Smaller and weaker

Readers outside London might like to consider this Evening Standard leader from George Osborne, the Chancellor who stitched the BBC up with the Over-75 licences. If you don't have time for the whole thing, he wants Andrew Neil dropped, the website halved and a move to a smaller licence fee + subscription offer.

The BBC is feeling the heat. From a victorious Right and a defeated Left, it is under attack.

This is not the first time — relations with the Thatcher government were regularly strained, and the Blair government forced out the director-general and chairman. But in all these battles past, the BBC had allies.

Today it finds itself more friendless as it faces a sustained kulturkampf from a resurgent nationalism and extreme Leftism.

Its antiquated funding model means that the commissioning budget is a fraction of that available to the big internet companies, while the social media revolution means that a population which once had no option but to hear the BBC’s view of the world can turn to a thousand alternatives.

As a new Culture Secretary is appointed by an all-powerful Conservative Government, it is tempting for the BBC to become highly defensive and lash out.

This morning, election anchor Huw Edwards, clearly sanctioned by senior executives at Broadcasting House, takes aim at the “laughable cluelessness” of their critics  and has a swipe at “hacks” in other parts of the media who, he says, pass off “blatant propaganda” as news.

But it is precisely because the BBC is so important that it needs to take greater care of its future, and distinguish legitimate criticism from outlandish attack.  We are clear: Britain is much better off with the BBC than without it. 

Anyone looking at our country from abroad would envy the soft power and influence in the world our national broadcaster brings us.

We love to consume entertainment from across the Atlantic, but where would the distinct voice our drama and comedy be if we were to rely entirely on the commissioning editors of American tech and television giants?

The BBC news outlets can help to bind our society together in a common and accepted account of the decisions that affect us, rather than drive us apart, as many others do.

So it is welcome to hear, as reported by the Evening Standard,  a different, more emollient tone coming from the BBC’s high command. They know they have to engage, and change.

Here are some pointers for the future.

The flagship news programmes need to rethink their classic confrontational interview format pioneered by the likes of Sir Robin Day and Jeremy Paxman. Entertaining as they can be, there’s little to gain from a politician submitting themselves to that kind of treatment.

Mr Edwards rightly says the BBC is being assaulted by those who want to “undermine trust in institutions which have been sources of stability over many years” — but the broadcaster might ask what its contribution has been to building that trust? 

Look at the relentlessly negative headlines that followed Jeremy Corbyn’s and Jo Swinson’s interviews with Andrew Neil, brilliant as he is. It’s not surprising that Boris Johnson refused to appear.

What was in it for him? These days senior politicians don’t need to appear on the Today programme (as no senior Tory has done since the election). They have other ways to reach the voter.

Time to reinvent the offer to the politicians. 

There also has to be a serious conversation about the licence fee. It relies on criminal sanctions which are likely to disappear in this Parliament, not least because it is ridiculous that a huge proportion of all crimes that come before our magistrates courts involve failure to pay the fee.

Yes, it funds first-rate news gathering. But it also supports activities that are contributing to the precipitous decline of commercial news organisations in the UK — look at the BBC website, with its film reviews and recipes and features, and ask what makes it any different from a newspaper website except that the taxpayer funds it.

The BBC has the potential to move — over a long time — to a more sustainable funding model that mixes compulsion with subscription.

The instinctive reaction of the BBC will be to circle the wagons on all these suggestions. That would be a mistake.

There’s a new media territory out there, and a new political landscape too, and our national broadcaster has to find a way to occupy it.