Who shall save a benighted BBC?

The philistines are taking aim, a dark cloud falls. We must rise to rescue our national broadcaster

The Queen Vic had reigned for three-score years, when there came into the land a wizard, Mar-Koni. And the wizard sent signals through the air, even over great oceans. And all were amazed. And the years passed, and the wizard showed that one signal could be received by great multitudes, if they had the equipment.

And in the twelfth year of the reign of George, the son of Edward, the son of Vic, there came companies that made reception equipment for the wizard’s signals. And their leaders said: “Great is the wizard, for now we can flog equipment to everyone so that, wherever they dwell, from the End of the Land even unto John O’Groats, they can receive the signals.”

And then they said: “What signals? We must hire a servant to build a company with great transmitters and a studio and someone to play dance music records or something, that the people will purchase our equipment. And the company’s signals shall be scattered across Britain, even as the sower broadcasts seed over the ploughed field. And therefore shall it be called the British Broadcasting Company.”

And they did advertise for a servant to lead the company, and to build the transmitters and studio and hire people to play the dance music records. And there came unto them a mighty man named John, five cubits of stature, an engineer from North Britain and a son of the manse and servant of God. And John said unto them, I will lead the company, and I will hire the best engineers in the land to build the transmitters and studio, even as you ask. But God hath not sent us these wonders just to play cheap dance music records.

And John had been wounded in the Great War against the Huns, and he was strong of spirit, voice and body, fierce of countenance and quite scary. So, although they felt in their hearts, “What’s the problem with cheap dance music records if the people like them?” (a question many still ask), they hearkened unto his words.

And John said, I will build a great temple to broadcast the signals. And it shall inform and educate the people, not just sell them your equipment, and play just a few dance music records if they be not blasphemous and delight not in fornication. And its message shall be one of peace. And above its great portal shall be written: “Nation shall speak peace unto nation.” And mayhap God caused the leaders of the companies to be befuddled but, as in a miracle, they hired John and let him build the temple even as he said, and it still stands after nearly an hundred years.

Enough. Reith is such an Old Testament figure that the King James Bible language seemed irresistible. And there really is something miraculous about his appointment. His “temple” is Britain’s greatest cultural institution and source of global soft power. And, despite huge consumption and technology changes, ever-growing competition and a 30 per cent cut in its real (inflation-adjusted) funding since 2010 in a market with rising real costs, we Brits, on average, still use it for over two hours a day – far more than any other product or service brand. And, globally, it now reaches nearly half a billion people a week beyond the UK.

Yet today, as never before, the BBC is constantly assailed by “philistines”. So, who are these “philistines” and why are they trying to destroy it; what arguments do they use; and will they finally succeed? The biblical Philistines probably came from the Aegean to the southern coast of Palestine, which is named after them, around 1200 BCE. But “philistine” in the modern sense (materialistic and lacking intellectual and artistic understanding) was first used by 17th century German students to describe “townies”.

Many, although not all, of the BBC’s enemies are, indeed, “philistines” – at least in their attacks on it – simply ignoring, or even denying, its central role in Britain’s national culture and creative industries. They include politicians, think tanks and newspapers, some individual authors, endless sites with names like Ban the BBC and TV Licence Resistance, and the “grassroots” (or “astroturf ”) #DefundTheBBC campaign, which recently ran a survey that purportedly found that 64 per cent of voters want a referendum on whether the BBC licence fee should be scrapped and that, if a referendum were held, 62 per cent would vote to scrap it. This was enthusiastically reported by the Mail on Sunday, naturally without any information on the survey wording used to achieve numbers so apparently hostile to the BBC.

Some of the “philistines”, like the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, have a clear commercial vested interest in diminishing the BBC: “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Others, like the Institute for Economic Affairs, are driven more by ideology: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Although the BBC does have critics on the left (especially for its reporting on the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, aka the Prophet Jezza) and the centre (mainly for its Brexit coverage such as Nigel Farage’s seemingly endless appearances on Question Time), large-scale, non-stop Beeb-bashing comes overwhelmingly from the right. This is doubtless partly for reasons of ideology, but there are several other possible explanations for the imbalance: commercial vested interests are mostly on the right; right-leaning think tanks tend to be better (and more opaquely) funded than those on the left; and most British newspapers – who also set much of the broadcast news agenda – lean right. Finally, the BBC’s right-wing critics often, mistakenly, seem to think almost everyone else agrees with them – the “silent majority” illusion.

The BBC is not left-wing, anti-Brexit and woke

The BBC’s enemies have long claimed that it is untrustworthy, left-wing and, now, anti-Brexit and “woke”. Quite a few Britons agree, especially if they themselves are right-leaning, socially conservative, older and pro-Brexit. But, in reality, they are a minority: almost as many (typically younger, left-leaning and socially liberal) think the opposite, while a roughly equal number in-between see it as broadly impartial. And asked which one source they turn to for news they trust, 51 per cent say the BBC – far more than for the second-ranked source, ITV (nine per cent). Fewer than four per cent choose any of the Beeb-bashing papers. Other claims are about money: the BBC’s supposed inefficiency, wastefulness, excessive size, scope and market impact (“crowding out” commercial media) and the idea that many people don’t use its services but are forced to pay the licence fee or go to prison. These are all pretty much complete nonsense. For instance, despite endless newspaper claims that the TV licence fee (for households that still have to pay it) represents poor value for money, 70 per cent of the public disagrees and – even more tellingly – two-thirds of the other 30 per cent changed their minds after just nine days with no BBC.

Many of the criticisms are simply incorrect. For instance, Lord (Ian) Botham’s claim that “in 2015, Tony Hall announced that, in return for a big increase in the licence fee, the BBC would pay for all pensioners aged over 75. Tony Hall then broke that promise” packs three factual errors into just 32 words. One can criticise Botham for speaking so forcefully without checking the facts, but the real blame lies with whoever (knowingly?) misled him into believing such a false account of what happened.

The BBC is far too popular for its enemies to destroy it overnight and their efforts over many years to persuade people not to trust it have proved remarkably ineffective: most Britons trust it far more than they trust those telling them not to do so, and only a small minority really object to its supposed “wokeness” – for example, that the Strictly Come Dancing 2021 final was a shoot-out between a deaf contestant and a same-sex couple. Netflix is much “wokier”. But by relentlessly salami-slicing its real funding, the government is slowly turning it into an irrelevant sideshow like PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) in America, caught between ever-rising real costs and endless funding cuts, now including another two-year freeze in the licence fee from this year. As the National Audit Office has confirmed, this will significantly reduce content budgets, with fewer original UK programmes, more repeats, and so on.

This squeeze seems likely to continue unless and until the British public finally realises what’s happening and stops it. So, not the End of Days yet – there’s still time to avoid “Auntiegeddon”. But not for much longer.