Abstract
‘If public service broadcasting was a car industry, our ministers would be out championing it overseas, trying to win contracts, boasting of the British jobs that would bring. And if the BBC were a weapons system, half the cabinet would be on a plane to Saudi Arabia to tell them how brilliant it was. And yet, it's quite the reverse. They talk of cutting down to size, of hiving off, of limiting the scope, with all the manic glee of a doctor urging his patient to consider the benefits of assisted suicide.’
– Armando Iannucci, giving the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh television festival
‘At its best, the BBC is the finest broadcaster in the world. Its reputation for quality and creativity as well as accuracy and objectivity is rightly admired across the world. The BBC plays a crucial role in projecting Britain's image across the globe. And it provides programmes which are enjoyed by millions every day. But the reason that it is governed by a Charter which requires renewal each 10 years is to provide an opportunity to ask questions about the way it is governed, the way it is paid for and what it does.’
– John Whittingdale, Culture Secretary, speaking at the Conservative party conference
‘The result [of BBC layers of management] is a regime characterised at its worst by self-serving, wasteful and mind-numbingly unnecessary supervision, which undermines the creative independence and confidence of the programme-makers who actually make the shows we love. The bureaucratic over-management of the creative process has reached Orwellian proportions and there is currently a destructive climate of frustration and fear in television production.’
– Tom Archer, former controller of BBC factual production, in a letter to the Guardian
