Abstract
Decades of poor leadership and slashed budgets have ripped the heart out of the BBC and its loyal staff, says a former World Service journalist
I had been hoping that after decades of loyal if obscure service to the same perfidious employer it would be possible to sneak out my little warts-and-all memoir without too much competition. No such luck when the employer in question is the BBC and it is embroiled in a very public wrangle over whether or not it deserves another 10-year extension of its Royal Charter. As soon as my publisher uploaded Greg Dyke, My Part In His Downfall onto amazon.com we found it surrounded by rival titles about the BBC. None of them turned out to be poorly argued or badly written when it came to the many and various challenges facing public service broadcasting in our digital era, but neither did they confront the BBC's worst kept secret. Too many of the people who make the programmes we love no longer believe in the wider project.
The BBC is not, as Lord Hall – Tony Hall – would have us believe, a billion dollar business. It is a public service paid for by hypothecated taxation: the licence fee. But while BBC programme makers have always understood and respected the public service obligations characterised by its founding director-general, John Reith, the hierarchy of executives above them have long since lapsed into cynical pretence. After years of being hammered by management consultants (thank you, John Birt) and being forcibly conscripted into a maverick geezer's vanity project (thank you, Greg Dyke), a yawning credibility gap now separates the BBC's corporate leadership and their six-figure salaries (plus benefits) from the programme-making proletarians who can't remember when they last had a pay rise and who cycle into work each day with their lunch in a sandwich box. Type “BBC staff surveys” into Google and the evidence stacks up before you, year after year: bullying; harassment; mistrust; stress; insecurity; bewilderment. How could the staff not have lost faith? Their so-called leaders value the perquisites of power and patronage far more than the modest satisfactions of honest stewardship.
DGs' cost in number of TV licences
In 2004, shortly after Mark Thompson took over from the downfallen Greg Dyke, he sought, like all eager, incoming Director-Generals, to reshape the BBC in his own image with a campaign called “Building Public Value”. I was working as a news editor at the BBC World Service at the time and sent Mark an e-mail with a few facts and figures to help things along, a little bit of historical context.
I was not disappointed that my research was not accepted with an effusion of gratitude, or even an acknowledgement. By that stage we had all got the message. The leadership wasn't listening. No need. Our bosses knew exactly what to do to fit the BBC for purpose in the 21st century and they were determined to do it, regardless. And they were right. We of the lumpen mass carried on loyally producing some of the best radio and television programmes in the world despite the pay freezes, mass redundancies and wave after wave of budget cuts inflicted on us as Mark Thompson and his cronies blundered from one mishap to the next in their efforts to strategise a way forward. In the process, the BBC became a family at war with itself, toxically dysfunctional. The politicians couldn't help but take an interest when it became clear that, no matter how badly the BBC was being led, no matter how alienated the staff from their managers, its top tier of parasites was brazenly determined to milk the monopolistic old cow of every last drop. We know their names but we also know, as they know themselves, that they and their anointed successors will never be brought to account.
There is no shortage of vested interests gunning for the BBC as the debate continues over Charter renewal. Perhaps the critics are right. Maybe, after nearly a century of noble endeavour, it is time to face up to the fact that the BBC has served its historic purpose. It is certainly true today that, if Auntie didn't exist no one would dream of inventing her. My worry, on behalf of the thousands of talented and dedicated staff who represent the true value of the BBC to the tax-payer, is this: that in their righteous indignation over executive salaries, managerial incompetence and the Jimmy Savile affair the BBC's political masters will find it easier to scourge the whole organisation rather than punish the greedy, vain, self-serving sneaks and strumpets who have held it hostage for so long. If that happens, if Charter renewal ends with the partial dismemberment of the BBC into constituent parts that can be easily privatised, that really would be a shame.
