BBC - how does it fight back?

[Mr Q]

The BBC wastes too much money on services where the opportunity for risk-taking, innovation, and out-there creativity is not great enough. It's paying for services which could be provided for, perhaps with a small reduction in quality, by the public sector.

But offset that risk of lower quality by transferring some services to the private sector against TV programming with greatly increased budgets which could fund the truly genius, daring, and inventive where profit was not an imperative.

The possibilities are exciting and mind-blowing. And I want the BBC (and Channel 4) to provide the lead in that.

The BBC and Channel 4 already do. The bulk of British TV exported around the world is from the BBC and Channel 4. It's very much all about what you want with little regard for what others want. You want the BBC to narrow it's focus to "innovative and out there" TV only, despite the fact you don't really know that's what everyone else wants. The BBC is not HBO. It has a responsibility to provide for all tastes and, despite what you seem to think, not everyone wants just wall to wall "out there" TV without fluff like Home Under The Hammer getting in the way. Some people's idea of good TV is the decidedly middle of the road 'Death in Paradise' and some people prefer the edgier 'I May Destroy You'. The BBC can, and should, do both. Your vision of a one note TV only BBC that's all edge all of the time isn't going to appease licence fee payers it's likely to turn off even more. Especially the Popmaster ones!

I dunno what it is but you seem to just want to disagree with me as a matter of principle.

In order to do this successfully, you're wilfully ignoring large swaithes of what I've written. Don't see why you're wasting your time responding to me, personally.

But once more, in the vain hope this actually gets through this time, I am not proposing the scrapping of services but I am proposing the wholesale transfer of some of those services in a beauty competition format to the private sector. Those services are those services which the private sector would have a more than reasonable chance of running for profit.

Therefore, all the services you and I want and don't want will remain, some in the BBC and some in the private sector.

No-one will lose out.

From the funds which are freed up from this move, the BBC invests its money on improving the services where it can add the greatest value - programmes that would simply be uneconomic for the commercial sector to produce because a) they wouldn't be popular enough or b) the return from selling advertising space in between those programmes would be insufficient to cover costs and make a profit.

In an ideal world, BBC management would be focused on creating a piece of appointment viewing (a film, a drama, a new series, and so on) once a week to increase the popularity of the corporation and people's respect and affinity for it. Because it's not doing that as well as it used to right now.

At around the 8th attempt Blobs, is that any clearer for you?

I wouldn't object to the BBC divesting itself of commercially viable content. Though I also accept there are plenty who think the BBC should be producing the middle-of-the-road stuff that brings in eyeballs. And I acknowledge the argument that by offering mainstream fare, the BBC reaches a wider audience, to which it can then showcase its more niche/cutting-edge content -- content that people might not otherwise be aware of.

That said, I think you're arguing for the BBC to do something that it probably already aspires to -- and perhaps even thinks it does -- do. The BBC does produce a range of "appointment viewing", as you describe it. You think the current offering is inadequate, which is a perfectly legitimate view. But I can't help but feel you're simply expecting the BBC to produce content that you think is great TV. And that's not the same as creating content that reaches the entire United Kingdom (and can be exported globally too).

In addition, I'm unclear as to whether you think this "appointment viewing" should be risky -- stuff that commercial outlets wouldn't invest in, because they don't know if there's an audience. Or if you mean that "appointment viewing" should be mass appeal. Because if it's the former (which I think is a good space for the BBC to play in), that necessarily means that there's every chance of investing in lots of flops in terms of audience numbers even if the production standards are best in class. And if it's the latter, then I'm not sure I understand what you think the BBC's role is or should be.

Finally, quality means different things to different people. And perceptions of quality are shaped by time and context. Part of what makes a piece of content stand out in a crowded market is that it offers something different to what people have seen before - or at least something different to what dominates mainstream consumption patterns at a point in time. While I wouldn't argue that there's only a fixed amount of creative ideas in the world, it is harder to "break the mould" if you're expected to do so every week. In short, part of what defines quality is that there is relatively little of it.