Dimbleby’s views fit a political agenda all too well
After the Question Time presenter criticised the BBC, Raymond Snoddy says it is good that he can broadcast his opinions so freely – but there is one small problem: the sort of ideas being promulgated are not actually very sound and fit all too precisely with an emerging Conservative agenda.
There is no doubt that David Dimbleby has had a distinguished 50-year career as a broadcaster at the BBC.
It is equally certain that last year’s coverage of the River Pageant to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee would not have been such a fiasco if Dimbleby had been in charge.
The trouble with Dimbleby is that he has never quite been content to be a mere BBC broadcaster. He has also wanted to run the place.
As long ago as 1987 the then chairman of the BBC, Marmaduke Hussey, wanted to quietly ease Dimbleby into the director-general’s chair so he could shake the Corporation up.
The plan leaked to the Financial Times which put the story on the front page. Opposition forces were able to muster and Michael Checkland got the job instead.
In 2004 Dimbleby was at it again, this time trying for the chairmanship of the BBC before losing out to Michael Grade.
The very distinguished broadcaster hasn’t lost the taste for trying to meddle with the future of the BBC by questioning this week whether the Corporation, which ultimately pays him, was too big and too powerful.
Some licence fee money could be used to fund other commercial broadcasters so that a greater diversity of voices should be heard, Dimbleby suggested.
BBC Four could merge with BBC 2 which in turn could cut out some of those gardening and cookery programmes. The BBC could also reduce its online presence to prevent it crushing local newspapers.
The Question Time presenter is, of course, entitled to his opinion and it is one of the great joys of the BBC that senior presenters can use BBC airwaves – in this case 5 Live – to bite the hand that feeds them.
A few facts might help. The BBC is already becoming smaller and has been forced to make £600 million in savings with the loss of more than 2,000 jobs.”
It is also true that there should absolutely be the widest possible debate about the size, structure, role and performance of the BBC in the run up to Royal Charter negotiations.
There is one small problem. The sort of ideas being promulgated by David Dimbleby – which are not actually very sound the closer you look at them – fit precisely with an emerging Conservative agenda.
In what was widely seen as a warm up threat in advance of the general election Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps suggested a few weeks ago that the BBC could face a cut in its licence fee or have to compete with other broadcasters for a share of the money if it did not rebuild public trust.
It is believed that Chancellor George Osborne wanted to look at a much smaller BBC last time but instead had to do a hurried deal with the BBC and the Lib Dems. The overwhelming need was to help reduce public finances by making the BBC pay for such things as the World Service and the Welsh Fourth Channel.
Last week at the Society of Editors conference, Home Secretary Theresa May made an ill-judged attack on the BBC for undermining local newspapers by dominating “locally-significant news.”
She must have forgotten that after a vigorous campaign by the Newspaper Society three years ago the BBC Trust put severe limits on how far the BBC could go in launching new local websites.
As Paul Linford, editor of holdthefrontpage concluded, the consensus among regional editors at the conference was that most local BBC websites were so poor and so full of old news lifted from their own titles that they scarcely represented such a threat.
The real irritant for the editors was the allegation that the BBC lifted the stories without attribution.
The way for Dimbleby and his ideas was paved earlier this month by former BBC lifer Roger Mosey – now snuggly tucked-up as master of Selwyn College Cambridge.
Mosey, a former editorial director and head of news at the BBC, suggested in a column in The Times [paywall] that the scale of BBC News and its dominance in the market made BBC executives uncomfortable. Two good TV channels might be better than four with resources spread too thinly which would mean the closure of BBC 3 and BBC Four. Oh and lets have some “top-slicing” – licence fee money handed over to other broadcasters.
Mosey is right that, certainly in the past, the judgement of BBC editors was influenced by like-minded peers to downplay the views of those against immigration or EU withdrawal.
Strange to criticise the BBC for the size of its market share in news when, despite everything, the Corporation still enjoys a remarkable degree of trust.”
Some will, however, be surprised that Mosey was unable to do more to counteract such problems at the time and equally surprised that he chose to air his views in The Times now.
The paper has been running a “much smaller BBC” campaign for decades – views that naturally coincide with those of Rupert Murdoch.
Roger Mosey, like David Dimbleby, is entitled to his views but former colleagues feel betrayed by the speed at which he put the boot in. Except that they were not using the word betrayed. The word begins with a “t”.
A few facts might help. The BBC is already becoming smaller and has been forced to make £600 million in savings with the loss of more than 2,000 job.
Similarly, it is getting smaller in relative terms too with the rise of BSkyB, the arrival of BT in the television market and the impact of new players such as Netflix.
BBC Four is the best thing the Corporation does. It would be insane to chop it or merge with BBC 2. People like cookery and gardening programmes and unless you drop the idea of a universal fee it is totally daft to suggest the BBC should not make such programmes. BBC Three is a necessary link with a younger audience.
Strange to criticise the BBC for the size of its market share in news when, despite everything, the Corporation still enjoys a remarkable degree of trust. So you go for a deliberate policy of forcing people to go away, do you?
“Top-slicing”, which was thoroughly debated several years ago in the context of Channel 4, may seem like a good idea but isn’t.
Who gets the money to make what programmes and who decides and distributes the money? Do you weaken the BBC to add to the profits of ITV or Richard Desmond?
Of course you can decree as an act of policy any particular size for the BBC but the evidence suggests that the public, who tend to go unrepresented in this debate, more or less like what they currently get from the BBC.
Try to close down any service, even relatively obscure music radio stations, and all hell breaks loose.
As he tries to grapple with a myriad of scandals, most the result of managerial ineptitude, Tony Hall must really welcome the help and support of his good friends David Dimbleby and Roger Mosey like a hole in the head.