Today the BBC hit back after being told to do its job. The white paper on its future told the public service broadcaster that it needed to produce public service output, rather than duplicating material ably produced by the commercial sector. The phrase used was “distinctive output”, and this was repeated ad nausium in its reporting of this morning’s story that it would be dropping its popular web recipe archive.
The reason given was that this was not “distinctive output”, and according to Radio 4’s Today programme, it was to save £15M/year from its on-line budget. Really? Anyone who knows anything about web publishing can tell you that publishing recipes is cheap, especially when you already have them. A quick look around the BBC more exotic on-line offerings will soon show where the money really goes.
So what are they up to? Politics, of course. The liberal elite running the BBC isn’t happy about being reminded how it is supposed to be spending our money, and is acting up in a disgraceful manner.
In its own on-line reporting of the matter, the BBC is linking this to the new requirement to publish details everyone having their celebrity lifestyle funded by more than 450K of our license money. This is going to be be awkward for the luvvies and the star-struck BBC executives fawning over them.
It’s about time the BBC started serving the people who pay for it. It’s hardly impartial when it comes to politics; it’s right in there playing politics itself – albeit the playground variety.