The dwarfs of Lime Grove
Sir: Mrs Brock (Letters, 6 June) puts on un- ItiNtified airs when she assumes that those .010 favour commercial rv or radio lack her ,evel of taste. Indeed, it was concern for
"minority' programmes which prompted some to favour commercial radio. They argued that it is wrong for the BBC to waste valuable resources on 'pop' on 'Radio I"; that far from being a public service this is a public disservice, the more so when it is financed by cutting allocations to 'minority' programmes. Most people in this country believe in principle that the state should con- fine itself to doing what private enterprise cannot do well or at all—however much they may disagree over the implementation of this principle. As applied to the mic/in4 dependent radio/TV controversy, this would logically mean that the BBC would provide programmes of high cultural value leaving the independents to aim high or low as they choose. Freedom of choice in the printed word has certainly not left us without good newspapers and books.
The alternative, 'Reithian', viewpoint was that since it was bad for the public to be given 'what it wanted' the BBC alone should be allowed to broadcast. This view, un- popular today, had at least its own logical consistency. The new Bac policy respects neither the logic and principle of Reithianism nor the principle of free choice. It spends money on brutalising 'pop' when commercial interests would be happy to pro- vide it it without charge on public funds, while Reith would have banned it. It has engaged in terrifying trivialisation of the mews (e.g. film-star treatment for the Portland spies) without even giving us the choice between trivial and intelligent offered on sound radio. In short we tend to get the worst of both worlds. If Mrs Brock merely wished to retain the BBC and its better programmes—as distinct from its monopoly—she would have no reason to oppose coexistence with com- mercial radio.
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