News and comment
so much time convincing us that we are lucky to be offered the chance, by 1986-7, to pay over £1,000 million pounds for it, not only encourages a scintilla of doubt to arise in the listener or viewer's mind, but discourages any other commentator from arguing the BBC's case for it, for fear of becoming part of the BBC's propaganda effort. There used to be a modest tradition in this country that if you thought you were the best in the world you waited for someone in the rest of the world to say so. It is exactly the sort of tradition which an `uncommercial' institution like the BBC took pride in upholding, and which the modern BBC does not even seem to understand. Nor are its strictly commercial arguments free from contradiction. It argues both that it is far too expensive to be paid for from advertising revenue, and that the consumer pays fantastically little for it (about two pence per hour per viewer). Perhaps if it is turned into a commercial organisation, one of the ser- vices it could offer is special pleading.
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