itself, which kept most things on track in resilient form. We got what we paid for.
Big lessons? Only one. The athletes made their medal hauls on the back of ruthlessly targeted lottery funding. Succeed and you get more money. Fail and you’re out of the running. Team GB, in short, was defined, underpinned and buoyed by choices. And if that’s the best way in front of camera, then how does it rate on the studio floor and in the back offices?
An answer, appropriately enough, emerged last week under cover of much golden-couple rejoicing. It’s one of the last of the doomed BBC Trust’s reviews before Ofcom takes over – and it reaches to the heart of our national broadcasting bind. Simply: when we turn on a radio or TV set in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, do we get what we want?
Yes, says the trust. Or possibly no. On the one hand, satisfaction levels are relatively high. On the other, they could be higher – especially north of the border. “Perceptions of the BBC in Scotland have traditionally been less positive than in most other parts of the UK, due to a complex mix of reasons, some cultural.” Which, being interpreted in non-review jargon, means you either want Scottish independence or you don’t – and no amount of banging on about “impartiality” will convince Alex Salmond (who was sounding off again last week) or his “highly engaged” supporters that fairness and balance can sit astride this ancestral fence. Hiding-to-nothing territory by standards impossibly set.
Furthermore, many of the cultural extras that can mean a lot are clearly on life support. For one thing, “language plays an important part in the history and cultural heritage of all the devolved nations, and indigenous minority language programmes are highly valued by their speakers and those who appreciate their cultural content. The BBC provides content in Welsh, Gaelic, Irish and Ulster-Scots on TV, radio and online.” But, for another thing, “while [the stations’] potential audience is small, it is also demographically very broad. The extent to which minority-language TV and radio services can be used by family groups who do not all speak these languages adds further complexity.” You’re not even broadcasting in the same language to a family sitting on the same sofa.
It’s a shrinking and increasingly age-related mini-market, in short. And, talking of shrinkage, let’s mention the fact that “older people are generally more interested in news about their nation [while] younger listeners are particularly likely to consume BBC and commercial music stations and newer digital music services. This has contributed to pressure on the stations’ reach and hours of listening, as well as their typical age profile”.
So “the stations’ challenge is how to continue to reach a broad audience without weakening their distinctive, speech-led offer”. Maybe, instead of insisting on separate talk and music channels, there might be ways of mixing the two. Radio 2 Plus 4. Think about it, chaps.
And meanwhile, remember that “all BBC TV and radio services are facing a challenge from the audience shift to online consumption. The BBC will need to offer more of its content online, including on mobile and social media, in order to continue to deliver its public purposes to a broad audience. However, it will also have to maintain the quality of its TV and radio offer as these media remain important to many adults.”
What? More online and social media? Didn’t the BBC and the trust just promise less of that, less trampling on newspaper and other commercial media patches last review time around?
But that was then and this is now. The GB bit of Team GB doesn’t seem so easy when victory against a heaving, squeezing government promises only shrunken survival rather than medals. Keeping nations together when a separation of media – look out for a tartan Six O’clock News – sets them further apart. And remember, the BBC couldn’t find the cash to keep future Olympics to itself. The trouble with keeping everyone happy is that you can’t. Unless, of course, Clare Balding is available to play supreme ref one more time.
