Brittin’s first summer in charge of the BBC
Opinion
Following Matt Brittin’s appearance before the industry at last month’s Edinburgh International Television Festival, Ray Snoddy assesses how it’s all going for the BBC director-general.
If you look hard enough, the BBC’s newish director-general Matt Brittin can find a few positives from the summer. But then again, not that many.
The BBC had a great victory over ITV with its coverage of the FIFA World Cup final, racking up a combined score peaking at 15.8m, compared with around 3.8m for ITV services.
This is not unusual, however. The UK audiences usually turn to the BBC for great national and sporting events.
The controversial attempt to use the FIFA World Cup to sell more licence fees apparently, at least according to the BBC, “performed very strongly.”
President Donald Trump’s $10bn lawsuit against the BBC is going badly, with the president already withdrawing claims that an editing error in a Panorama documentary had somehow damaged his business interests.
Remaining claims that his reputation was damaged rest on even shakier ground.
For petrol heads, there is also good news that Top Gear is returning to BBC schedules at some unspecified date after an interval of more than four years.
But that really is about it.
Brittin’s in-tray
A range of serious issues have been crowding in on Brittin ever since taking over at the BBC in May.
He revealed some of them in his first public appearance before the industry at last month’s Edinburgh International Television Festival.
Brittin admitted rather sweetly that he knew cuts had been announced and savings had been announced but that he “hadn’t really understood the severity”.
A bit of a briefing failure there by someone.
Brittin now knows that 2,000 jobs are likely to go as part of a process designed to save £160m across news, nations and content divisions – out of a total savings package of £500m – by the 2028-29 financial year.
Reform the Industry
The new director-general sent mixed messages about the Corporation he now leads.
The organisation was “inward-looking”, and that made it “risk-averse,” yet despite that he managed to be impressed by “the creativity and talent” at the BBC. Up to a point.
A couple of days before his Edinburgh debut, Brittin could not have missed an open letter from 600 broadcasting industry veterans accusing BBC bosses of failing to spot top new shows. At the same time, they lacked knowledge of their audiences and a feel for the real world.
The campaign group Reform the Industry claimed that the vast majority of BBC programme commissioners were not “best in class, nor equipped with the cutting-edge expertise required to meet evolving audience needs.”
Some in the group may have had the odd conflict of interest and could be smarting from rejection notes, but at the very least they should give Brittin food for thought as he tries to do something about his inward-looking, risk-averse organisation.
The problems with news could be more pressing than allegations about out-of-touch entertainment commissioners.
This time the stinging criticism came primarily not from 600 broadcasting veterans – but from just one- although he is an individual who really knows what he is talking about.
Richard Sambrook, former director of BBC News, attacked BBC coverage of Reform’s proposed welfare plans which led the headlines on News at Ten, BBC radio networks and the BBC website.
Sambrook described the BBC coverage as bizarre and asked whether policy proposals from the Lib Dems or the Greens would get such attention, possibly years away from a general election.
“BBC coverage of Reform’s welfare plans is frankly bizarre. Headline Ten, leading on some radio networks,” Sambrook pointed out.
“Reform is not even the official opposition and the plans have less credibility than Count Binface,” the former BBC news director added.
The BBC has been criticised repeatedly for giving what many see as inordinate, uncritical prominence to Reform leader Nigel Farage and his party.
Green leader Zach Polanski, speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe, criticised the level of coverage the BBC gave to Reform compared with his party.
At least Sambrook’s criticism seems to have hit the target on this occasion. A few days later, when Reform came out with equally impractical housing policies, the Today programme on Radio 4 took a much more measured approach.
The “policy” was last in the news running order and was introduced by the magic words “if Reform were in government”, which of course they aren’t and are unlikely ever to be, as they continue to sink in the polls.
The policies, including banning foreign nationals without permanent settled status from social housing, were then severely criticised by both LibDem and Green spokesmen.
A sudden improvement – but scandalous that it took an intervention from Sambrook to show the current BBC how to do it.
The other great flaw in the often excellent BBC flow of journalism remains coverage of the UK’s relations with the EU.
BBC reporting of Iceland’s narrow decision not to become a member of the EU echoed a typical British-style IN-OUT referendum.
Alas, there was no time to mention that Iceland is already a member of the single market and enjoys freedom of movement under the Schengen area – privileges that could easily have been available to the UK without formal EU membership.
Present and future financing
The biggest issue facing Matt Brittin is the BBC’s present and future financing.
The present is serious enough. The BBC revealed in its annual report, published in July, that the number of households paying the BBC licence fee fell by 500,000 last year to 23.2m, the sharpest fall since 2020-21, when 740,000 stopped paying the fee.
Now only 80% actually pay the licence fee.
Speaking at the time, the BBC director-general said this was “a moment of real jeopardy not just for the BBC, but for public service broadcasting and the UK as a whole.”
Brittin added that “we urgently need a solution that will provide sustainable, sufficient and universal funding” so that there will continue to be a BBC “for each of us.”
Self-evidently so, but there is little evidence that the Government has any clear solution in mind, as the culture secretary suggests that maybe you could add a charge to streaming subscriptions.
Increasingly, the only workable solution would involve a licence fee charged to every household, whether they use BBC services or not.
It is unclear whether the Government, despite all its assurances that it wants to protect the future of the BBC, will have the courage to bite that particular bullet.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.