It is time to have the BBC Trust elected by and from among the license-payers, with make the license fee itself optional.
It is time to ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national daily newspaper, to ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national weekly newspaper, and to ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one television station.
It is time to re-regionalise ITV under a combination of municipal and mutual ownership.
And it is time to apply that same model (but with central government replacing local government, subject to very strict parliamentary scrutiny) to Channel Four.
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Given that the number of people who care about the composition of the BBC Trust is vastly smaller than the number currently paying the licence fee, isn't your first paragraph a recipe for a massively underfunded BBC?
ReplyDeleteAnd if you don't want "any person or other interest" to have influence over more than one TV station, isn't that a good reason not to put control in the hands of local government? There are fewer successful parties than there are regions, after all.
It is a recipe for a BBC which did not simply replicate commercial broadcasting, since only the people who really cared that it didn't would bother to pay the license fee.
ReplyDeleteThey would of course include those many devoted listeners to Radio Three and Radio Four who currently do not pay anything, because they do not have televisions.
People would still be free to watch or listen to BBC programmes whether or not they paid, just as the services of the National Trust or the RNLI are not confined to members.
The classic Political Class hatred of local government, I see. We can't have any of that accountability to common people, can we? Local government is not an interest group. It is the elected representation of the people.
But the programming would cost pretty much the same as it does now. And you'd be dividing that cost among a fraction of the current fee-payers. So there'd be less money.
ReplyDeleteSo, just so we're clear, people who stand in local government elections are completely different from those who involve themselves in national politics? Because your view of the latter seems to be that they're untrustworthy power-obsessed morons who need to be booted out forthwith. Are you sure none of these people stand for local government? I had gathered from this blog that you knew some people who did just that. Do you want them in charge of local television?
I have known people involved in local government to be many things, but not "untrustworthy power-obsessed morons". One of those, from time to time. Two, very occasionally. But never all three.
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is that it is far harder to get into local politics. You have to win the votes of your own local community, and indeed of that section of it which votes in local elections, i.e., those who are more aware politically and more engaged in community matters.
Thus, local government is, for example, vastly less profligate financially than central government, and far less prone to corruption, which is in fact practically impossible due to the very tight rules indeed that Parliament has imposed on councils but not on itself.
Your argument is really one against local government at all. Political Class people always do think like that, because they know absolutely nothing about it.
As for the BBC, this way it would only make the things that the sort of people - again, basically the sort of people who can be guaranteed to turn up and vote in local elections - wanted it to make.
There would still be other programming, of course. Where it belongs. In the commercial sector.
So why do you want very strict parliamentary scrutiny?
ReplyDeleteI also want better MPs.
ReplyDeleteBut, as I said, it has been Parliament that has imposed very high standards on local government. Just not on itself.
This scrutiny would be through one or more Select Committees, and there are still quite a few good people on those.
And, of course, there is not only one House of Parliament.
They don't believe in Parliament either David. Not in Select Committees or the Lords as we have know it, for the reasons you give.
ReplyDelete