Too much of this rubbish...?
Mark Thompson is giving the MacTaggart lecture up in Edinburgh this summer. There’s plenty for the BBC boss to think about after a year in which it has been “open season” on the BBC, started by James Murdoch’s assault a year ago. There’s plenty to say about what Mr T might tell us, but after an interesting conversation with somebody better informed that me, here’s Beehive top level, one-paragraph review of the BBC’s four principal channels.
BBC One. Is it starting to look too much like ITV with too many stripped and high volume shows? Think the One Show, Holby City, Waterloo Road…and of course EastEnders. Well, the Walford soap isn’t going to give, but something else might have to in pursuit of more originality in the early evening. After all, the Beeb shouldn’t be about overworking hits, just to prop up ratings.
BBC Two. Has the channel been drained of half of the best stuff? Its range has suffered after all the drama spending was diverted to BBC One, while some of the high culture shows haved shifted back to BBC Four, and the edgy comedy wandered off to BBC Three. This is a channel that used to show The History Boys; now it is defined by Top Gear, sexism and Clarkson.
BBC Three. Ah, yes the channel of contradictions. Loved by the BBC Trust, slagged off by the critics. Now we all love it when liberalism meets celebrity, but the endless ‘do you know where this prawn/wig/WAG came from?’ shows, make you wonder if that trick been done to death. And there are all those repeats of EastEnders. Time for a refresh maybe?
BBC Four. The runt of the litter. Yes the output is classy, but can it survive on one hour of original UK material a day? There’s very little consistency in Four’s scheduling, and, as a result, many viewers have little clear idea what is on at any given time. Nor is it obvious what is a Four show, and what should be sitting squarely on BBC Two.
Add it all up and it starts to look like there is one mainstream channel too many, particularly given that the licence fee ain’t going up. Now, that might not be up for a discussion for now, but it is an agenda item for after digital switchover. That used to be a long way off, but it is happening in 2012 and that is only just around the corner after all.
