Comedy consultation, no mandate

It looks like Whittingdale's White Paper, "Bending The BBC To My Will", is going to be snuck out on Thursday afternoon, with most MPs already heading home for a long weekend, sunning themselves ahead of the State Opening of Parliament on Wednesday week.

Patrick Foster in the Telegraph says Big John is going to re-write the BBC's mission statement. Not even his own public consultation called for that, despite it being the first question...

Why the BBC? Mission, purpose and values 
The great majority (95 per cent) did not express a view on this issue. Of those that did, 3 per cent felt that no change was required to the BBC’s public purposes and 2 per cent said some change was needed.

And remember, John ignored 92% of responses because he deemed them "not wholly representative of public opinion at large." The DCMS team didn't even bother to read 6,000 views gathered by the Radio Times.   

Leading from the second consultation question, it looks like John prefers the views of 'organisations' rather than voters. 

What the BBC does: Scale and scope 
The majority of responses indicated that BBC expansion was justified in the context of increased choice for audiences. A number of organisations highlighted specific areas of concern with regard to crowding out commercial competitors. 

The majority of responses indicated that the BBC’s content was of high quality, and distinctive from that of other broadcasters.


And John looks set to ignore majority views on governance

Governance and regulation
A large majority of responses indicated that the BBC should remain independent from one or more of government, Parliament and Ofcom

And yes, universality looks likely to be cold-shouldered by John as well

Universality
Fewer than 3 per cent felt that the BBC should not seek to be universal.