The Paradox of Public Broadcasting

Who exactly is public broadcasting for, and to what audience is it supposed to cater? If a public broadcaster's programming is targeted at the more educated classes, how can its support from taxation of the entire public be justified? If, on the other hand, its goal is to chase ratings and appeal to as broad a swathe of the public as possible, what is it doing that the private TV networks aren't? These are questions for which I've never once seen decent answers from the apologists for taxpayer funded television, and the impossibility of giving satisfactory answers to them is what lies behind this article about a recent BBC internal report.

The BBC remains too middle class and highbrow and needs to be driven downmarket, an internal review has decided.

Executives at the corporation have always denied that it is a bastion of the liberal elite, pandering to the young, upmarket and metropolitan.

But now they are secretly conceding there may be some truth in the accusations and are drawing up plans to make programmes more populist.

The change of heart comes after Mark Thompson, the BBC's director-general, ordered a review to identify who uses the BBC's services.

Although in its early stages, the report has already found that lower income families are less well served than their wealthier counterparts. "There is a feeling we may be serving the professional classes well, but not reaching the C2s and D1s," one BBC insider is reported to have said.

Shows such as Doctor Who, which attracted 8.9 million viewers on Saturday, and Any Dream Will Do, the follow-up to How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria, which attracted 7.3 million, are said to be good examples of programmes that appeal to all generations and classes. However, more of the same at the expense of serious programming will lead to allegations of "dumbing down".

John Whittingdale, chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, said it was "worrying".

He said: "The only reason you have for the BBC and its licence fee is to provide output that otherwise would not be provided.

"If it is doing nothing different then what is the point of it? Those with downmarket tastes are supplied by the market. The BBC is there to set the standard.

"I am convinced there is demand for high-quality programmes across the board."

Notice something strange here? John Wittingdale is intelligent enough to grasp that there's no point in using tax money to fund a public body to do what the private sector is already excelling at, but when it comes to the sort of programming he seems to personally prefer, his mind goes into shutdown mode: for all his "conviction" about there being "demand for high-quality programmes across the board", the fact is that his remarks are in response to a report which has already concluded that nothing of the sort is true! Here we see the patronizing, self-serving BBC worship of the well-off in full flight - what they don't want to admit to themselves is that it suits them quite well to tax the proles to fund their "highbrow"* television, even if the only way they'd ever be able to get all those lower earning, less educated masses to watch "Blue Planet" and "Age of Genius" would be to arrest them and strap them down in chairs with their eyebrows stapled to their foreheads, Clockwork Orange style.

The answer to these never-ending debates about what the BBC's programming ought to be is extremely simple: abolish the ridiculous, regressive licence fee tax and let those who are willing to pay for its programming decide with their wallets. If there really is as much "demand for high-quality programmes" as well-heeled types like to think, surely it'll be no problem to keep the BBC's funds flowing in, even under such an arrangement.

NB: It is in instructive to read the comments which appear at the end of the article, as they are uniform in displaying the same absurd mixture of arrogance, class presumption and contempt for contradictory facts which were evident in Mr. Wittingdale's remarks. Take the individual called Caroline who writes "How arrogant and discrimantory of the BBC. Who's to say that poorer households won't enjoy drama or poitics[sic]?", and this as a follow-up to a report whose very purpose was to answer that question, and had already answered in the negative. Then there's Pat Guide, who says "The BCC [sic] already caters too much for the pondlife that they call viewers who watch Eastenders": I'm no fan of Eastenders myself, and Mr. Guide's opinion on what to do with the licence fee's concurs with mine, but it's no exaggeration to say that the rest of his comments venture deep into Nazi territory. Then there's "Tim Lyon", who piously tells us that "It's entirely patronising to brand people of different so-called 'social classes' as being different in intellect. Many of the people labelled C2s and D1s are intelligent, hard-working, and a darn sight more intelligent than some of the 'middle class'."Mr. Lyon is correct in saying that there are many low-income earners who are more "intelligent" than the better off - at least going by certain measures of such a nebulous concept as "intelligence" - but he's talking absolute nonsense when he says we therefore can conclude that the better off aren't on aggregate more "intelligent" than "the people labelled C2s and D1s" according to said yardsticks - they are, very clearly so too, no ifs and buts about it. If pretending the average 40-year old builder, street sweeper and garbage man is as well-read and quick thinking as a software developer, an architect or an investment banker is what it takes for members of the middle class to reconcile themselves to taking money from the former group to fund entertainment for the latter sorts, then no leaps of illogic are too great to make.

*More like "middlebrow" as far as I can tell, but I digress ...