As y’all know, I’m a big fan of the BBC – Britian’s finest export, top media entity in the world etc. etc. yup, I love it. So was a little disturbed when all the reports came out a while ago that said that there was a shake up about to happen in the BBC funding and programming stragegy…
Well, today the news has broken that the BBC will keep the licence fee for at least 10 years – one of the threats to the BBC was to start to redistribute the funding from the licence to the independent stations to assist them in Public Service Broadcasting. A dreadful idea, given that we’d then be paying for it, and putting up with adverts. Not good.
So the news is welcome. There’s a bit of a shuffle going on at the top level, and the board of govenors is to be scrapped, which I’m hoping is a good idea. There’s also a very welcome call for the Beeb to stop chasing ratings and focus on quality. Hurrah!!
If you want to get caught up on all this stuff, there’s no finer place to start than David Attenborough’s Book, Life On Air – he was there almost from the start, and was controller of programmes for BBC TV, and interviewed for the position of Director General. An amazing book, full of great stories.
