BBC: Wave of closures and critical changes that will affect output balance

 

For decades, the BBC has strived to become more like private mass media and is paying a very high price for it with recent announcements leading to the demise of various services. One hopes that the trend towards political correctness will now turn into a trend towards value content, if anything for the sake of survival in a very competitive environment.

The coming of the Digital Age left  many promises unfulfilled. The transition from analogue to digital was a bag of missed opportunities. In the 1990s came the expression 'Value for Money' that became 'Value for Rubbish' and waste leading to generations of viewers walking away from the BBC.

The saga of the BBC World Service was a typical example of what should not have been done. The once proud BBC World Service was cut off bit by bit. BBC World Service used to be a pool of talent respected worldwide and one of the worst tragedies was the loss of its well known headquarters at Bush House in Central London. The facilities had been rented from the beginning and the opportunity was missed to acquire them because those in charge thought that there was no point in buying the buildings because rental payments were relatively low. When the cost of renting went up, the Corporation saw much of the budget allocated by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office eaten away and the decision was made to move the World Service to Broadcasting House - not before closing down many language services and reducing the entire operation to the bone.

Short-termism killed the BBC World Service that now exists as a skeleton of its former self. From a budgetary point of view, the BBC World Service was merged with local BBC and it now seems that BBC News Channel will now merge with BBC World to form "a single global rolling TV news service". Elegant way of calling a de-facto reduction of the BBC output.

Tim Davie, the present BBC Director General, stated that many of the World Service's foreign language services would go online only. Another step towards the shadows. It was announce that there will also be cuts to local television and radio services in England because 'while the vast majority of the spending is focused on traditional broadcast television and radio channels audiences are shifting online. This will lead to a chain of job losses.

Any hopes of retaining British soft power overseas should be forever forgotten. For decades, British programming for overseas publics has been cut bit by bit. The now defunct Central Office of Information used to produce a wide range of programmes in English and in foreign languages for radio and television that were very much appreciated by foreign audiences. The closure of foreign language services produced by the BBC only made a bad situation worse.

Unless there is a dramatic change in terms of internet services provision across the United Kingdom, millions of Britons across the United Kingdom will not be able to access BBC streaming services when so called traditional radio and television broadcast services come to an end. One wonders then what is the point of focusing on services that can only be accessed by those who have access to Internet connections that are fast enough to distribute such services.

All we hear is talk about finances. What about content? At the end of the day, no matter how many cuts are introduced to save monies, people are going to continue walking away from the BBC if value content is not on offer and/or the services cannot be accessed because of slow and insufficient Internet connections across the United Kingdom.