Q1: How can the BBC’s public purposes be improved so there is more clarity about what the BBC should achieve?
Not a good start. How about having some more clarity in your questionnaire? ‘The BBC’s public purposes’ ? Are you referring to the ‘Educate, Entertain, Inform’ principles that broadcast media as a whole lost track of twenty years ago? The BBC has produced its fair share of mindless dross but still manages to produce programmes which don’t insult its audience’s intelligence – unlike so-called commercial broadcasters.
Q2: Which elements of universality are most important for the BBC?
Oh dear. This is becoming less a consultation and more an examination of people’s ability to understand government management jargon. The answer to your question is, of course, ‘it depends who is running the BBC’. I am afraid the phrase, ‘elements of universality’ is too vague to have any relevance.
Q3: Should Charter Review formally establish a set of values for the BBC?
I’m sure the BBC has had a ‘set of values’ since its creation. Have you had trouble finding or understanding them? If you are suggesting the establishment of new values based on the wording of your questionnaire, then the answer is, ‘a thousand times, no’. Values are clear, practical principles for the greater good. Not verbal diarrhoea with no basis in reality.
Q4: Is the expansion of the BBC’s services justified in the context of increased choice for audiences? Is the BBC crowding out commercial competition and, if so, is this justified?
This question brought to you by Rupert Murdoch and pals. I don’t see the BBC ‘crowding out commercial competition’. It is Sky et.al. that occupy the airwaves and brainwaves with their greedy, bullying nonsense.
Q5: Where does the evidence suggest the BBC has a positive or negative wider impact on the market?
This is merely a rewording of question four. You appear to have given up on clarity altogether. How much has this questionnaire cost?
Q6: What role should the BBC have in preparing for the future technological landscape including in future radio switchover?
Do you mean, ‘the future technological landscape’ generally, or merely that which pertains to broadcast media? I would say the BBC is in the ‘technological landscape’, now. It is helping to shape it, not waiting for it to appear. As for the final clause about ‘future radio switchover’, its throwaway meaninglessness reflects the attitude those in power have towards the medium. Radio helps people think, something which political and commercial authorities have always despised.
Q7: How well is the BBC serving its national and international audiences?
It is doing superbly, given the grotesque fragmentation of society.
Q8: Does the BBC have the right genre mix across its services?
As you are rewording prior questions once more, please see my answer to question seven.
Q9: Is the BBC’s content sufficiently high quality and distinctive from that of other broadcasters? What reforms could improve it?
BBC Radio remains of high quality. BBC TV has fallen foul of trying to compete with the likes of Sky, Channel 4, Channel 5 etc. Television as a medium is now a sewer. This isn’t the BBC’s fault alone, of course. It is due to businessmen’s greed combined with the general public’s wilful ignorance. Tackling these two elements would improve BBC TV’s content.
Q10: How should the system of content production be improved through reform of quotas or more radical options?
This question makes the BBC sound like a Communist factory. Thanks, Rupert.
Q11: How should we pay for the BBC and how should the licence fee be modernised?
There is no need to abolish or ‘modernise’ the licence fee.
Q12: Should the level of funding for certain services or programmes be protected? Should some funding be made available to other providers to deliver public service content?
This is yet another rehashed question, this time of question eleven. My answer has not changed.
Q13: Has the BBC been doing enough to deliver value for money? How could it go further?
The programmes I listen to more than justify the cost of the BBC. The rest, I ignore. As to how the BBC could ‘go further’ in delivering ‘value for money’, I might suggest that it made more programmes of the type I listen to. This would, however, be gross, narrow-minded narcissism and we have enough of that in politics and broadcast media already.
Q14: How should the BBC’s commercial operations, including BBC Worldwide, be reformed?
This is a leading question more suited to a sweaty UKIP flyer.
Q15: How should the current model of governance and regulation for the BBC be reformed?
See my answer to question fourteen.
Q16: How should Public Value Tests and Service Licences be reformed and who should have the responsibility for making these decisions?
See my answer to question fourteen.
Q17: How could the BBC improve engagement with licence fee payers and the industry through research, transparency and complaints handling?
It’s difficult to engage with licence fee payers when the BBC’s competitors in ‘the industry’ are screaming for it to be torn down.
Q18: How should the relationship between Parliament, Government, Ofcom, the National Audit Office and the BBC work? What accountability structures and expectations, including financial transparency and spending controls should apply?
Parliament, Government, Ofcom and the National Audit Office (a very long name for what is essentially one organisation) need to sort out their own ‘financial transparency and spending controls’ before lecturing others.
Q19: Should the existing approach of a 10-year Royal Charter and Framework Agreement continue?
If we have to suffer this kind of ‘consultation’ every ten years, no. No, no, no, no, no.
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