Just how sad is the BBC?

Hmm… Interesting what you’ve done with the place.

Whether an apocryphal story or not, an old tale among broadcasters goes that the clerks in charge of the BBC commissioned a survey (likely a time and motion study – before the Birtian nomenclature of Blue Sky Thinking had its dawn), and the findings were along the lines that the corporation would run at its absolute optimum if all the creative elements were removed. For creative elements, read broadcasting staff… writers, directors, actors and so forth.

Among the creative community – those responsible for the actual output, nay raison d’etre of the corporation – it was seen as the revenge of the clerical classes against centuries of being perceived as grey, mediocre little people. Admittedly, this kind of contempt wasn’t always merited, but the gollums in admin took it very personally and vowed to overthrow the current order and force their place into power so that they could subjugate the creatives. It took a couple of generations, but they achieved it through a glacial coup d’etat.

As the pendulum of things swings to and fro in its function to restore balance, now seems the time to restore some kind of equilibrium. But it hasn’t happened.

So tight has become the grip of the bureaucrats that it has succeeded in rendering down John Reith’s vision from a template that informed public utility broadcasters all over the world to a grey, high octane broth. It feeds the bureaucrats first and foremost now, as is amply demonstrated by the current scandal over mammoth severance cheques funded by a public of licence fee-payers rendered largely uninterested by acceptance and largely disinterested by the grey men and women now in charge.

Whether or not originally inspired by bitter feelings of inadequacy, the clerks in charge today are far worse, as they’re devoid of anything as animated as passionate feelings; they’re just superannuated clerks who’ve stumbled upon a their own Shangri-La. A leader in The Times (11th September 2013) refers to the management and the BBC Trust displaying misjudgement of biblical proportions. And in the same tide of unedifying flotsam, if anybody younger than 50 ever had any doubts about the BBC’s left leanings, they would do well to recall Margaret Thatcher’s erudite observation: the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money. Except the money hasn’t run out yet.

They haven’t even the spark to be vicious. They’re just fat, gorging, venal and largely unaccountable (until now) piggies. It’s very sad.

One tiny beam of light might be that the leader also reports that fully one in 10 magistrates’ cases in 2012 was for non payment of the licence fee, although whether this was out of active protest, inertia or dishonesty isn’t recorded here.