In a digital world of short attention spans and online chatter, it has become the smart thing to say broadcast television is over. I disagree.
That’s why the BBC and its original Reithian aims of public service broadcasting are needed more than ever. If we are to successfully discern actual truth from fantasy, then we need to understand history.
The BBC can be a sort of safe house for truth; a place where, if you tell the story right, gaining knowledge can be a pleasure. At their best, the BBC’s documentaries allow people to be absorbed in a subject without having to declare allegiance to their particular tribe.
I would like to see my Holocaust film and other BBC programmes become part of mainstream education in colleges and high schools in the UK and even America. We should take advantage of that one moment where kids don’t have their smartphones out; where they can be told important stories based on the truth and ask difficult questions at the same time.
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I think platforms are the least of the problems, but funding does worry me. Reform have said, if they form a government, they will abolish the licence fee. That would be a terrible blow, an absurd bit of national self-amputation. The BBC is internationally respected. Trust me, if you live in the US for as long as I have, you realise just how good the BBC really is.
A populist narrative around the licence fee is not a new phenomenon. In 1986, when the licence fee was increased from £46 to £58, and Mrs Thatcher was talking about the BBC taking advertising, John Cleese starred in a short film for the BBC. It was a parody of a famous scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Cleese goes into a pub and asks, “What has the BBC ever done for us?” The pub’s regulars, BBC stars like David Attenborough, Terry Wogan and Esther Rantzen tell him just how many things we get for the licence fee.
View oEmbed on the source websiteToday it remains one of our great national virtues that we can hold more than two things together and still recognise them as British. Someone should be shouting out loud about how great the BBC is. I suppose it should be me and, if asked, I shall. Maybe even if I’m not asked.
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