Is this a false, overdrawn, and exaggerated picture from a glance into the crystal ball? Oh, no. It could very easily happen. Indeed the signs are already being drawn in the sky.

Nor are these indicators any longer confined to the usual anti-BBC chorus led by Rupert Murdoch. They are coming with increasing sharpness from voices such as Gerald Kaufman MP, the chairman of the parliamentary culture committee; from Lord William Rees-Mogg [perhaps a disappointed man at not being appointed Chairman of the BBC] ; and from a range of liberal voices which at one time would have been first to leap to the defence of the BBC as “an oustanding British institution”. What then has been responsible for this sea change? The reasons are varied, confused and often contradictory.

To simplify some of the arguments: Gerald Kaufman believes the BBC, having achieved remarkable success in the past, has in many ways now passed its sell-by date. He has already declared that he wants to open an inquiry during the lifetime of this Parliament into the renewal of the BBC Charter which is scheduled to take place in 2006. The Kaufman inquiry would include hanging a very big question mark over the continuation of the licence fee which, as we all know, produces £2.5 billion a year and increasingly is seen as a form of Poll Tax. Gerald Kaufman is questioning a licence fee system which now provides for only 30 per cent of the total TV audience. However he will now face a formidable opponent in Gavyn Davies, the new Chairman of the BBC.

Mr. Davies is himself the co-author of an earlier report on the BBC which was rightly acclaimed for its intelligent insight into the problem of running a modern BBC. On balance the Davies report came down on the side of retaining the BBC as a powerful public service voice of reason against the bombarding forces of globalised commercial television. Of course the Davies report recognised that there had also to be a commercial cutting edge to the BBC.

The Rees-Mogg case – put recently in a Sunday Times article [January 27, 2002] echoes some of Gerald Kaufman’s views with a few additional ones of his own.

Rees-Mogg wrote:

“The BBC’s roots are in the history of the 1920s, a society that was fearful of disintegration and yet was deferential. These fears and attitudes inspired the creation of a broadcasting monopoly that survives from the age of Stanley Baldwin”.

“The BBC has to adjust to the new world of subscription and digital television; it also has to get rid of the traces of the arrogance of monopoly; it has to respect its audience. We are not as dumb as it seems to think”.

As far as the old suspects are concerned we all know what they think of the BBC... an outfit run by a bunch of intellectual lefties who, mostly, are out of control. Or, in the eyes of some, a band of social misfits running their own private mafia. These were certainly some of Lord Tebbit’s views during a notorious spell of Whitehall interference in the Thatcher years – views that certainly scared some of the then masters of policy at Broadcasting House and led to the removal of one Director General.

Then there has been the long prevailing argument of the Murdoch Brigade of Guards – that the BBC is a State-controlled media rip-off, enjoying the protection denied to commercial television [and radio] and benefiting from a licence fee which they regard an outrage against The Market and the world of advertising.

It would, of course, be wrong to dismiss all these critics as the ravings of madmen or of craven self-interest. The critics have a case and sometimes a good case. The BBC has been locked in a form of time-warp. Yet in recent years it has also taken some significant, even remarkable, steps to change old ingrained attitudes and adopt a much more modern role – sometimes to the irritation of millions of television viewers who demand and deserve better quality, especially on television. But even under the much criticised Lord John Birt the BBC did make important changes, notably by investing in digital television. Birt was not unsuccessful or wrong in everything he did. Clearly he knows more about the media than about railways.

Clumsy

Perhaps it would be in order to remind Rees-Mogg that it was the BBC, under the patriarchal figure of Lord John Reith, which was a crucial influence for quality and education to a mass radio audience in the nineteen thirties and during the war years. It was Reith’s BBC, even more than the schools, that was responsible for bringing enlightenment on music, drama, literature and history to working class families who otherwise might never have learned about the names of Beethoven, Shakespeare, Byron, H. G. Wells etc. It was the BBC via radio, during the war years, that brought a uniquely powerful weapon of accurate, if often censored, reporting into the homes of everybody – not just the middle classes. And throughout the post-war years and into the age of television [remember, television hasn’t always been with us] it was again the BBC that experimented with and developed new forms of journalism, as well as entertainment, which became the envy of the world – not least to Americans visiting visiting and living in Britain.

And in present day terms it is also worth reminding the sceptics about the extraordinary revival in radio audiences now rising more rapidly than at any time since the advent of television while TV audiences, generally, have been slipping. Perhaps this is a reflection of the dumbing down of television – an issue about which we ourselves have criticised the BBC.

So let us say this to all the critics: beware. You may well force the BBC onto the margins of media communications; you may clear the path for a more modern, market driven, system of news and entertainment; you will certainly open the gateways to a fresh dimension of advertising glory; and doubtless diminish the so-called “monopoly” of the BBC [a false argument if there ever was one] to make way for a competitive system that will drive down standards of quality and, ultimately, produce its own oxymoron – a Market Monopoly. Is that what we want?

With all its imperfections, its weaknesses, its backdrop of auntie-like fuddy-duddy attitudes which often inhibit more courageous and forthright programming, the BBC is still a beacon of something special not only for Britain but globally [obvious example: the BBC World Service]. Improve it, to be sure; sharpen it up if you like. But if you destroy it the result will be disastrous, not only for real and effective journalism, but for Britain.