Big brains' views on the BBC review

Libby Purves in THE TIMES: I defy anybody to name any network you could cut without upsetting somebody, somewhere, with a keyboard. It’s never nice: jobs are lost at one end of the process, and pleasant leisure habits at the other. Obviously, if neither 6 Music nor the Asian Network had been invented in the first place, nobody would take to the streets to demand them, and the same goes for the more recherché corners of the vast BBC website.

It is because of its reckless expansion that the BBC now faces contumely.

The most interesting aspect of the review, however, is the dog that didn’t bark in the night. Or rather, the doggy chorus that yelps and puts on stupid programmes about fat teenagers and Jodie Kidd doing crystal healing. The review speaks of making quality programmes, but not about binning the dross: four TV networks remain untouched. Yet if, for example, BBC 3 and BBC 4 combined their best programmes, you could build one cracking channel. “Ah, but they serve quite different audiences!” cry the schedulers. Nobody ever asks why, in an age of remote-controls and timeshifting digiboxes, viewers can’t be trusted to build their own niches ?

Hamish McRae in THE INDEPENDENT: There is an inevitable temptation to pile on the pressure: to attack the director-general, the senior executives and the BBC Trust chairman and members. I happen to think that the corporation is lucky to have a good director-general (much better than some of the previous incumbents) but unlucky to have a weak chairman and Trust. It probably also has too many jobsworths at a quite senior level. Anyone who recalls the handbagging that PD James, guest-editing the Today programme, gave the director-general over the nonsensical job descriptions of senior staff will say aye to that. But this isn't at its core a problem of people; it is a problem of structure and organisation.

You cannot expect people to do well in their jobs until there are clear objectives. This is a vital issue of public policy so it should not be a party political matter. So the next government will have to think not just about the future of the licence fee but also the size and structure of the whole endeavour. Then, and it is really important, it has to lift this above politics and bring its opponents on side – well, more or less. There has to be leadership but there has to be consensus too.

Steve Hewlett in THE GUARDIAN: In a sense, what the BBC is now trying to do is to leapfrog from its "multichannel" phase into the on-demand future. It needs to refocus on its core propositions – some starved of resources in the drive to digital expansion – and use them to forge a key position in the emerging world of on-demand delivery of content on the internet. Ask them to compromise on that, and the BBC would rather die in a ditch.