THE BONELESS WONDER
the failure of Peacock leaves
the BBC problem unsolved THE publication of the Peacock Report, which has been almost universally received with derision if not contempt, leaves the BBC exactly where it stood — an obvious Problem, for which there is no agreed solution. In a way the BBC is an epitome of Britain today. Maybe John Osborne ought to write a play about it. It is an institution with a splendid past, a confused present and a future of inevitable decline. Its headquarters in Portland Place say it all: a building which was a modernistic outrage at birth, now a comfortable, undis- tinguished antique, dedicated in letters of Imperishable stone (and in Latin, forsooth) to a God in which it no longer believes. Everything about the BBC is an uneasy combination of faded gentility and awk- ward attempts to suck up to the proles. On the management floor, the accents and origins are still overwhelmingly middle-to- upper-class. It is entirely characteristic that the professional head of the Corporation should be a Wykehamist who does a little shooting (but only of animals). When you get nearer to the mikes and the cameras, the accents tend to acquire a flat, plebeian tone, but in an uncertain manner, as though some sort of regional quota system, Imperfectly thought out, were being hesi- tantly applied. Most news announcers still adopt Received Pronunciation; but one has funny flat vowels; another is evidently a Scotswoman. It does not add up. The BBC policy on accents, increasingly a non- Policy, reflects a general loss of nerve. Like the Church of England, it retains much of the furniture of its faith; but the spirit has long since flown. The BBC palpably does not believe in itself, nor in any of the things for which it once stood.
Nor is this surprising: it has a hierarchy, but no chain of command; countless rules, but no discipline; executives galore, but no leaders. It is typical of the BBC that its controlling body should still be styled governors, when the one thing they obviously do not do is govern. Much was made last week of the decision to appoint Joel Barnett, who might vaguely be termed a Labour supporter, as the new vice- chairman. But what on earth does it matter? Lord Barnett's actual influence on BBC output will be nil. For all practical purposes, the present chairman, Stuart Young, has none either. The governors collectively cannot enforce their will. When they discovered, last year, that in the preparation of the Real Lives pro- gramme the BBC's own rules concerning terrorists had been repeatedly broken or ignored by officials high and low, nothing happened. None of the officials concerned was dismissed, demoted, removed, re- buked or admonished. Indeed, if the gov- ernors had tried to do any of these things, they would have had a strike on their hands, In theory they can issue instructions to the director-general. But nothing would happen if they did. For the director- general is not really in control either. He reigns; he does not rule. He fiddles about with administration; he does not impose policy. What happens is not so much decided as emerges from the Left-liberal cultural soup which laps around the formal structure. The BBC is devoid of any principle of authority, except on bureaucratic details: it is the Boneless Wonder.
The inertia and immobilisme at the BBC have tended to spread to the rest of the broadcasting system. The ITV network, sharing a broadcasting duopoly and with an absolute monopoly of television advertis- ing, has absolutely no incentive to change anything. It snoozes all the way to the bank. In essence, nothing has happened to British television broadcasting since 1955, when ITV began. Channel 4 has produced no radical departure; in everything but name it is ITV 2. Most of its programmes could be shown equally well on BBC 2 without anyone noticing.
Indeed, perhaps the chief indictment of the whole British broadcasting set-up — an inevitable consequence of its monopolistic nature — is the dreary, homogeneous uniformity of its programmes. There are four channels but only one set of assump- tions, opinions and values. Much of the output is interchangeable. There are plenty of items which fit the threadbare formulae of all four. The same applies to most of the people, especially those near the top of the production pyramids, who all tend to share the same 1960s ideas — a quarter of a century on. There is an identikit program- me boss, Mr Alasdair Foreman-Isaacs, who would be equally at home running Thames or BBC 2, Granada or BBC 1, Central, TVS or Channel 4. And so on all down the line. The viewer may turn the knob: but all he gets is more of the same, depending on the time of day or day of the week. It is a great many years since the duopoly produced a genuine new idea. Why should it? Both of its constituents have assured incomes and no competition.
What British broadcasting needs is not a committee of inquiry but a stick of dyna- mite. It needs the equivalent of the Eddy Shah-Wapping explosion which is still re- verberating in national newspaper pub- lishing. Naturally, no collection of high- minded busybodies like the Peacock Com- mittee can bring that about. In any case, government should not try to shift the responsibility for deciding policy on an issue as important as broadcasting to a non-elective panel. The Labour Party has made its position clear enough: they want to stick to the old duopoly from which, of course, they have done very nicely. The Conservatives should stop shuffling about and begin to behave like a government: make up their minds, draw up a policy and put it to the electorate. I do not see that they have any alternative but to devise means to transform broadcasting, as ex- peditiously as possible, into the airwave equivalent of print-publishing. This means ending the monopolies and selling off the BBC. Let us have a clear outline in good time for the next election, so that the poor, forgotten viewers have a real choice for once.
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