Midsmartin wrote:I think the BBC is, sadly, in a self-fulfilling downwards spiral.
Where they really ought to excel is in high quality news, current affairs & documentaries. They should be doing in depth analysis & investigations. Instead, in an effort to keep politicians happy they have been cutting budgets for these operations, and dropping anything that might upset the government too much. News coverage is increasingly lightweight and tabloidy.
Intelligent science programming on TV is almost extinct. For years they countered actual science on climate change with the "balance" of the scientifically illiterate. Vapid opinions are as important as actual science.
Radio 4 still has some highlights. "More or less" often shows up the poor reporting elsewhere on all channels including the BBC. Radio 4 is still permittted to do intelligent science - though for how long I wonder, as the pressure to dumb down by appealing to the masses seems to be increasing. Heaven forbid we should be elitest by assuming our audience has GCSEs.
I find that I agree with this perspective.
The remit of the BBC is to "inform, educate and entertain". This was set up in an age where it did not have commercial alternatives.
There are many alternatives today for the "entertain" bit. That seems to be where the BBC is spending vast amounts of money trying to compete (cue conversations about football commentator salaries etc). And yet where they provide public value is in the "inform, educate" part.
I think there should be a public discussion about restricting the remit of the BBC to areas where it provides material not provided by the commercial broadcasters. This would fit with radically slashing the budget, and then funding this from the general exchequer.
