BB
I don't really want to wade too far into this debate, as I agree that a lot of the more outlandish suggestions made so far are little more than scaremongering and positing of extremes to make the ultimate decisions appear like more reasonable compromises.
However, it does surprise me how eagerly some people are eating up some of the wilder ideas mooted in some of these recent reports, and how little consideration has been given to the BBC's responsibilities as a public service broadcaster. If things were really so dire for the BBC to be seriously considering simulcasting the News Channel on BBC Two during the daytime, and for the abandonment of any serious commitment to local radio services, I find it very hard to believe that any reasoned measure of public service commitment could justify 'protecting Graham Norton and football' while services with a strong PSB element like local radio, which are not satisfactorily duplicated in the commercial sector, could be so savagely undermined.
I think a lot of folks are allowing themselves to get their titties in a tangle over this a bit too easily, without taking a breath and looking at this from a more rational viewpoint. If the BBC suddenly decided that its interests were best served - in the interests of cost-saving - by abandoning or reducing key parts of its public service remit, such as political programming, making arts accessible, and providing local services and other output that the commercial sector doesn't find sufficiently appealing, it wouldn't be much of a public service broadcaster any more, and the idea of the licence fee itself, never mind a licence fee increase, would become increasingly difficult to justify.
Of course, I can't rule out every single one of the ideas that have been discussed so far, and the existence of simulcasting trials on local radio, as well as the schizophrenic nature of the BBC Two schedule, do of course lend some credibility to changes being made. But I do think that some people could do with taking a step back and looking at the landscape as a whole, rather than believing that so many wild and fanciful changes are just a stone's throw away.
However, it does surprise me how eagerly some people are eating up some of the wilder ideas mooted in some of these recent reports, and how little consideration has been given to the BBC's responsibilities as a public service broadcaster. If things were really so dire for the BBC to be seriously considering simulcasting the News Channel on BBC Two during the daytime, and for the abandonment of any serious commitment to local radio services, I find it very hard to believe that any reasoned measure of public service commitment could justify 'protecting Graham Norton and football' while services with a strong PSB element like local radio, which are not satisfactorily duplicated in the commercial sector, could be so savagely undermined.
I think a lot of folks are allowing themselves to get their titties in a tangle over this a bit too easily, without taking a breath and looking at this from a more rational viewpoint. If the BBC suddenly decided that its interests were best served - in the interests of cost-saving - by abandoning or reducing key parts of its public service remit, such as political programming, making arts accessible, and providing local services and other output that the commercial sector doesn't find sufficiently appealing, it wouldn't be much of a public service broadcaster any more, and the idea of the licence fee itself, never mind a licence fee increase, would become increasingly difficult to justify.
Of course, I can't rule out every single one of the ideas that have been discussed so far, and the existence of simulcasting trials on local radio, as well as the schizophrenic nature of the BBC Two schedule, do of course lend some credibility to changes being made. But I do think that some people could do with taking a step back and looking at the landscape as a whole, rather than believing that so many wild and fanciful changes are just a stone's throw away.