After having had its licence fee increase rebuffed, the BBC is planning to cut 12% of its workforce. Most of the cuts will happen in the factual division, which produces programming such as Planet Earth and stands to lose up to 50% of its budget. The BBC's trashy-populist-entertainment operations, however, look set to emerge unscathed.

One could question the rationale behind this peculiar set of priorities; after all, its Reithian ethos of worthy factual programming is a big part of the high esteem in which the BBC is held across the world. Indeed, one could ask why, for example, EastEnders is any more of a public service, and thus any more worthy of funding from a mandatory tax on television receivers, than its commercial rival Coronation Street, or whether or not something like Top Gear could be provided by the free market with no loss of values. It could be argued that the populist fare fulfils an important function: that of buying social approval for the BBC's license fee. Were the BBC to cut back on it and concentrate on "quality" programming, the majority of license-fee payers might start to question whether they should be obliged to pay over £100 per year for the privilege of skipping the BBC and going straight to Sky One. From then on, it would take a campaign on the front page of The Sun (whose proprietor, it must be remembered, would dearly love to see the BBC reduced to something of the size and stature of the American PBS or Australian ABC; underresourced, timid and marginal) to put the dismemberment of the BBC on the legislative agenda in time for the next licence fee review.

Which is a rather sad state of affairs. Surely the purpose of that unique institution, the license fee, should be to fund quality, enlightening programming in niches which the market, left to its own devices, wouldn't fill, rather than to provide popular mass entertainment (a task which the market has always stepped up to catering to)?

Posted by: threeze | | Wed Oct 10 01:34:36 2007

Surely the more populist programmes bring in a lot of revenue from being re-sold overseas? Why do they need to be funded 100% from the licence fee, which would be better off being used to produce "quality" TV.

Posted by: gusset | http://blog.gusset.co.uk | Wed Oct 10 10:38:34 2007

I always thought it was the factual programming that brought in the most overseas revenue? The BBC Worldwide material. Surely that is the stuff that is exported most, rather than the populist stuff that anyone could make? Most of the sells of that I assumed was in terms of farmat rather than content? Maybe I was wrong.

Sad day indeed.

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