Profit and loss | 19 July 2018

There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed in its latest Annual Report. Who gets too much? Why are women presenters still paid less than their male counterparts? What can be done to create more equality at the BBC? But all this controversy about money and gender is a red herring, diverting attention away from what we should be far more concerned about.

Quietly, without fanfare, the BBC has been changing the way it makes and delivers its programmes. As the report also reveals, BBC Worldwide, set up in the 1990s as the ‘commercial’ wing of the BBC, with the aim of building the BBC’s ‘brands, audiences, commercial returns and reputation across the world’, but always remaining distinctly separate from production, has been merged with BBC Studios. This corporate sub-organisation was set up last year to bring all production, whether television or radio, under one unifying umbrella, Desert Island Discs treated the same as Blue Planet, Dead Ringers as Strictly.

It was then an easy step to integrate, very soon afterwards, Studios with Worldwide, bringing together, as the report states, ‘programme production, sales and distribution in a single commercial organisation’. In practice, the distinction between publicly funded and commercial production at the BBC is no longer so clearly defined. That long-held principle, established by licence-fee funding, of freedom from commercial considerations when deciding what programmes to make, has been jettisoned. The impetus behind production will now always be cost and audience figures; originality and social programming will be under constant challenge.

Whoever comes up with the cheaper bid will win the commission. Even long-running favourites will be challenged next time the series comes up for recommissioning to produce a bid that’s more ‘distinctive’ and ‘risk-taking’ than its ‘commercial’ rivals, and above all less expensive.