What If The BBC Is Privatised?

Time and again we hear from the BBC’s critics that if only the TV licence is ended and the BBC moves to subscription-based viewing and advertising, or some sort of privatisation even, all will be well.  We also see that commercialisation is now UKIP policy.  The argument is shallow, unimaginative and misconceived, and if implemented, would leave us in a worse situation. 

To reiterate, we call for:

1. Complete abolition and closure of the BBC; all transmissions to cease; its Royal Charter revoked; its assets broken-up, and fragmented and sold on the commercial market.

2. A total end to state involvement in information, media and broadcasting.

3. A new era of plurality and choice with the free market assuring independence and standards. 

These changes would be as epochal as the formal abolition of slavery - and we purposefully draw a parallel between the two institutions.  The existence of a state-owned and state-controlled media amounts to the perpetuation of slavery through mass psychology.

That being said, we are not mad marketeers.  If a state-owned media is wrong, then so is a transmogrified statist media owned by private interests.  We do not want that either.  In so far as we believe in the so-called ‘free’ market as a concept, it is in the sense that we regard it as part of the natural order of a healthy society.  We do not want corporate media dominance – but then, that’s one of the very reasons we oppose reforms and ‘improvements’ to the BBC. 

It follows that our understanding of ‘privatisation’ is quite different to that of neo-thatcherites.  To us, privatisation is simply a process in which state assets are returned to the public, the most efficient means of doing this being via the market – either through sale of the entity as one or more operating concerns or closure followed by asset-based sell-off.  In the case of the BBC, we favour the latter.  The BBC has fulfilled its mission and is now functionally redundant.  Its assets must be sold and the proceeds returned to the public, minus any legacy contractual and legal obligations to the BBC’s staff, pensioners and other creditors.  To continue the BBC and allow it to operate in whatever form – public or private – would be to continue a sham and a deceit and allow the enemies of this country to run rampant. 

But some will not be convinced by the case, so here we would like to offer a vision of what broadcasting would look like under a Privatised BBC.  We consider it dystopian.

Watch this:

    

That’s a video from The Guardian about people who voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.  We see here how unconscious biasing works.  The casual viewer might regard The Guardian’s treatment as ‘fair’.  We disagree.  The Guardian interviews various individuals who are articulate and well-spoken but in some way slightly eccentric.  Much like Nick Clegg’s feature on Wales for the BBC that we eviscerated yesterday, The Guardian misses out the majority category and in doing so (intentionally or otherwise) presents the viewer with a distorted picture of things.  You will notice that The Guardian does not interview the white English working class who would represent normative England.  They are entirely absent from the feature.  This is because The Guardian does not regard such people as articulate or well-spoken or having the ‘right’ sort of views.  Certainly, the people interviewed have voted Brexit and are in opposition to a large part, perhaps all, of The Guardian’s agenda, but they are able to put across why in a way that The Guardian and its audience finds acceptable, or at least relatively inoffensive.  You will note that even in the segment with the man in Lincolnshire in which the problem of immigration is discussed, he negotiates around the central issues carefully in a way that must leave the observant viewer deeply annoyed and frustrated.  The result is an unconscious biasing towards relatively unchallenging opinions and the censoring-out of any genuine dissent against The Guardian’s agenda.  It’s a subtle process and even The Guardian’s own journalists and producers may not be entirely self-conscious or self-aware about what they are doing.

With this instructive example under our belts, we turn to what a Privatised BBC would be like.  We must remember that the BBC is not a pleasant little radio and TV outlet with nice smiley people all working fluffily in the public interest.  It is a state-owned and state-controlled diversified multi-media state conglomerate with interests in:

(i). the broadcasting of TV and radio programmes, now entirely digital;

(ii). the production of radio and TV programmes, for the BBC itself and other outlets (especially S4C in Wales);

(iii). news-gathering and other journalism;

(iv). the arts and creative industries;

(v). vocational and graduate training in management, broadcasting techniques, the arts and journalism and other relevant fields;

(vi). books, magazines and other publications;

(vii). various websites.

In evaluating the option of a future Commercial BBC, or Privatised BBC, one thing we need to do is imagine what the qualitative experience of its output will be like under those proposed situations, taking into account the BBC’s diversification and super-dominance.  It is by doing so that readers, we hope, will begin to understand why we insist on abolition and closure.  Obviously the exercise is little more than educated guesswork, but we can base our guesswork on the preponderance of what the BBC actually does now.

Here's an example which we think typifies the attitude of the BBC to the rest of the country outside London, the hip parts of Manchester, urban Bristol and its other metropolitan strongholds.  In other words, this is what the BBC thinks of the native white British, using its privileged position as a state broadcaster to tell us.  The message seems to be that if you voted for Brexit, you are somewhat of a xenophobe, and a bit of cad:

BBC Newsnight is not ‘news’, it is an ‘agenda’.  For comparison purposes, let's zoom back to The Guardian.  Here we have an exemplar of the genre. A jumpy little lefty with a squeaky voice, who looks like an overgrown first year university undergraduate, runs round the English countryside patronising everybody he meets ad hoc, snarkily inferring they are [stupid/backward] [country bumpkins/narrow-minded provincials] because they don’t agree with his Leftist predicates:

The BBC and The Guardian are the same people.  But maybe you’re not convinced?

Here’s another one from the squeaky little mouse:

The result of privatising the BBC will be that we are left with a multi-media conglomerate that looks like a hybrid of Channel Four, LBC, Virgin Media and The Guardian.  If you need it put to you bluntly: imagine The Guardian as a massive global multi-media empire and you have a sense of what a Privatised BBC could do.  Channel Four already tries its best to be the private sector's Leftist propaganda outlet of choice in Britain.  We don’t need another one.  Imagine furthermore this media empire retaining a Royal Charter (entirely possible, very many private companies are chartered) and having the mission of a public service broadcaster, with all the credibility and implied integrity that goes with it.

In response to these points, the supposition of many anti-TV licence campaigners goes something like this:

-The TV licence system becomes unsustainable and ends.

-It is then replaced by subscription-based viewing and advertising.

-The BBC then crumbles (a bit like ITV Digital did) because of insufficient viewers and subscribers.

This seems cogent enough, but a moment’s thought should tell you that it doesn’t hold.  The thinking is errored as soon as it comes up against what we know about the reality of the BBC’s institutional values and its broadcasting.  You don’t just change those things by changing the structure.  Even a public to private shift won’t change it.  The BBC already in effect operates much like a commercial entity.  Thanks to the John Birt era (an appointee of Thatcher), a large part of the BBC’s revenues and operating circumstances are commercial and resemble how a private company would function. Yet still the BBC is incurably Leftist and metropolitan; in fact, the more ‘commercialised’ the BBC has become, the worse its culture.  But then, why should that be a surprise?  Lots of private enterprises operate in this way and neo-liberal economics often goes hand-in-hand with social liberalism.  There was always a great congruency and alignment between Thatcherism and the social liberal Left.

Furthermore, we must consider the BBC’s accumulated strengths.  Whatever else may be said about the BBC, the following has to be conceded:

• The BBC is a prestigious brand with global market penetration and worldwide recognition.  Literally virtually everybody in the world, across cultures and languages, knows who the BBC are and broadly what they do.

• The BBC has had the benefit of nine decades of public investment, in its brand, its technics, its production values, its buildings, its talent.

• The BBC has a loyal following of many millions, and there is a hardcore (mostly Left, but many from the political Right) who will defend the BBC come hell or high water.

• The BBC has become intrinsic to the managerial-state, and each reciprocates the other with support and patronage (and probably bribes and favours too).  That will remain the case even if it is privatised.  Think we’re wrong?  Take a look at how privatised utilities work: they are in effect state bodies operating under the auspices of private capital, and in the case of some post-privatisation entities, the private sector status is nominal.  Suffice it to say that anybody who thinks commercialising or privatising the BBC in whatever way is a solution or would end its influence on the country is just being naïve.

Like it or not, those are facts or conclusions from facts.

Our view:

The BBC won’t crumble if the TV licence ends.  To the contrary: the BBC can and will thrive without the TV licence, and we think the BBC’s senior management (who aren’t stupid people) know this and privately want the TV licence system torn up for good.  They won’t say so publicly because they know why the TV licence still exists, despite its obvious ridiculousness.  It serves the interests of their political masters.

To be clear, the reason the TV licence remains in place is because it suits the political class.  For them it’s the perfect system:

-It allows the government of the day to exercise strategic and broad tonal control over the BBC, its output, its institutional culture.  As a hypothecated tax, it also avoids the problem of accountability and answerability that there would be if the BBC were funded out of general taxation.  Note, however, the rider below.

The important rider is that a move to a directly-funded BBC would be the easiest evolutionary option and explains why other broadcasting systems that have abandoned their license tradition have immediately took up direct funding models – it’s the path of least resistance, despite its difficulties.  It avoids a big legal or parliamentary showdown.  Abolition, in contrast, requires great political and moral courage and foresight.  Commercialisation and privatisation are legally and administratively quite tricky, politically-controversial and play into the hands of the relevant public broadcaster, which has a brand and whose elite management (and their private capital cronies and associates) want to be enriched thereby without state meddling.

Taking all the above into consideration, we hope you can see why an abolition campaign is needed.  Most of the alternatives don’t bear thinking about, but rest assured, they will be on the agenda should we reach the point where a boycott/non-payment campaign threatens the sustainability of TV licensing.

The State, Statism and Leftism

Conservative- and patriotic-minded people often think that if only they can capture the state machinery, it can be made to work in the national interest.  This does not follow.  The state itself is Leftist by nature, and 'statism' (i.e. the habitual or dogmatic reliance on the state to solve problems) always leads to the imposition of Leftist agendas.  

Margaret Thatcher came to understand this quite late in her career, and on becoming leader of the Conservative Party, set about trying to ‘roll back the state’.  The organised opposition to ‘Thatcherism’ came from the Labour Party, trade unions, the BBC,  local government, civil servants, academia, large companies, charities, and similar, not to mention opposition from 'wet' Tories within the Conservative Party itself.  Those forces remain in place today, and if anything, have been greatly strengthened.  They are the Left.  They are the people who rely for payment of their wages on enforced deductions from your wages: i.e. taxes.  They all work for the state or other public bodies, or in the case of charities and the corporate business sector, for organisations subsidised by the taxpayer.  Their opposition to Thatcher was virulent, bitter and at times violent, on a scale perhaps never before seen against a government of modern times.  The reason for this was not really because of Thatcher's policies as such.  In fact, virtually all post-War governments, both Labour and Conservative, had implemented similar policies (albeit not to such an ambitious or sweeping extent); rather, it was because Thatcher explicitly proposed to attack, undermine, and where possible, systematically dismantle, the very basis of the Left's power in Britain.

Thatcher's friends and allies were, variously, the entrepreneurial lower middle-class, most of the provincial Tory Party, much of the ordinary working class - especially in the south of England - and socially-conservative and patriotic elements within the Labour Party, who realised the Left was descending into lunacy.  Thus, the battle lines back then were quite similar to those that exist today over Brexit.  Thatcher failed in her objectives and, if anything, the reach of the state expanded under her governments.  One problem with Margaret Thatcher was that she had been formed politically under the post-War social-democratic consensus.  Her melodramatic Damascene conversion to Austrian economics and Gladstonian liberalism was her scientific intellect attempting to find a sufficiently-powerful antidote to her essentially leftist leanings, but she could not entirely shake-off those formative influences and was not sufficiently ruthless in dealing with the Left.  Nevertheless, 'Thatcherism' is a term coined in a British context for a style of government that goes against social-democratic policies in that it minimises state intervention; supports a concomitant contraction of the state; encourages economic liberalism, government spending cuts, tax cuts, deregulation, privatisation and flexible labour markets; and that pursues a patriotic stance at home and abroad.

We are not Thatcherites - in fact, we are not even supporters of the Conservative Party - and we have different motivations to Thatcher for attacking the Left, but we agree with her method.  In order to defeat the Left, we must dismantle the state – we think the BBC is a good starting point.  It is the centre of the Left’s power in this country.

Ours is not an argument against the state per se.  That is an entirely other subject and a different debate.  For us, the point is that the state, if it exists, must be minimal, and must - so far as is possible – work broadly in the interests of the indigenous population.  We believe the two things go together: a larger state bureaucracy means more Leftism, a lesser need for self-reliance among the population, a large number of intrusive and inefficient state-run or state-subsidised services that are available not just to the indigenous British but to all-comers; whereas, a smaller state bureaucracy, means less Leftism, a greater need for self-reliance among the population, but more focused and efficient essential services directed to the needs of the indigenous British people and no other.  We want the latter, not the former.  For that to happen in Britain, we must have a Ground Zero Revolution in which the state bureaucracy, and other similar bureaus such as those in local government and large companies, are dismantled under process of law.  This is true radicalism: a return to the roots of good governance founded in communities, families and individuals, instead of reliance on large impersonal entities that are funded at the point of a gun.  This blog focuses on the BBC, but from time-to-time we may touch on the other lines of attack and how radical reform can be achieved.

To be clear, it is not that we are uncaring right-wing free marketeers who want to remove social safety nets.  Quite the opposite: we want to see a system built around the needs and interests of the British people.  We think that requires a restoration of tradition, family, community, autonomy and responsibility, in which a minimal state agrees to provide safety nets on the understanding that people learn to stand on their own two feet and take responsibility for themselves, their families and their local communities.

What could replace the BBC?  We want to see public broadcasting replaced with plurality.  There is choice already, but not enough.  Most broadcasting is bland and conformist, and we think the existence of the BBC has something to do with this.  The private sector will fill the void to a large extent, but local communities and conscientious individuals could organise their own broadcasting stations, covering issues that matter to them instead of having concerns and issues imposed on them.  With digital technology, this is now possible.  The BBC itself cannot contribute to a pluralistic and democratic media environment.  It was founded as a paternalistic broadcaster, at arm’s length from the state, intended to inform, entertain and educate – and this was perfectly admirable and laudable for its time - but as society changed, the BBC lost its way and has gradually become a maternalistic general purpose busy-body agency of the state, smothering and stifling everybody, and telling everybody what is good for them.