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Chris Blackhurst: The BBC’s values are skewed when it puts web over broadcast

 
Change of tack: George Osborne is challenging the BBC and telling to curb its online activity (Picture: Peter Macdiarmid, Getty Images)
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Chris Blackhurst
9 July 2015

On a trip to the North of England, I was contacted by one of the Radio 4 news programmes and asked if I would go on, to spout off about something or other.

I said where I was, and apologised. No, they said, they had a studio in that town. Could I go there?

What I found was an outpost of the BBC, far removed from the glitzy New Broadcasting House or, elsewhere in the North, the corporation’s buildings at Salford’s MediaCity.

There was only one person around. The place was dusty and empty. He had the correct equipment, plus a large stack of CDs.

I couldn’t get out of my mind an image of him, sitting there, all on his own, broadcasting into the night.

Meanwhile, the BBC spends £174 million on its online presence every year. Part of the money goes on the website for that local station. It’s bright and all-dancing, linking to the BBC’s myriad sites.

Looking at it, nobody would know the actual broadcasting bit was so rundown and seemingly under-resourced. Somewhere, along the way, the BBC’s values have become seriously skewed.

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Late in the day, George Osborne is challenging the BBC and telling it to curb its online activity. It’s a smart move for the Chancellor, guaranteed to win him praise from a newspaper industry that has seen newspapers suffer in the face of the BBC’s web onslaught.

While they must try to make a profit for their shareholders, the BBC is under no such obligation and can continue on its sweet way, adding to its increasingly vast online bulk.

According to Osborne, it’s not only local newspapers that are under threat — nationals, too, with the BBC effectively becoming the national newspaper as well as the national broadcaster.

Business news in pictures - July 9

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Putting to one side Osborne’s desire to appease the newspapers with a leadership contest due before the next election, he has a valid point. I’ve never understood why the BBC requires web pages that bear no relation to its broadcasting remit.

It should confine itself to TV and radio. Online there should be some web pages dedicated to programmes, and BBC iPlayer. And that’s all.

My suspicion is that for the BBC executives, however, that is nowhere near trendy enough, that they see themselves as closer to Apple and Silicon Valley than my man and his northern studio.