Is Lord Hall doing a good job at the BBC?

A little over a year since Lord Hall took charge of the BBC, how should we judge his performance? Raymond Snoddy gets out his red pen and examines the evidence.

In judging the performance of the BBC, time breaks down into two distinct eras – BLH and ALH.

Outside the joys of quantum physics Lord Hall cannot be judged for things that happened before his arrival – BLH.

He can, however, be judged on his reaction to the series of scandals, cock-ups and managerial incompetences that he inherited. There are now also enough of his own decisions to assemble an initial score card on how he is doing.

The reactions? Barely a pass mark. There were first the small fumblings of the Pollard report into the Newsnight debacle when Lord Hall was just that little bit too keen on drawing a line under the affair, leaving a few embarrassing details on who knew what, when, trailing and unresolved.

The reaction to the Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was more dramatic and ultimately more flawed as the recent report of the Employment Tribunal into the summary dismissal of former BBC technology director John Linwood made all too clear.

There was the small problem that one of the first emails Linwood received in office suggested that the project was “in serious trouble.”

But that was BLH.

What is no longer in doubt is that a decision was taken to get rid of Linwood at almost any cost and, by implication, place most, if not all of the blame, firmly on him. The Tribunal found that he was 15 per cent responsible for his own dismissal – which of course leads to the inevitable conclusion that he was 85 per cent innocent of his undoing.

It was a procedure that the Employment Tribunal found showed a “cavalier disregard for any of the norms of a fair disciplinary process.”

The Tribunal also tellingly observed that the culture and climate at the BBC “gave rise to avoidance strategies, no doubt including, on occasion, the steering of the spotlight of blame in other directions, on the part of those who felt themselves in danger of association with a sinking ship.”

How very familiar. How very traditional. How very BBC. After all, the only person who left the BBC prematurely as a result of the Pollard inquiry was Steve Mitchell, the deputy director of news. Some say his otherwise inexplicable forgetfulness resulted from a desire to protect more junior colleagues. His seniors and betters were comfortably redeployed.

Lord Hall did not invent buck-passing at the Corporation but he was in charge when the illegal sacking of John Linwood took place and, presumably, he was also present at the executive committee meeting on May 13th last year when the matter was discussed.

He was also, how shall we say it, unwilling or unable, to do anything about the avoidance of blame strategies.

There are also those who say that the decision to axe DMI totally with the loss of £98 million showed more dramatic sense of an operatic nature than wisdom. Could nothing have been retrieved from the wreckage? After all, the iPlayer, the BBC’s most obvious technological triumph, had initially been in trouble and in need of rescue.

The BBC will have to go from tape to digital eventually at an inevitable cost.

Question marks are growing over Hall’s decision to move BBC Three to an online existence. Of course costs have to be cut and the BBC Three audience is more online and mobile savvy than most.

However, BBC Three is the Corporation’s main vehicle that reaches out to the young audience and consigning it to the half-life of an online-only existence with a greatly reduced budget has the feeling of tactical thinking dressed up as long-term strategy.

The decision may well have to be revised by the BBC Trust which has the duty to look at the longer-term interests of the BBC and its audience.

The future of BBC Three is but a bauble compared with Compete or Compare – a strange little phrase of the sort much loved by the BBC. Wouldn’t Compete and Compare make a lot more sense? Whatever it is called the strategy amounts to the privatisation of BBC production.

Opening up virtually all BBC production – with the only stated exception being global news gathering – to competition has the political merit of disarming the corporation’s political opponents by giving them everything they were asking for without a fight and without any sign of recompense.

The BBC has surrendered before a single shot has been fired.

Obviously for the independent sector it’s a case of trebles all round with more millionaires and ultimately, more American acquisition of what used to be BBC productions. It is turning BBC Production from being an operation at the heart of the Corporation into a mere supplier with no guarantee of levels of production and therefore of stable employment.

Of course competition is a good thing and if the newly privatised BBC Production fails to come up with the best ideas they will be gone.

Except that public service broadcasting marches to a different drumbeat, something that is explicitly recognised by the protection for global news gathering. Commissioners might well be tempted to reach for more popular and cheaper content from the independent sector.

Naturally Lord Hall talks the talk and says the aim is “a world class BBC, not a low rent BBC.”

A mixed economy in production, with perhaps a DG’s override on important independent offerings over any formal quota, would be less dramatic but far more sensible.

As always the greatest damage can be done by those with the best intentions. By default the BBC could become little more than a commissioner broadcaster within the next five or 10 years.

For those who argue that’s just fine and dandy, the experience of ITV is instructional. The hard men from the free market who took over ITV ignored the siren calls to get rid of ITV studios and become a mere broadcaster.

The result? ITV is flourishing and building up an increasing portfolio of rights. Surely potential loss of rights in future is an issue that the Lord Hall must have considered before embarking on his grand gesture?

Overall, with the best will in the world, and giving full credit for his role in stabilising the BBC after the brief appearance of George Entwistle, it is difficult to see anything more than a B minus at the moment for the man once known as the head prefect of the BBC.

And that’s before the publication of the Savile report, although that at least is ALH – apart, of course, for how the findings are dealt with.