Word: bbc
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...Another cranky presbyterian seems anything but entertained by the BBC. At a September press conference in Downing Street, Gordon Brown gestured to a journalist near the front of the throng, indicating that it was his turn at the microphone. As the journalist identified himself, Brown motioned him to stop. The press conference had barely begun and the Prime Minister had already answered questions from four BBC correspondents. Now here was a fifth. Brown didn't care that each journalist represented different BBC outlets catering to different audiences: to him, the BBC was the BBC and enough was enough...
...There's been little love lost between the BBC and the government since the 2003 clash over claims made, in an unscripted on-air exchange between John Humphrys and reporter Andrew Gilligan, that a dossier making the case for the Iraq war had been "sexed up." This led to a judicial inquiry after the source for Gilligan's story, government scientist David Kelly, committed suicide. Strained relations with the government probably did not directly affect license-fee negotiations, but add to the sense that the once-beloved Auntie Beeb has become the relative nobody wants to sit next...
...These claims are furiously rejected by the BBC. Byford says it constantly strives for balance and impartiality - for what he calls "a completeness of view." He concedes, though, that the BBC's swarms at news events can seem "incoherent and duplicative." Plans unveiled on Oct. 18 to fuse TV, radio and online newsrooms and lose up to 490 jobs "should have been done earlier," says Byford. "We're a multimedia broadcaster increasingly organizing around a multimedia platform...
...Whether or not these cuts deliver the improvements Byford envisages, the spectacle of the BBC targeting such core services and preserving frothier output fuels concerns that it has lost its reason for being. Richard D. North, author of a 2007 book called Scrap the BBC!, calls the broadcaster a "grotesque monopoly" and advocates its privatization. "Broadcasting now needs no more control or support than the print media," he says...
...veteran broadcaster David Attenborough insists that public-service broadcasting still plays an irreplaceable role in British cultural life. As he sees it, it's pointless to expect individual programs and channels to fulfill all public-service requirements, even though his own natural-history shows for the BBC, including the hugely popular Life on Earth, appear to meet every Reithian ideal. Attenborough shares the view of the BBC's top management that the broadcaster must continue to provide a spectrum of programming to ensure something for everyone. If some people switch off, no matter. "The notion that you shouldn...