Strictly Come Dancing is not the BBC’s core broadcasting
Rod Liddle — a former editor of the Today programme — says that the Corporation must stop pretending to be democratic if it is to keep the licence fee. Unashamed elitism is the only chance that the Beeb has in the new media world
One of the first things to go to hell when the Soviet Union collapsed was elitist early evening television. Within a remarkably short period of time the opera and the ballet and the documentaries moved down the schedules to be replaced by the sort of free and democratic programming with which we in the West are familiar: jabbering cretins, vapid celeb monkeys talking crap, mindless lumpenprole soaps, Yankee import dross, bite-sized chunks of ‘newz u can uze’ and footie. Ah, good, welcome to capitalism, you Russkies. It was as if an entire nation of 220 million people had seen its collective IQ behave, overnight, much as we have witnessed this last week or so from that other pillar of Western supremacy, the stock market. Down ten points and still dropping. Down still further, I would guess — all the way to Celebrity Rape Island, I’m an Imbecile Give Me a Job and the deathly prole-fest of X Factor, with its perpetually shrieking, ham-faced wannabes strutting their hopeless stuff in front of smug idiots. Where, those older Russians will be wondering and shaking their heads, are the pig iron forecasts and the Kirov and the lies? Gone, gone forever. (Well, OK, they’ve got the lies back now.)
These are the two formerly competing political systems, then; under one administration you got a small home and a job, fairly intelligent — if, uh, somewhat partisan — television programmes provided for you by the state, and electrodes attached to the testicles if you ever kicked up too much of a fuss. Under the other, no job, no home, the bilious hag Sharon Osbourne on TV but the freedom to believe that you are capable of anything, that all manner of happiness might be yours. Like you, I prefer the latter, just about. But it’s always been a pretty close call for me.
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Bruce, UK
October 9th, 2008 9:39amIn short then:
Attenborough and Blackadder and a news organisation that does news, you know, facts, without bias and not a regurgitation of partisan guff. A bit of high culture and "major" national events, sporting and cultural.
Sounds fair enough but I still detest the coercion in collecting the TV Poll Tax.
PS I will declare an interest that watching two dozen or so badly behaved millionaires running around a field spitting holds no interest for me.
cuffleyburgers
October 9th, 2008 11:10amIn theory, perfect.
But the news programmes are unwatchable, dumbed down and lefty liberal biased...
Truly the only solution is a subscription channel, making quality programming and toping up the numbers by selling it - quality drama of the sort I was brought up on will always have a market in other European countries, the former commonwealth.
You would probably find that if there were no BBC freezing out private investment, a privately funded "quality" player would soon step in.
Marc O'Polo
October 9th, 2008 2:27pmVery good argument. I fail to see why the BBC produces so much ratings-driven tosh. It shouldn't produce any at all, of course. If they're going to squeeze money out of me - I sure as hell don't want it wasted on Celebrity Come X Factor Dancing Island or whatever these cretinous tv programmes are called.
Alphonse Clench
October 9th, 2008 7:39pmThree letters: HBO.
Daniel
October 9th, 2008 7:57pmGood idea, better still though, fund it out of tax (slightly less visible/painfull), make it unashamedly elitist, and instruct it to promote the interests of the UK.
robert
October 9th, 2008 7:58pmThe BBC has alienated a vast core of an audience that would otherwise agree warmly with RL's analysis by its blatant Guardianista viewpoint on every single issue concerning us today
David Short
October 10th, 2008 10:23amThe licence fee will ALWAYS be 'iniquitous'.
It is a tax on owning any device capable of receiving broadcasts, not just the BBC.
It is iniquitous to poor people, and always has been.
All the money goes to the BBC, even though the licence fee is to pay for receiving any broadcast programmes.
I normally agree with Liddle, but here I disagree totally.
The US has never had a licence fee, but produces the best-written, most intelligent TV programmes in the world (it was always a myth that British TV was the best).
john Walter
October 10th, 2008 11:30amLike Rod I used to work in current affairs, not a million miles from his dinky little office.It was once said of the BBC that it's like musical chairs, except at the BBC they add one. So it was yonks ago with the invention of the 'World at One' as the answer to the stodgy old news. Then came whole new management levels,and now swathes of new outlets. Every time the BBC thinks it's in trouble or needs a revamp, it simply tacks on something new it made earlier out of a couple of toilet rolls and some newspaper. I hate to speak ill of the living dead but much of the latter weedlike proliferation is down to John Birt. All the people now currently making a balls of running the Beeb are Birt's babes now in the home stretch to gargantuan pension pots. Thompson was an insane editor of the regional London news programme. Word was, a)nobody ever saw him: b)he was always at a meeting: c)neither a nor b mattered as nobody understood a word he said without a management speak dictionary to hand, so the show went helterskelter on its chaotic way. Will they understand him when he takes his seat in the Lords? I pray he refuses the honour.
TDK
October 10th, 2008 2:44pmLet's see. An ex-news person at the BBC thinks the news is what the BBC does does best.
I need to think about that when I'm back in my hotel tonight with a choice of CNN, Sky News, Euronews, CNBC, Bloombergs and of course the BBC 24 hour news channel. Clearly the market fails to give us any news.
Oh and the BBC is so so neutral. When I get sick of listening to a left wing slant on CNN I can switch to the lefty BBC.
What the BBC used to do well was documentaries. But some time ago program makers discovered the idea of narrative. Now we sacrifice content to tell a story.
In truth your conception of the BBC is little different than that of PBS. Perhaps you should go the whole hog and fund it the same way too.
Fred Kite
October 10th, 2008 5:23pmThis doesn't take into account that the BBC is largely a vehicle for middle class female employment.
And the girls really aren't that interested in elite broadcasting. They want celebs and shopping.
Martin
October 10th, 2008 7:08pmUtter rubbish. The BBC is crap. If you want science or engineering prgrammes you have to go to the digital channels like Discovery or National Geographic. There's been a couple of excellent series on the Moon missions recently. Brilliant prgrammes.
From the BBC we get fat celebs dancing in high heels and for some odd reason a programme about over sized cats sniffing each others bottoms.
Scrap the TV tax and let the BBC earn its corn for a change
JohnAnt
October 10th, 2008 8:41pmWhy have a telly at all? it's as outdated as a fax machine. 24 hour news, comment, classical music, comedy: all much more readily available and higher in standard on radio and the internet. I'm quite happy to let those who are unaccountably addicted to tv pay for my radio listening.
No telly = pay no license fee. It also means no annoyance at the constant manipulation of the image by Justin and Cressida.
R3 and R4 with pictures would be a subscription download. Farming Today and 'Wind Power for Blind Book Fans' or whatever the current 'public service' range of all the 'factoid aid' progs on R4 R4, actually serve no real public apart from small minorities.
squin dubh 416
October 14th, 2008 11:58amA FIRST RATE ARTICLE
However I suggest Tales from Arabian nights shouldbe required reading if new entrants
wish to discover BURNS O and stellas new novel
slainte
KENMORE
Iain Shepherd
October 15th, 2008 5:29pmRod Liddle makes some good points. I don't really care what happened to the crap programmes but my European colleague reckon that the crap BBC programmes (Strictly Come Dancing etc) are much better than their equivalents in other countries. Nobody mentioned the web-site. Nearly all my colleagues – Greeks, Germans, Poles French (even) – use it as their main news source. Whatever is done don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. BBC still makes the best programmes in many fields.