Radio
What a joke
Michael Vestey
When I glance with masochistic plea- sure at Willy Rushton's cartoon of the BBC director-general John Birt I see a mask: the familiar vacuous smile disguising an even greater hollowness. It never ceases to astonish me that this absentee human pre- sides over the world's greatest broadcasting corporation, an illustration, I think, of how the wrong people often rise to the top. I bought the cartoon, by the way, from the splendid Jack Duncan cartoon gallery in London which is, sadly, closing in January.
The moment I fully realised that Birt's BBC was now a complete shambles of an organisation came last week on Radio Four's Today. It was when the presenter Jim Naughtie introduced the chief execu- tive of news, Tony Hall, to discuss the restructuring of news and current affairs on 1 October, but instead of interviewing him handed over that task to a BBC media cor- respondent Torin Douglas.
I had to laugh. The sometimes smooth but hesitant Hall was not to be interviewed by Naughtie, or the terrier-like John Humphrys who was sitting beside him, but by the weak-voiced and stilted Douglas who is not a good interviewer, as the subse- quent exchange proved. There were to be no interruptions of the kind we're familiar with when politicians appear on Today, no penetrating complementary questions, none of the 'Well, hang on a minute . . .' bullying that we're used to. Instead, this insipid interviewer allowed Hall to slide through his explanation with few real chal- lenges. There was little thought for the lis- tener and viewer, the licence-fee payer.
Douglas and Hall concentrated on how the changes affected staff: a streamlining of ,news and current affairs under `super-edi- tdrs' with programme journalists providing material for all outlets — as home and for- eign news reporters already do — instead of dedicating themselves to individual pro- grammes. Staff would still work for, say, Today or the World at One, but presumably they would be moved around after a cer- tain time. The existing programme editors who run and shape these programmes would be answerable to a new tier of man- agement but would still be in day-to-day charge. To me, this means more homogeni- sation across the BBC, with programmes sounding much of a muchness. And this to save money to pay for the completely unnecessary 24-hour BBC television news network and expensive digital channels of the future.
It seemed utterly pathetic that Naughtie or Humphrys were unable to conduct the interview. The explanation was that they had signed a letter protesting at the changes and were therefore part of the story. But Douglas, as a BBC employee, is also part of the story. It was clear that BBC executives are prepared to duck the hard questioning they expect others to face. And where was the director-general? Hiding behind his mission statements and out- sourcing graphs no doubt.
The truth is that Birt is completely unfit- ted to run an organisation that makes pro- grammes for people, by people and about people. He has no ideas of his own but relies on McKinseys and others to produce them for him. He is remote, authoritarian and intolerant of differing views. If his old chum Peter Mandelson from LWT's Week- end World days has modelled himself on Machiavelli, Birt is more Erich Honecker. In fact, purely in terms of cost, there is something to be said for the proposals. At the moment, like their television counter- parts, radio current affairs programmes Today, World at One, PM and the World Tonight approach a subject in their own distinctive ways. I know because I have reported for them all and have presented two of them, Today and The World Tonight. When an item has been covered through- out the day, The World Tonight at 10 o'clock traditionally offered more reflective coverage and perhaps a wider perspective, though less so today. This meant consider- able duplication, a constant source of won- derment to observers.
For example, when a cabinet minister made himself available for interviews, in would troop a succession of BBC interview- ers from news, current affairs programmes, regional radio and television and some- times even the World Service, until the minister was so dazed that he became like a parrot on Prozac. Either that, or he would become intensely irritable towards those at the end of the queue. It paid to get in first with the tape-recorder. The record I observed was ten BBC interviewers in addi- tion to those from ITN, Channel 4 News and independent radio. This is clearly absurd but each programme wanted to cover the item in its own way. Waste? Or a reflection of the diversity of the BBC's vast output? Both, really. On Radio Four's Mediumwave (Sunday) Charles Wheeler suggested the duplication was sometimes necessary if the distinctive nature of programmes was to be main- tained. Well, yes and no. But while the con- sultation with staff now belatedly gets underway, I have written to the cultural secretary Chris Smith urging a public inquiry into the BBC and how it's run and before it becomes a complete laughing stock. Questions need to be asked. As a public body the BBC is about as transpar- ent as a brick wall.
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