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Some time in my childhood, the BBC took hold of me and never quite let me go. I still can't visit, say, the Yorkshire Dales without remembering cosy Sunday-night vet shows. I can't cross the Solent without hearing the Howard's Way theme and remembering Ken Masters's promise to "drag this boatyard into the 1980s!"
Today, as frightened, angry BBC staff hear the Corporation's plans for modernising its own boatyard - and learn how many of them will be dropped over the side - it's a good time to ask whether the BBC will be as important for future children as it was for me. Are today's cuts a necessary evil on the road to a fitter, more sustainable Beeb? Or will they prove a milestone in the organisation's decline?
Certainly, television in particular now seems less consequential than it was. Gone are the shows which united the nation in front of the screen. In news, the aggregate audience for BBC1's three main bulletins is half what it was 20 years ago.
We are told endlessly that all this is due to competition from new cable and satellite channels, the rise of the web and the rest. But actually, that's only part of the reason. In the TV staples - original British drama, soaps and comedy - cable and satellite offer no competition. They don't make any dramas, soaps or comedies.
In news, the growth of 24-hour channels has indeed taken some viewers away - but across the whole day, the reach of Sky and News 24 put together is only around three million, not nearly enough to explain the decline in BBC1's news audience.
I think another reason why the BBC's programmes have become less popular and less consequential than they were is that they are, on average, less good than they were. I know this has been a staple complaint of newspaper columnists through the ages; and I know that there is still plenty of wonderful stuff on the BBC.
But Jeremy Paxman recently complained that his programme, Newsnight, one of the shimmering orbs of the public-service Beeb, was preceded by a show on celebrity dog-walking. Over the last 20 years, Newsnight (unlike the dumbed-down Six O'Clock News) has held its audience. But even where you still have TV jewels, it is profoundly devaluing to surround them with mediocrity.
Why are there so few arts or books programmes on BBC1 or 2? Why are so many dramas so formulaic? Why have the BBC's successful shows, such as EastEnders, been overstretched, doubled from two to four episodes a week?
Paxman thought that British TV had lost its sense of purpose. I agree. The beginning, middle and end of the BBC's purpose - its only hope of long-term survival - should be to make high quality programmes. Programmes popular and unpopular, programmes of creative daring, public service andsometimes minority interest that no commercial broadcaster could risk.
This is, of course, already the BBC's stated aim. But it's not achieving it often enough. And today's announcement should be judged solely on whether it will help the BBC to achieve it more.
The omens look bad. There is certainly scope for job cuts at the BBC. One single, not very special presenter, Jonathan Ross, is paid £6 million a year, enough to fund the annual salaries of a third of those being made redundant in BBC News.
When I worked at the Corporation, I would wander around the upper reaches of TV Centre, marvelling at the lunatic job titles on the doors and the sheer quantity of non-programme-making staff. The editor of my old show, Today, answered to about five different managers.
Unfortunately, however, it doesn't look as if it's those jobs that are being lost. The redundancies are coming from the other part of the operation, the part with the hollow-eyed 25-year-olds on 25 grand, the constantly ringing telephones, the hot-desking slums which never get properly cleaned. The part that actually makes the programmes.
When I worked on Today, we had 55 staff to make 17 hours of speech radio a week. Most people did 12- or 13-hour days, and sometimes we nearly fell off air because there weren't enough of us. Today was a flagship programme; God only knows what the rest were like.
And yet the programmes are the areas being asked to take further cuts. How can the BBC say that it wants more distinctiveness and quality and then sack the people providing the likes of Arena, Timewatch and the news? Inevitably, it will make it even harder to do thoughtful and challenging programmes because thinking and challenging takes time, and people, and space.
In some programme areas, there may indeed be waste. But some waste is actually essential to true creativity because people need the freedom to try things that are not guaranteed to succeed.
One further barrier to quality programming is TV's preoccupation with form at the expense of content. At the micro level, this is manifested in the endless, ludicrous "lives" cluttering up the news, taking costly satellite trucks, technicians, and correspondents' time to stand outside, say, a deserted Foreign Office at 10pm and add nothing to what has already been said in the main report. Spend the money on journalism instead.
At the macro level, and as today's announcement of the TV Centre sell-off shows, the BBC continues to be obsessed with buildings and management structures. But it doesn't matter where you make a programme or how you commission it. It only matters what that programme says.
This is why, in cutting the talent while retaining the formidable bureaucracy, Director-General Mark Thompson is putting at risk the soul of the BBC. Clearly, £2 billion over six years is quite a lot of money to save. But if the axe does also need to fall on programmes, cull the second-rate ones and let the flagships be protected, even enhanced.
One of the best things about the BBC is the passionate commitment of its ordinary staff to quality. So I am glad that they seem highly likely to strike to protect it. Because it is quality, and nothing else, which can save the BBC.
Reader views (2)
Andrew Gilligan is correct in saying that, 'it is quality, and nothing else, which can save the BBC.' The BBC like any organisation will make cost cuts.
But it is wrong for them to sacrifice quality over quantity. I do think that the BBC does duplicate - by sending multiple news teams to the same news story.
They will have a regional TV and Radio news team, a national TV and Radio news team - that is 4 news teams for one story. Resources should be shared more, so only one BBC News Team covers the story for all of the BBC.
I think that this is what the BBC DG Mark Thompson is talking about. But I do think, as most people in the world think - the BBC is the organisation we all look to in a crisis.
So keep the quality and do not spread it out on channels most people do not watch. Mark Thompson should consider the future's of BBC3 and BBC4 - these programmes can be accommodated somewhere else - late night BBC2 and late night BBC1.
It would be good too keep these channels - but if sacrificing quality jobs in order to keep BBC3 and BBC4 - then I do think that Mark Thompsom is making the wrong decision. If cuts need to be made - make them in BBC3 and BBC4.
Sometimes it is better to have quality rather than quantity.
- Peter Callaghan, Redhill, Surrey, England., 19/10/2007 12:19
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This is an excellent report by Andrew Gilligan. I agree with so much of the content and would like to ask Mr. Gilligan to take things one step further and suggest that a Poll takes place of BBC people who must be preserved at all cost. Of course this sounds like a silly idea but actually it would illustrate to those in charge what type of programmes we want and expect from the BBC longterm and this is surely an important factor. It's a relatively easy task for the humble viewer to notice where cuts might be made and it's essential now for the BBC that its loyal viewers aren't lost as there really isn't a great deal to watch on ITV!
- Dawn Bonham, Northampton, UK, 18/10/2007 16:08
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