It is right that John Whittingdale has been appointed
to look into the national scandal that is the BBC.
to look into the national scandal that is the BBC.
Anyone looking at the TV schedules - I have counted
as many as eighteen repeats a day, some fifty years'old
- may come to the conclusion that the £3.5bn the BBC
as many as eighteen repeats a day, some fifty years'old
- may come to the conclusion that the £3.5bn the BBC
receives annually from the licence fee represents
increasingly poor value for money.
The BBC has become a powerful metaphor for arrogance,
incompetence, profligacy and worse. Senior executives
found wanting are never dismissed, but merely moved to
more senior positions with seemingly meaningless titles.
Those who leave appear do so with extraordinarily
generous compensation.
The Corportion appears to have all but abandoned the
role Lord Reith intended: an impartial public service
broadcaster, educating and enriching the fabric of our
society. Instead, it has become a number of
disfunctional and unaccountable feifdoms,
contemptuous of any criticism of how it spends
public money in competing with the commercial media.
The £100 bn wasted on the abandoned digital archive
is but one example.
The £100 bn wasted on the abandoned digital archive
is but one example.
Savile and other big names with ludicrously expensive
contracts illustrate the folly of needlessly seeking to
boost audience figures in the ratings' war.
The appointment in 2010 of the former Labour cabinet
minister, James Purnell, as Head of Digital and Strategy,
minister, James Purnell, as Head of Digital and Strategy,
on a salary £295,000 - the post unadvertised - strengthens
the perception that the BBC has a growing left-
the perception that the BBC has a growing left-
wing bias. Its recent coverage of the general election merely
merely confirms this.
merely confirms this.
