Quentin Letts to Replace Thompson for BBC'S DG?

[Teddy Bear]

If only!
BBC Trust Chairman Patten recently announced that he would be looking for a replacement for top job at the BBC, presently occupied by Mark Thompson the Director General. There's talk that it might be Helen Boaden, which means at least more of the same, if not worse.

But an outsider, Quentin Letts, has put in for the job. He is described as a freelance journalist writing mainly for the Daily Mail, as its parliamentary sketchwriter and theatre critic, having formerly worked for The Telegraph and The Times. A long-standing critic of the BBC, he named Greg Dyke, a former BBC director-general, and Jay Hunt, ex-controller of BBC1, in his book 50 People who Buggered Up Britain. Which makes him A-OK in my book.

Here's 2 articles written on his bid. They certainly identify a few of the existing problems at the BBC.
I'm sure many here will be wishing him the best of luck, though because the BBC IS what it IS, I'll be very surprised if he gets it. He himself thinks he 'hasn't got a hope'. Shows he really knows what's going on at the BBC

First is from The Independent.

Let me be the People's Director-General, says Quentin Letts
I'd drop lefties, bureaucrats ... and Clarkson, says waspish political columnist as he applies for BBC's top job. Matthew Bell reports


He is Fleet Street's most gleeful troublemaker, a master of the well-aimed custard pie. Now, Quentin Letts is preparing to put down his pea-shooter and join the executive ranks, by applying to be director-general of the BBC.

The 48-year-old journalist has signalled his intention to throw his hat in the ring, after reports that Mark Thompson is preparing to cede the £779,000-a-year post at the end of the year. He says he would do the job for "no more than the salary of a back-bench MP" ( £65,738) and would offer a "centre-right-wing perspective" to an establishment long perceived as dominated by the left. His manifesto would include "severe cutbacks" and the "sacking of Jeremy Clarkson".

Mr Letts is a freelance journalist writing mainly for the Daily Mail, as its parliamentary sketchwriter and theatre critic, having formerly worked for The Telegraph and The Times. A long-standing critic of the BBC, he named Greg Dyke, a former BBC director-general, and Jay Hunt, ex-controller of BBC1, in his book 50 People who Buggered Up Britain.

Mr Letts says he decided to apply after seeing the list of favourites for the top job, dismayed that "all had the same uniform background and attitude: Establishment left, TV insiders, all part of the schmoozebelt".

Speaking from his home in Herefordshire yesterday, he said: "They think they own the BBC. Well, the BBC doesn't belong to them. It belongs to everyone."

It was reported last week that Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, had appointed the international head-hunting firm, Egon Zehnder, to find a successor to Mr Thompson, who has been in the top post for eight years. Mr Letts fears the firm may overlook him.

"I offer something different," he says. "A centre-right-wing perspective, a belief in a small state, yet a published (in my book Bog-Standard Britain) defence of Reithian values and of the BBC's "top end" – views echoed only last week by Lord Patten, when he told the Beeb not to be ashamed of high culture. The BBC is our most influential institution. It is highly politicised and it would be wrong if no right-wing, non-television people were interviewed for the job."

Mr Letts's "manifesto" would include: "the sale of Radios 1 and 5 Live; closure of the Asian Network; a cut to the BBC website by half; trimming Newsnight by 20 minutes, starting Today 30 minutes later (Sarah Montague sounds as if she needs more sleep); sacking Jeremy Clarkson (or at least a sale of Top Gear); doubling the World Service budget; dumping much of daytime TV; ending all-night telly; closure of Salford; and the restoration of Play for Today." He would also screen cricket again, and replace darts and snooker with hockey and netball.

"My first act would be to announce that the BBC is to forgo populism and inspire listeners and viewers. BBC2 would return to being highbrow, and show roughly what you get on BBC4 now. I would keep Strictly, but a Saturday night on BBC1 would have either a drama serial, or some form of family entertainment."

Mr Letts is married, with three children. He read medieval literature at Cambridge and became a gossip columnist. He lists his hobbies as "gossip" and "character defenestration". Asked what he thought his chances were, he was realistic: "I haven't got a hope."

And one from The Telegraph

Quentin Letts for BBC director general? He couldn't make things any worse
By Stephen Bayley

Mark Thompson, the current director general of the BBC
Not since Malcolm McLaren ran for Mayor of London has there been such an attractively irreverent whack-job candidacy for a top job as Quentin Letts' mischievous tilt at the BBC. McLaren, who knew a thing or two about adversity, might have been hobbled by his choice of running mates: I was to be his cultural commissar and Damon Hill, the Formula One World Champion, his traffic minister. But Letts is unencumbered by inappropriate personnel. Instead, his support comes in the cheerful costume of sweet reason.

One of the big mysteries of contemporary life is the decline of the BBC. "No polysyllables!", I was once told before going on air. The idea of "public service" broadcasting once assumed that the public was to be served with the best possible standard of information, education and entertainment. The highest common factor was once the target, now the BBC's denominators are occasionally so low that they are positively subterranean. Mysteriously, the decline has not been caused by careless neglect, or lack of funds, or by government perversion, but by what appears to be a willed preference for shaming mediocrity, triteness, damaging partisan sensibilities and wince-making vulgarity.

There are exceptions, but not enough of them. The noble idea of Public Service Broadcasting has been travestied into news which now sounds like social services bulletin boards : whatever assumptions might be made about the audience's appetites, they are lowering ones. Huge areas of interest are routinely, presumably deliberately, ignored by BBC News. Japanese politics? German media? Californian technology? And the news we get is often presented with the terrible infection of embarrassingly dated political-correctness of the dungaree era inflamed with catchpenny tabloid sensibilities.

Kingsley Amis years ago said more television will mean worse television. He was confronting the spectre of a second channel. But because he was an angry old bigot does not mean he was wrong. I don't know whether, as DG-in-waiting, Quentin Letts has much time to study Napoleonic military theory. But what the Corporation needs is a big lesson in "reculer pour mieux avancer." Of course, you wouldn't be allowed to say such a thing on air.

[Teddy Bear]

Here's the article on the subject from Quentin Letts himself.

Put a stop to Leftie bias, restore religion, and bring back culture! QUENTIN LETTS throws his hat into the ring for the top job at the BBC

By Quentin Letts

When the young John Reith applied to become the general manager of the British Broadcasting Company in 1922, there was a refreshing amateurishness to his candidacy.

Reith admitted he did not know much about broadcasting. Only after completing his application form and posting it in the letterbox at his club did he consult Who’s Who to learn more about the man in charge of the selection panel.

Discovering that Sir William Noble hailed from Aberdeen, Reith badgered the club porter to retrieve his letter from the locked mailbox so he could add some gallant prose about his own Aberdonian credentials.

It worked. Reith landed the job (which paid £1,750 a year) and went on to become the first — and greatest — director-general of the BBC.

With the imminent departure of Mark Thompson, the BBC’s ‘DG-ship’ is again about to fall vacant. I hope readers of the Mail will not mind, but I am putting in for the job.
Victory

This is no comment on the pleasure with which I serve as your Parliamentary sketchwriter, theatre critic and occasional powder monkey, helping the gundeck let rip at the political and arts Establishment.

Anyway, I very much doubt my campaign will end in victory, so our acquaintance may continue. But I intend to have a bash at the DG-ship. Here is why.

The BBC needs to do less and it needs to aim upmarket. It needs to drop the tone of perpetual political correctness, disown coarseness, cease its tiresome and offensive bias against religion and stop acting as an unremitting champion of the public sector (and assailant of the Coalition Government for trying to reduce the deficit).

The sole justification for its licence fee is that the BBC will do things not otherwise done by independent, commercial broadcasters. Much though I admire many BBC programmes — Sherlock, The Proms, Strictly and many more are brilliant — I am not convinced this can be said of all of its output.

BBC 3, consistently defended by the broadcast professionals, is a particular weakness. Its listings include shows such as Sun, Sex And Suspicious Parents, and Snog, Marry, Avoid.

How do these fit with the ideal, inherited from Reith, that the BBC should nurture high-minded aspiration, enlightening and educating the British public?

One of my first wishes as director-general would be to see the white dot appear on BBC 3. That station’s demise could save the licence fee payer £85 million a year. Every little helps.

I can see sparse justification for much of the BBC’s daytime programmes, plenty of which seem to be derivative efforts about property and cooking.

Indeed, does BBC television really need to broadcast during the day? Can the commercial sector not be given a free run between the hours of, say, 9.30am and 4pm?

Would it be so heinous for the old testcard to be brought back during those times?

Broadcasting through the night also seems fairly wasteful. Few licence fee payers would be inconvenienced by the disappearance of Filthy Cities and Celebrity Antiques Road Trip, which went out on BBC 1 last night well after midnight.

Were I DG, it would also be goodbye to such daytime BBC TV fare as Britain’s Empty Homes, Cash In The Attic, Flog It! and other such non-gems.

What would I favour in their place? Well, much less telly, for a start, because I would also close the (actually rather good) BBC 4 and fold its best output into BBC 2.
Creative

That would save £50 million and would improve BBC 2, which has made strides in the right direction of late.

What sort of shows would I want to see instead? I am not a TV producer. They would no doubt have far more creative ideas than me. But how about a return of Play For Today, which was last seen in 1984?

As a drama critic, I come across plenty of new plays on the stage, some terrific, some so-so. Why are so few seen on television?

How about a weekly, prime slot for a show about fine art? And why, in Olympics year, is there no development of the It’s A Knockout idea, pitting the towns of Britain against one another in sporting heats? Could it not get our youngsters athletically involved and engender civic pride?

Viewers would like the licence fee to be lower and that can happen only if the BBC reins in its corporate empire building. It has too many executives who fret too much about fulfilling some outdated, multicultural remit.

The Corporation’s new chairman, Lord Patten, has grasped the crisis of confidence facing the BBC. He argued only last week that programmes must become more intellectual.

Where is today’s Kenneth ‘Civilisation’ Clark? Where is the new Jacob ‘The Ascent Of Man’ Bronowski? The new John Freeman, of one-on-one interviews fame?

I am not a nostalgia freak, but I did recently look at a schedule for a night’s BBC 1 programmes from 1964 and was struck by the presence of a late-night show called Gallery, a high-brow discussion programme introduced by Ian Trethowan.

Last night’s BBC 1 schedule offered The Graham Norton Show. Norton is a talented comedian and makes me chuckle on a Saturday morning on Radio 2, but he is no Ian Trethowan.

Lord Patten needs a DG who will work with his grain rather than trying to undermine him.

The first step is to worry less about audience numbers. It may be an unfortunate thing to echo Captain Bligh of the bad ship Bounty, but the director-general must take the attitude: ‘A pox on the ratings!’

I believe, as it happens, that ratings would soon rise, with viewers responding to quality. A nightly television version of BBC Radio’s From Our Own Correspondent would educate and interest viewers more, surely, than Kirsty Wark’s A Question Of Taste cooking quiz on BBC last night.

It might also redress the BBC’s mainstream failings in foreign news reporting. The Corporation has an amazing network of correspondents whose work rarely appears on prime-time TV.

Funded mainly by our annual £145.50 licence fees, the BBC spends £4 billion a year. An astonishing sum, no?

In addition to the savings on BBC 3 and BBC 4, I would get rid of Radios 1 and Five Live, which fall into the category of ‘already done by the commercial sector’.

Also expendable is the opinion-tinged BBC News Channel (£41 million), which fulfills the role of padding during the small hours.

The imperatives of rolling news do not sit easily with the mainly high standards of BBC journalism.

Furthermore, those cliches of 24-hour news are becoming intolerable and, in the age of the internet, redundant.

The Left-wing Guardian newspaper, effective in-house journal of BBC executives, last week ran a list of ‘runners and riders’ for the director-generalship. To a soul they were TV professionals, some of them BBC ‘lifers’.
Insiders

The favourites were broadcasting insiders, a dismayingly narrow range of urban, fashion-conscious folk, denizens of the London telly schmoozebelt.

Their politics? Pink-tinged or (at best) Centrist, so far as one could discern. Here were creatures of the status quo.

When I saw that list, I was so irritated I thought: ‘What the heck — let’s have a tilt at the windmill.’ Should there not be at least one Right-wing, non-broadcast executive in the pot of applications? Hence my candidacy.

If Boris Johnson can become Mayor of London and John Prescott can talk of standing as a police commissioner, why can I not stick up my paw for the DG-ship?

The Left will laugh. Some of them already are. As Ali G might say: ‘Is it cos I is Right?’

The status quo is a non-starter, and not just in terms of the DG’s £650,000 salary (who does he think he is? Stephen Hester?).

I would do the job for the salary of a backbench MP, around £65,000. I would do without a limousine.

I would charge almost no expenses and would expect the BBC’s executives to accept similarly modest packages.

If our legislators must make do on such money, so can a broadcaster. But you will not hear that from any of my other so-called rivals for this nationally important position.