Gavin Orland » The BBC’s self-destroying business model

The BBC’s self-destroying business model

Wednesday 6th January 2010 17:28 in Misc | 147 views logged | 1 comment

The BBC is such a big organisation it’s difficult to generalise about it. I find it painfully politically correct, and therefore irresponsible, in its news reporting, I get tired of its constant religious bias and sickened by its payment of obscene salaries to essentially unskilled people who just utter inane banter. But that’s not to say it’s entirely useless.

There was a time when you’d turn on Radio 3 and hear either complete silence or some weird triangle sound as they played a live broadcast of someone’s Bar Mitzvah celebration. They’ve been doing well recently though and had an excellent weekend last year all about Mendelssohn. There are some decent programmes on Radio 4, the World Service can be better, and there’s BBC 7 spoken radio. Then there are the films they broadcast and the dramas, occasionally okay, there’s the news and there’s the enormous wealth of articles on their website. The best thing about it is:

I get all of this for free.

That’s right, I don’t pay them a penny. So when I do become annoyed with political correctness of the BBC I can at least take consolation from the knowledge I don’t pay them anything. I watch their films, listen to their news, watch their news, watch anything else I want, use their website and all its frills, all for free. (This is largely made possible by their iPlayer service.)

What is the BBC thinking of, giving away all its content for free? And how long can it last? Not forever, I’ll bet. One does not have to be an economist to see that this business model is crazy. Should I be using iPlayer and not paying for a TV license? Well, I answer that I don’t make the rules. They could change them. But then perhaps I would pay to go to a provider who is less PC.

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Charles Moore, writer in the Daily Mail, has refused to pay his license fee ever since the BBC failed to sack Joanathan Ross for making an obscene phone call on air. Ross should, of course, have been sacked when he told Gwyneth Paltrow on his chat show he’d like to “f**k” her. Anyway, he’s gone now, saving the BBC the approx. £6m it wasted per year for someone who, essentially, just bantered as one would in the pub (if one liked pond-skating conversation).

Eddie Mair interviewed Jew Alan Yentob, Creative Director of the BBC, yesterday. Yentob was quite aggressive in defending the BBC’s handling of Ross, but what amazed me was that he also claimed quite clearly that Moore was “obliged” to pay the license fee for listening to Radios 3 and 4. This is certainly not the case, so I e-mailed PM from my phone to say so.

They did not feature my comment today – perhaps they don’t want people to know there is no obligation to pay the license fee in order to listen to BBC radio. It is shocking, however, that the Creative Director of the BBC, a man with a lifetime career there, should have made such an inaccurate remark.

Comment by Gavin — Friday 8th January 2010 #

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