Future of the BBC

THE BBC’s chairman Lord Patten has had an eventful week. On Monday, he confirmed The Economist’s report of two weeks ago (“Auntie’s Big Year”) that he was already looking for a new Director General to succeed Mark Thompson, the present incumbent. Today at a conference, he delivered a wide-ranging speech on the corporation’s future, laying out several demands about its scope and substance.

In terms of impact, Lord Patten who has only been in the job for less than a year, is steaming ahead. The governing Trust, which he chairs, has just demanded that the executive unravel plans for drastic cuts in local radio. Such ruthlessness has come as something of a shock in the corporation. “Westminster’s strong-arming methods applied to White City” (The BBC’s headquarters,) complains one senior executive.

Launching the starting gun before Mr Thompson has announced a desire to go is regarded in some quarters as highly discourteous to the serving DG.  He has, after all, steered the organisation through difficult negotiations to preserve its funding levels and had been a calming influence on an accident-prone organisation. Mr Thompson is, however highly paid and Lord Patten has made clear his successor will be poorer.   

Today at the Oxford Media Convention, the Chairman issues interesting challenge to the BBC to define more clearly its scope. Another Lord stalks these debates: namely Lord Reith, who said that it was “better to overestimate the mentality of the public than to under-estimate it”. Lord Patten bracingly points out that this is not being elitist: it is being meritocratic.

In broadcasting terms, this amounts to a call for a new seriousness and a protest again the creeping tendency of the BBC to judge itself purely on the size of its audiences as a measure of success. Even according to its own research, the corporation scores more weakly with viewers as an innovator and bringer of new ideas than on other criteria. Formats and less-than-distinctive daytime programming have blurred the BBC’s unique public service brand.

It is thus quite right to call for “boldness and experimentation”. That demand will be heard by the array of candidates to succeed Mr Thompson. Less clear is which of the leading candidates it favours. George Entwistle, the present director of BBC Vision, is relatively new to the job, intellectually sharp and more likely to shake up some existing orthodoxies than other candidates. But charter renewal – due in 2017 – is always a difficult political fight. That will benefit Caroline Thompson, a senior management figure, with a surer grasp of the public diplomacy involved and long service on the BBC executive. Helen Boaden, a highly competent director of News, is favoured by many insiders, but may rank as a candidate who favours the status quo too firmly.

The call for more innovation might also embolden Jay Hunt, who escaped recently to head Channel 4. Whoever gets this job also has one irritant to deal with: a long-running accusation that the corporation has failed to take women seriously enough in key roles, both on and off-screen (your blogger declares an interest, as an occasional female broadcaster on the BBC should do.)

A dearth of women is an easier argument to make about on-air authority than the BBC apparat, where many women have held key roles, as the above list of contenders ably demonstrates. However, Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, struck a chord when he complained that many political and current affairs programmes do feel overwhelmingly male and the corporation has not, in truth, done very much about that, despite much hand-wringing. Lord Patten has also promised to take an interest. Strange days indeed when two Tory men are telling off the “liberal” BBC on grounds of gender representation. Nowadays, Auntie’s high ground, like much else about her, is up for grabs.