Word: beebe
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...there's one thing guaranteed to make news organizations queasy, it's becoming news rather than reporting it. No wonder the BBC, Britain's venerable public-service broadcaster, is looking green around the gills. In the past couple of years, "Auntie Beeb" has rarely been out of the spotlight, amid speculation on the future of the broadcaster's public funding, scandals over mismanaged phone-in competitions and red faces after footage of the Queen was wrongly edited to suggest she had stormed out of a photo shoot. Yet all of these controversies pale in comparison to the storms of anger...
...Dowdy and doughy or not, the three men and their show can claim an army of followers. The most popular program on BBC2 - the higher-browed of the Beeb's two main channels - Top Gear regularly pulls in more than 7 million viewers, roughly a quarter of all Britons watching TV during the program's Sunday-night slot. Chalk that up to the show's high speed and high production values: crazy challenges and outlandish races - an Aston Martin versus a train between England and Monte Carlo, for instance (the Aston won) - are, like the rest of the show, beautifully...
...habits. It funded these adventures with cash from license payers. It was already beginning to slim down again when, in 2006, the government limited increases in license fees over the next six years, leaving the broadcaster with a $4 billion shortfall. Cutting jobs and selling property will keep the Beeb afloat for now, but underpinning today's turbulence is a deeper question that even its own managers are asking: In this brave new digital world, just what is the point...
...enduring belief that it must stay in the forefront of changes in media has driven its growth. The Beeb ballooned in the 1990s, adding staff and diversifying its operations and output. In came the rolling news service BBC News 24, along with a commercial arm, BBC Worldwide. In the drive for ratings, nobody stopped to ask if the corporation could sustain such growth or stretch itself in so many directions...
...that it will go on doing what it has been doing but with fewer people, a greater impact and higher standards. Quality is the key, whether it's straight news or comedy that spills out of a character's absurdly tight latex outfit. It's the only way the Beeb can bear out this claim by Byford: "The BBC is here to make the world a better place." Perhaps it has to start at home...