The hoo-ha over the BBC turning to Bain consultants for ideas is about the company's track record in South Africa.
My cause for creating a hoo-ha would be closer to home. It was in the mid-eighties the Rupert Murdoch set light to the 'scrap the licence fee' touch-paper. He'd been provoked by a licence fee bid by the BBC in 1984 for an increase from £45 pa to £65 pa (41%), with ambitions for satellite transmission.
Say the BBC started thinking about alternatives to the licence fee about the time of the Peacock Committee in 1986. As an organisation in love with 'policy' and 'strategy' it has invested millions in that 'thinking' over the past 36 years. It has hired former No 10 advisers and former Cabinet ministers. In recent years, it has reshaped its top two boards with 'commercial' expertise at executive and non-executive level. It has a Goldman Sachs alumni at the very top. An adviser to Boris Johnson, a confidante of Rishi Sunak.
It shouldn't need Bain to imagine a range of new financial futures. It doesn't - this will be a clear case of consultants borrowing your watch to tell you the time. But at what price ?
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