Glenn Beck's February ratings show a year-over-year audience decline of 26 per cent, after a 38 per cent fall in January. Well, people were bound to grow bored of him eventually, and sooner rather than later.
But Fox News, more than anything else, is the reason why, while a pornographer can own four national newspapers and a terrestrial television station, Rupert Murdoch cannot own four national newspapers without Independent National Directors of two of them in order, in theory, to keep him away from editorial matters, nor is he allowed to own anything more than 39 per cent of a satellite news channel, and his purchase of the wider satellite network requires that that news channel, too, be put under Independent National Directors in order to keep him away from it.
The Times and Sunday Times INDs have been pretty useless over the years; when in London, Murdoch, Sun Editor-in-Chief, attends editorial conferences at The Times. But the Sky News reorganisation provides an opportunity for something a whole lot better: a Chairman appointed for a fixed term by the relevant Secretary of State with the approval of the relevant Select Committee of the House of Commons; and Independent National Directors elected by and from among Sky subscribers, with each voting for one candidate and the requisite number elected at the end.
That Chairman should be Vince Cable, and the job itself might even be made a de facto Lib Dem sinecure, in the way that Britain always sends one Labour has-been and one Conservative has-been to the European Commission. And who knows, in view of the cross-subsidy involved, these Directors might even be given ultimate editorial control of The Times and Sunday Times, too?
More enticingly - but not, I suppose, remotely practicably - a comment on a previous post has led me to consider that, especially if there were indeed to be such an expansion of the role, there might be four Independent National Directorships, respectively named, like Professorial Chairs, after Paul Foot, Alan Watkins, Michael Wharton and Auberon Waugh. Someone, perhaps any literary executors in each case, would be responsible for appointing the figure best embodying the tradition of each of them.
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There is more than a little of all four of Foot, Watkins, Wharton and Waugh about you.
ReplyDeleteWho knows, as the process gathers momentum we could even get the Daily Herald back in all but name. Imagine that, the Sun as a paper Lansbury could have edited and both halves of the Chesterbelloc could have written for.
Maybe even awarding again the Order of Industrial Heroism, with its medal designed by Eric Gill of the Distributist League and the Westminster Cathedral Stations of the Cross, and featuring Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child. Awarded by what was then the official organ of the TUC. As you have often said, numerous union banners featured characters or scenes from the Bible.
I am particularly fond of The Perfect Craftsman, and would dearly love to know what became of the rather good example of it that passed into the possession of a late friend and mentor of mine before hanging in a class case by the stairs on the way up to the chamber of the now-abolished Derwentside District Council, also the seat and citadel of many of my friends and mentors.
ReplyDeleteBut this is very much off topic. If anyone knows, then do please email me at davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. I have no ulterior motive. I would just like to know, primarily for the sake of the dearly departed.
This post will have annoyed the scum of the earth, but it is the comments that will have sent them into apoplexy.
ReplyDeleteMostly because they have never heard of Lansbury, the Chesterbelloc, the Distributist League, Eric Gill, The Perfect Craftsman and possibly even the Daily Herald. They do not like being confronted with their ignorance, and you are the master when it comes to throwing it in their faces.
Plus they think that the only history of the left is the history of Marxism, in truth always a peripheral irrelevance until the old student Trots and Soviet payees staged a coup in the Labour Party after John Smith died and in the country in 1997.
Bringing me on topic, I hope. The Murdoch Empire was the heart, mind and soul of New Labour. The man behind Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck was also New Labour's paymaster and puppet-master. They are all part and parcel of the same global project. That is why Murdoch now supports David Cameron, that project's present British front man, the heir to Blair.
Quite so.
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