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| Is the BBC fit for modern Britain? - Image credited to the Spectator Blog |
There is a perception in some quarters that for the highest BBC positions there is a template of a person that the interviewers already have in mind at the start of the process. Usually this encompasses an Oxbridge background and a good public school coupled with a knowledge and strong link to the social circles that person will be operating within during his (Yes his) career. Without many if not all of those prerequisites, a lot of other people just will not bother with such a time consuming process because it is loaded against them right from the start.
Mr Patten's appointment really epitomised this process very well as a merry go round for the great and good in British Society. In all honesty,although he has faced some big challenges - Mr Patten's performance has not met with universal approval. This was epitomised by the parliamentary committee grilling he received recently at the hands of my MP Phillip Davies.
The BBC and its executives also need to hold their hands up as there seems to be a culture of mutual support and admiration for that group of people and this was cruelly exposed in the parliamentary committee process when a number of BBC executives were given extra payments to "keep them focused" before they left the Corporation as part of a redundancy process. This should never have been allowed and reflects how detached the upper echelons of the BBC are from the ordinary viewer\listener -- That is why it is so crucial that a new candidate will be able to re-connect the Corporation with the people. Another person from the same background as the existing group of executives just will not achieve that.
Many years ago I remember listening to an interview with a former head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation who was born in the UK on a council housing estate. One thing that struck me in his interview was his statement that if he had stayed in the UK he would never have achieved the equivalent position in the UK ( Head of the BBC) that he had achieved in Australia. He said that this would have been due to the class perceptions in UK society which are unfortunately still rife.
It would be great if we could get an effective candidate from an untypical background to move the BBC in a new direction (Please witness how old fashioned the BBC looks in comparison to some of the exciting reporting, coverage and commentaries on Al Jazeera). I was surprised to learn that for all its notoriety and fame BBC 2's "Newsnight" reportedly averages only 600k viewers per night. Is it it a programme for the elite of our society or do we now get our news and information from different sources?
I won't be holding my breath though -- we will probably still get a candidate from the same narrow and shallow pool who will not rock the BBC boat too much. It is, however, a boat that does need to be rocked
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