Informed 11


and is critical of the departing leader. “If you are losing 25 per cent or more of your revenue that’s prety bloody perilous,” he says. “Tony Hall has not been a huge success as a DG, let’s be frank. He steadied the ship, but maybe he is sinking the ship as well.” Te Tory party has a long legacy of hostility towards the BBC. But BBC insiders say it is the combination of characters in key positions that makes the current threat an existential one. Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings once described the BBC as the party’s “mortal enemy”. Julian Knight, newly appointed as chair of the Digital, Culture, Media & Sport commitee, has compared the licence fee to a “poll tax”. Te new Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, is a loyalist said by the Telegraph to have impressed Johnson with his “ability to get things done”. One senior figure close to the BBC said that, while Tory anti-BBC rhetoric historically “flickers on and off”, the current animosity is unprecedented. “Te starting line position for the Johnson government is that the party has a very substantial faction within it which wants to destroy the BBC and sees it as being irrelevant and positively harmful.” Paul Siegert, a former BBC political


correspondent and now NUJ national broadcasting organiser, said: “Even Margaret Tatcher in her heyday wouldn’t take on the BBC. We are extremely worried. With a majority of 80, the government feels it can pick a fight with anyone and certainly has the BBC within its sights.”


Te BBC is struggling to respond. In a speech in Salford, the BBC’s chairman David Clementi reminded the government that the BBC is “a great national asset” which can unite post- Brexit Britain. “A diminished BBC would weaken the country as a whole,” he said. Franks, speaking from India, said


there is international dismay that a fine example of independent media might be being pushed around. “In countries like India the soſt power of the BBC is so


evident and yet sometimes it’s just not valued or appreciated at home,” she said. According to one BBC executive, the Johnson administration desires “a fundamental change of government status for the BBC, taking away its right to be the nation’s broadcaster”. Broadcasting House is fuming that it is being cast as just another media outlet, and one that has failed to keep up with rivals, such as Netflix. “What a lot of the commentary seems to ignore is that we have actually kept pace with that change and are oſten at the forefront of it,” Clare Sumner, BBC director of policy, tells NUJ Informed. “It shouldn’t be forgoten that we still reach nine out of ten people in the UK and we are by far the most used media organisation.” Te licence fee allows the BBC to provide a “universal range of services”, she says. “We’re not just making programmes to drive subscribers or delivering news to meet commercial targets.”


“People who care about the BBC should fight for it”


Damian Collins, the Conservative MP


and former chair of the DCMS commitee, agrees that the comparison with Netflix is unfair but says this is unappreciated by many licence fee payers. “Tey are comparing services like


Netflix with the bits of the BBC they access, because a lot of licence fee payers only access a relatively small part of what the BBC offers.” Collins says continued public support


for the licence fee will be very important for its survival but that the BBC faces an increasing batle for the atention of audiences. “Te BBC is in a position now where I think the number of people paying the licence fee is starting to decline for the first time in a decade and the cost of making programmes is going up.” But he denies that BBC election coverage enraged the Tories, pointing out that its output “was criticised by all sides”.


Te BBC newsroom is in despair aſter 450 job cuts and £40m savings to meet the last licence fee setlement. Tere is a race against time to move resources from broadcast to digital before it loses touch with youth altogether. “Tere is a real risk that young audiences will never form a habitual relationship with the BBC of any kind,” I was told. While one executive described the


newsroom’s introduction of a central commissioning model as a “proportionate and sensible” response to the need for savings, another denounced it as a “Yo Sushi” conveyor belt approach to news which would devalue flagship programmes. “Te place is in freefall. We’re seething that such a stupid and patently flawed set of proposals could get this far,” he said, blaming the departing DG for the situation. “We’re appalled that Tony has once again shown his weakness as a leader. He’s running away and sanctioning terrible decisions at the same time.” Lord Hall, who is heading to the National


Gallery, was expected to stay until the BBC’s centenary in 2022. Tere is no obvious successor in place. One senior BBC figure wondered whether strong outside candidates would be prepared to take on a role which “could be a full-on confrontation with the government”. Since the election, figures in Downing


Street have been “slightly juvenile” in their playground bully approach towards the BBC, I was told. Indeed, when Dominic Cummings was recently asked by a BBC journalist if he was losing influence he responded bizarrely by quoting catchphrases from PJ Masks, a children’s programme (not made by the BBC). Te new government has also picked


early fights with the tech platforms and the parliamentary lobby, angering even supportive outlets such as the Daily Mail. Te BBC is receiving backing from other parts of the UK’s creative sector, where its fate is the cause of great concern. “Tere is still plenty to fight for,” says one source. “People who care about the BBC should fight for it.”


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