A Touch of the Whip?
It looks as if there has been much activity lately on the part of that shadowy background body, the Board of Governors of the BBC. The Governors have generally been thought of as damp clay in the hands of a resourceful Director- /General. There is no doubt that Mr. Hugh Carle- ton Greene and his lieutenants are resourceful; but the clay may have been stiffening lately. While the Governors have supported the Director- General in his efforts to take some of the old starch out of the public-service concept of broad- casting, it looks as if they have become increas- ingly concerned about the tendency to dispense with it entirely. It was the Governors who had the 'glamorous' coverage of Miss Christine Keeler and Miss Mandy Rice-Davies somewhat reduced. It was the Governors who reminded all concerned that they could, and would, if they thought it necessary, kill That Was The Week That Was. The signs are, in fact, that the Governors are resolved to do rather more governing and perhaps to direct the attention of the chief executives more positively than hitherto to questions of standards and reasonable impar- tiality. If the mask of Auntie were merely replaced by that of Anti, and many programmes increas- ingly informed by a flippant, destructive bias, what then would justify the BBC's special position? What, in short, is the BBC about, apart from the pursuit of ratings in straight opposition to ITV? Such questions must, I fancy, be buzzing gently in the gubernatorial brains. The final responsibility, after all, is theirs.
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