Sharpe's Opinion

Just finished listening to House of Comments and I rather think you all missed the point of the BBC’s broadcasting model. As David Attenborough explains in his speech about the future of broadcasting (http://www.scribd.com/doc/22601976/The-Future-of-Public-Service-Broadcasting-by-Sir-David-Attenborough) the BBC was set up to make news, educational and cultural programs and only delved into entertainment to draw people to the educational stuff (I can personally attest that this model still works marvelously on iPlayer. I have never watched so many documentaries in all my life as I have in couple of years since it went live).

Programs like “Strictly Come Dancing” are not around because they are popular/entertaining per se, they exist because their popularity draws people to the BBC and exposes them to the BBC’s cultural programming. 6Music is under threat because it doesn’t fit well with the BBC model. It doesn’t draw a mass audience (Radio 1 & 2) or produce a cultural/educational output (Radio 3, 4 & 5). 6 Music is in a weird dead zone (unfortunately shared by my favorite channel BBC3) of producing excellent non-populist entertainment. Unfortunately, the BBC does not need this for its model to work. It does, however, need Radios 1 & 2. It’s essentially throwing out what it doesn’t need in order to protect the core BBC model from commercially driven attacks.

Another interesting future of broadcast was given by Stephen Fry if you’re interested and also comes as a podcast (http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/06/18/the-bbc-and-the-future-of-broadcasting/)

http://www.governing-principles.com