Top-slicing the Beeb: Clueless execs get busy

Smelling the Ovaltine, swirling down the drain

What does a TV executive look like?

It's hard not to notice when you look at these top execs and policy makers that they all share similar backgrounds. Dame Patricia Hodgson ran the Independent Television Commission - she's now on the BBC Trust. Ofcom's lead on the review, Peter Philips, was head of corporate planning at the BBC. C4's finance director was the BBC's finance director. And the aforementioned Fairbairn, a McKinseyite management consultant, has sashayed from being Director of Corporate Planning at the BBC, to the same job at ITV. She stopped off at 10 Downing Street, from which Ed Richards, Ofcom chief, sprang...

No wonder that when they see a hairline crack in opinion, it looks like the Grand Canyon.

It was Kip Meek, former Ofcom No.2, who pointed out that for all the talk of "plurality" there was actually very little when you looked at the output of the public service news organisations. Not, he said, when you compared them to Fox or Al-Jazeera for example. Which is very true - when these news outlets "compete", it's to elbow each other out of the way to get the most melancholy shot of a polar bear. They won't tell you that polar bear populations are actually doing just fine.

And it was a movie distributor (of quality documentaries), Tim Sparke, who dared describe most public service broadcasting as rubbish, or "fast food", with thin ideas stretched into whole series.

Sparke's right - the big broadcasters have lost their ambition of making challenging programs that make people think (rather than agree with a thought or feeling). This is a real heresy, and challenges us to compare the memory of the public service broadcasting we grew up with (Morecambe and Wise Christmas shows, The World About Us, Dennis Potter) with the reality of prime-time today, where we find the BBC - with a few honorable exceptions - is one long advertisement for itself, punctuated with glossy cooking and property shows. No wonder the reality of the BBC today is unbearable for many so of the pundits, that they prefer the sentimental fiction - the paternalism and the smell of Ovaltine - that emanates from the constructed memory.

Not so for Sparke, but then he has never worked at the BBC - and so can't have had the chip implant.

Hands off my dial

Alas, the pundits and "citizens groups" are even more myopic and interbred than the cosy coterie of TV executives. There's the Voice of the Listener and Viewer, which was set up 25 years ago in response to the prospect of The Archers disappearing from Radio 4. (Seriously.) Speaking at Westminster on their behalf was Ivan Gaber, who makes programmes for the BBC.

Journalist Steve Barnett (alas, not this Steve Barnett), who chaired one panel, can be relied on to portray the BBC as a handicapped, put-upon contender; as can another journalist, Maggie Brown, a sort of Diet Polly Toynbee.

But the most vociferous ankle-biter, ever-present at such events, is marketing advisor Patrick Barham. He hectors and interrupts panellists to announce that the licence fee is far too low, and he'd gladly sell his house and all its possessions each year to pay for the Beeb. I'm exaggerating, but not by much.

(In 2004, the BBC rewarded his loyalty with a hefty digital consultancy.)

Three of the above four are "Professors" (Bedford, Westminster and LBS respectively), and all can be relied at such events on to keep the debate on tightly-defined territory. Narratives which may see the BBC expand on a global scale, for example, or which question any of its sacred duties, are simply excluded. Time and again they presented polling evidence that the current licence fee arrangement was for the best.

But people are voting with their feet. Or thumbs. And this Ofcom correctly identifies as an issue worthy of public debate.

Martin Lejeune found himself being attacked from all directions, but raised a very simple fact - that a third of the public consumes less than five hours of BBC services a week.

The panic this provoked from the audience was fascinating to see.