Wednesday Mar 12th 2008
Time to wean the junkie BBC off its tax habit
Martin Le Jeune featured in The Financial Times, 11 March 2008 - Copied below.
Today Ed Richards, chief executive of the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, will deliver a speech on his planned review of public service broadcasting to the Royal Television Society.
The BBC’s first director-general, John Reith, famously defined the mission of PSB as “to inform, educate and entertain”. A lot has changed since Reith wrote those words, but not much has moved on in British television, which pretends to be edgy and forward looking while clinging to a system and a way of thinking that, in its essentials, Reith would have recognised.
What are those essentials? A belief that substantial state intervention in the television market is necessary; the maintenance of a specialised tax to fund it; a stubborn refusal to acknowledge in policymaking the contribution made by non-PSB broadcasters; producer capture; and, worst of all, a rampant and condescending paternalism.
Salieri | 12:35pm |
No comments |
More >