Post by Teddy Bear on Jun 24, 2008 21:39:53 GMT
It's good that others have become aware of BBC hegemony at the cost of what their mandate is really about, as this article explains.
Is the BBC empire-building or providing a service?
By Neil Midgley, TV & Radio Editor
Last Updated: 6:20PM BST 24/06/2008
Sometimes, despite his £750,000-a-year pay packet, it's hard not to feel sorry for BBC director-general Mark Thompson.
The corporation's latest expansion proposal, to provide a network of local online video services, is already provoking cries of foul. Proprietors of hard-pressed regional newspapers find it justifiably hard to see why the lavishly state-funded BBC should close off one of their few opportunities for expansion.
Mr Thompson, though, has to obey a more venerable mistress: none other than Her Majesty the Queen who, in the BBC's current royal charter, requires it to represent "the UK's nations, regions and communities".
The pursuit of these public purposes - which in reality came from the House of Jowell rather than the House of Windsor - takes the BBC to all sorts of questionable destinations.
Its commercial activities are required by the government to subsidise the licence fee, but risk trampling viable commercial competitors. Just ask the former staff of IPC's Shoot! magazine, closed partially because of strong competition from the BBC's Match of the Day publication. Or ITV, whose bids for talent now have to compete not only with licence-fee funded deals, such as Jonathan Ross's, but also the BBC's international commercial revenue, now snugly feathering Jeremy Clarkson's nest.
The BBC Trust now has to consider whether the BBC's proposed patchwork of ultra-local online video services would serve licence fee payers well. More crucially, Ofcom must decide whether commercial competition would be unduly smothered.
Let's try to imagine, for a moment, either of these publicly funded regulators deciding that the public sector is already plenty big enough. But their in-built expansionist tendencies aren't the real difficulty.
The true - and urgent - problem lies with a meddlesome government. Only they can decide that competition is more important than empire-building.
By Neil Midgley, TV & Radio Editor
Last Updated: 6:20PM BST 24/06/2008
Sometimes, despite his £750,000-a-year pay packet, it's hard not to feel sorry for BBC director-general Mark Thompson.
The corporation's latest expansion proposal, to provide a network of local online video services, is already provoking cries of foul. Proprietors of hard-pressed regional newspapers find it justifiably hard to see why the lavishly state-funded BBC should close off one of their few opportunities for expansion.
Mr Thompson, though, has to obey a more venerable mistress: none other than Her Majesty the Queen who, in the BBC's current royal charter, requires it to represent "the UK's nations, regions and communities".
The pursuit of these public purposes - which in reality came from the House of Jowell rather than the House of Windsor - takes the BBC to all sorts of questionable destinations.
Its commercial activities are required by the government to subsidise the licence fee, but risk trampling viable commercial competitors. Just ask the former staff of IPC's Shoot! magazine, closed partially because of strong competition from the BBC's Match of the Day publication. Or ITV, whose bids for talent now have to compete not only with licence-fee funded deals, such as Jonathan Ross's, but also the BBC's international commercial revenue, now snugly feathering Jeremy Clarkson's nest.
The BBC Trust now has to consider whether the BBC's proposed patchwork of ultra-local online video services would serve licence fee payers well. More crucially, Ofcom must decide whether commercial competition would be unduly smothered.
Let's try to imagine, for a moment, either of these publicly funded regulators deciding that the public sector is already plenty big enough. But their in-built expansionist tendencies aren't the real difficulty.
The true - and urgent - problem lies with a meddlesome government. Only they can decide that competition is more important than empire-building.