A Decentralised BBC?

Again, that's bobbins.

Wales have AM:PM, Dragon's Eye, not sure where Assembly Live has gone, but there's First Ministers Questions quite often on a weekday afternoon. And it may only be watched by four people and a cleaner, but there's S4C-2 from the BBC, a whole channel for Welsh political activities.

Northern Ireland did have political programming provision, but if it escaped your notice, there hasn't been a parliament there these last couple of years.

Wales doesn't need a Newsnight opt because its devolved powers are limited only to health, education and transport. It's nowhere near on the scale of Scotland.

We do, my regional centre, BBC Birmingham is moving a nice new premises in the exclusive Mailbox and have a new public area so we can go and see the goings on... there are many programs made at BBC Birmingham and the other regional centres...

I don't feel like I am losing out at all...

lol, I personaly blame it on that wishy-washy, excuse of an "acting" and lets hope it stays that way, although if Jowel has her way hes here to say, director general. Bring Back Dyke.
Nothing like a good snipe at the government.
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There seems to be no argument here... every licence payer who has replied agrees that there is no problem with the current model...

I'm Irish. Therefore, I consider myself entitled to comment.



London firms get contracts to design BBC marketing campaigns, to design BBC's graphics and logos, etc. That money is collected from people across the UK, but it is spent in London (that's economic expropriation -- I'm an economics graduate student, I can explain this further if you like...but I don't know if you would; they don't call it the dismal science for no reason ).

And, as I said, a lot of BBC's production and administration occurs in London. And again, money taken out of every region in the UK gets spent in London. Why couldn't BBC News move its headquarters to somewhere other than London. Would it really matter, in an age of satellites and electronic communications? That money could then be spent in places like Manchester or Leeds, which are at an economic disadvantage to London.

The sort of regional economic disparities that people complain about are only made worse when the government spends money in places that are already in an advantageous position (and with a BBC budget of £2.5 billion, that's not exactly a small expropriation of people's money).

they are normally better when they make sense.

In my opinion, the BBC should make BBC-1 a UK only channel.

All of the regional news magazines and regional programs currently on BBC-1 would then be moved to a truly independent BBC regional television station for each region. For parts of the broadcast day, the station could show pan-regional (eg BBC North West + BBC North + BBC North East) programming.

The only good argument for decentralisation is that a decentralised BBC wouldn't be an easy takeover target should the Charter Review go the wrong way in 2006...

So BBC-1 becomes a "national" only channel, and, what ? BBC-2 becomes a "regions" only channel? Sort of like how France3 is regions only (except for the one evening national newscast each day) and France2 is predominantly national?



But I'm trying to say that, if a Labour government is in power in 2006, you'll probably see an initiative to decentralise the BBC into BBC England, BBC Wales, BBC NI, and BBC Scotland (independent units) to consolidate regionally the license fee funds collected in each region and spend them within those regions. This would be done to avoid the expropriation I tried to explain above. BBC News would exist as a national unit (sort of like an ITN, providing national and international news to the BBC regions and to BBC World and World Service), but local news would be the responsibility of the regions (like it is now, yes).

In short, the BBC will have transformed itself into the ITV of the 1950s-1980s and ITV will have transformed itself into the BBC of the 1950s-1980s .

And, you make a good point...if the Tories are in power in 2006, a decentralisation programme would probably be a good defensive move against the privatisation of parts of the BBC. Although it could lead to the abandonment of Wales, where S4C already exists, for example.

Well in the United Kingdom, a sensitivity towards an anti-IRA bias should be accepted seeing as so many innocent people have lost their lives in cities across the country. Equally, I could empathise with an anti-UK armed forces bias in Irish press (ofcourse, this segregation of the two communities isn't good but should be understood and acknowledged).



The fact is that unlike many other countries, the UK' capital dwarfs the other cities is every aspect. No other UK city comes close. The fact of the matter is that one in 9 people in the UK live in London. Hence, with a setup like that, it is likely that all of the design work does go to London companies. If there was an astoundingly creative design firm in Bristol, the BBC would utilise them (indeed I believe they do, 4:4:2 Bristol provide design services to the BBC quite often). The fact is that no other city can rival London in anything much. All of the best companies are based in London and that is it. Im sure you wouldn't advocate the BBC choosing a rubbish design house justg because they're not based in London.

As far as news is concerned, the same applies. Moving the news centre away from Central London has caused problems (BBC NEWS has said it is harder to get people to the news centre because it is too far out). Moving the news centre to Manchester would mean that important people such as MP's, company cheifs, and general newsmakers would have to travel all the way to Manchester for interviews etc...

So basically, becaused most of the UK's services and government is located in London, as seeing as 1 in 9 people live in London (as oppsed to 1/60 in Birmingham, the UK's SECOND city), as an economicist, surely you can see that most of the activity will be in London - that is the way the UK has seemed to work and to a degree always may do... the UK's government, service sector, broadcast sector and most other tertiary industries are all centralised, headquartered... whatever... in London. There is no point in pretending that this isn't the fact by moving everything to the other areas of the country. It does, and whether you like it or not, London dominates all areas of life in the UK. The BBC reflects this, but only be default.

I don't condone the IRA's tactics, but I don't laud the SAS or the people responsible for Bloody Sunday either. It's easy to forget that, in modern times, the first blood was spilled in Ireland, and it belonged to people demonstrating against injustice and racism.



But don't you see that the government's policy here reinforces London's supremacy?

Why couldn't good design houses (or any other industry, for that matter) get a tax break if it moved to another city? Some sort of incentive to avoid keeping London as a domineering behemoth? And why couldn't politicians be interviewed from Millbank for a national news programme hosted from Birmingham, for example? Having a programme like The Politics Show from Millbank makes sense. But, something like Newsnight could be broadcast from a small town in the Channel Islands and nobody would perceive the difference as long as the regular set was used and satellites were in working order.

Besides, with nonsense like the Congestion Charge and relentless crowding and expansion, you have to wonder how long London can continue growing? And, I thought it was the proper role of the government to use its spending programmes to try to balance out inequities between regions, rather than institutionalising the dominance of the capital city?

I think a decentralisation of licence fee money could happen, but not an organisational decentralisation. This would mean that the Nations and Regions get a proportion of funding from the total amount of income from the Licence Fee for each part of the UK i.e. BBC Scotland is only funded by part of the income from Scottish licence fee payers, BBC English Regions from part of the income from English licence fee payers etc. The hierarchy of the BBC is fine as it is, it does not need to be changed. Nor does any reorganisation of divisions such as BBC News into seperate national units of the BBC.

I think that the regional news operations of BBC Nations and Regions should be transferred into the control of BBC News, as that is how ITV News is now organised, so it makes sense to match it for control of resources such as OBs, reporters etc. and it could help to reduce costs by avoiding situations like the both an OB team for the National News services, and one from the regional BBC service at a given event, when they could manage with one (with the exception of important news events, where both National and Regional services would need to be on-air at the same time).