First of all the Conservative leader David Cameron said he’d meddle with the license fee. Then Ben Bradshaw, from the Dept for Culture, Media and Sport said the BBC should be scaled back. James Murdoch, who wants to protect his father’s Sky empire, wanted to scale back the BBC website.
Now Lorraine Hegessey, from Talkback Thames – the company responsible for The Bill on ITV, wants to charge for the iPlayer.
Now, I may be old fashioned, but now that I’m paying my license fee for these services, why do I want to pay more?
The Tories want to scale back the BBC because they think that big businesses will take over where it left off.
The repulsively new Labour lot, who are also introducing a broadband tax, want to reduce the size of the BBC so that they can give money to ITV from your license fee.
James Murdoch just wants rid of the BBC, everything should be at a cost to us, as users of services.
Lorraine Hegessey – god knows why she got involved in the arguments. She makes programmes for the BBC. Frankly if she doesn’t believe 100% in the organisation she should pull out of working for them now.
The BBC which makes the amazingly good (and sometimes amazingly crap) programmes you watch and hear, is being torn apart by political figures and industry players who want a piece of the pie.
The thing is, none of these independent companies who are allegedly waiting in the wings to take over actually have any idea of how difficult it would be to make the wildlife, sport, documentary and everything else that’s done by the BBC. Would Radio 1 still focus on new music, or would it be a national version of any other pop station – i.e. bland?
Over the next couple of years, big decisions are going to be made way above our heads, about the service we know and trust. We may have to fight to keep the BBC independent and impartial. The prospective Governments all want to meddle!
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