Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Position

Dear readers,

You know I like to be supportive, and I try. Particularly when it comes to the BBC World Service. But the "positioning paper" and "draft operating licence" published today by the BBC Trust, ahead of the move to licence-fee funding, are full of motherhood, apple pie and blah. They offer a tepid bath of reassurance that licence-fee funding fits with BBC public purposes, and that the World Service should "address the enduring global gap in the provision of trusted international news" - just what I was saying to my missus in the longeurs of The White Queen. Many more will be chanting it as they approach the Post Office with their easy payment forms.

Both papers focus on rationalising the status quo, rather than creating a compelling vision of the future - you might have thought Mark Thompson would have left some inspiring notes when he did the deal, but clearly not.  The core of the proposition is there must be a need - because what we are already doing gets an audience.

This "gap in the provision of trusted international news" needs defining. Whilst I admire the new viewing figures for BBC Arabic, viewers in the Middle East who speak Arabic can pick from around 500 free-to-air channels - are all the rest telling fibs ?  Who defines when the gap is plugged ?  In "French for Africa", can't we trust our Euro-partners who have it as a first language to deliver honest reporting ?  Etc, etc.

There are, thankfully, enough hints in the paper that the Trust would like to see all this as self-supporting in the long run, for me to lay off for the time being. See Clause 64c.

Yours

Bill

P.S. I don't underestimate the difficulties of this part of the transition, and commend this article which opens a window on some of the thinking.

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