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Oh dear, aunty is in trouble again. I refer of course, to the BBC following the eruption of indignation over an obscene phone call made by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand during a Radio 2 program. Not only has the content been deemed offensive but the man they were verbally abusing was 78-year-old Andrew Sachs, now a national treasure due to his memorable performances as Manuel in Fawlty Towers.
Having heard the unpleasant message left by Ross and Brand a great number of people are upset at its tasteless content but there is something more offensive still. These two men are paid huge sums of
taxpayers' money to behave like juveniles who never learned any manners.
Ross is understood to have a 3-year contract with the BBC worth £18 million. This grates even more starkly now than when it was announced. In the present economic climate ordinary citizens, who do arguably more important jobs, struggle to survive while uncouth youth rakes in the money.
Ross’s pay was justified at the time on the basis that he is a brilliant professional broadcaster. He has just demonstrated very clearly that he is not. Brand is also very highly paid and I will leave you to judge his worth. A fiver seems too much to me but then I am not in the age group his alleged skills are aimed at.
Whatever your personal taste in broadcasting, the amounts of money involved here should surely guarantee a very high degree of professionalism. It seems hard to find any in these two gentlemen. This incident aside, it highlights wider issues and it leaves the BBC itself open to criticism and not only the
judgment of those who cleared the program for broadcast.
Already I hear discussions on the future of those responsible for this editorial decision and it seems they risk being pilloried. Certainly it cannot be the high point in their careers but this risks diverting attention from the more important issues.
It is all too common to find an individual to blame when there is an institutional fault that needs to be addressed and this case goes to the heart of the debate about publicly funded broadcasting. We should expect more of aunty Beeb.
Some already say that the licence fee is an unfair tax because they seldom watch the BBC on TV or listen to BBC radio. Whilst that may seem an understandable position I wonder if these detractors have tried spending long periods of time in countries that do not have what Brits now take for granted? Television in
particular is rarely anything but dire almost everywhere else. It would be lamentable if this incident were used to attack the
Beeb rather than prevent a further push in the direction of Ross and co.
American TV is rightly legendary for its trashy quality and Pink Floyd’s famous analysis of, “64 channels
of [and here I paraphrase] rubbish to choose from,” is hard to improve on, except that there are now nearer to 1000 sources of terrible broadcasting.
Spain is little better with much of the TV programming pitched at the game show, Mexican soap opera level, or imported US shows and films. All these dubbed into Spanish or a regional language, making the credibility even lower than in the original. Hello magazine (Hola over here) was born in Spain and a celebrity culture rules the roost. TV commercials are extremely loud and so long that it is – literally - possible to take a shower during the commercial break.
What locally produced drama there is is of mediocre standard and while some documentaries in Catalonia are good they seldom approach the quality of programs seen in Britain. A serial like Pride and Prejudice would be inconceivable.
Thanks to the BBC, Britain does not have to endure such poor viewing, although many people feel that quality has suffered too much already. Certainly Ross and Brand have done nothing to dispel that view this week but we still have a great deal to be grateful for.
The quality of all British broadcasting is dictated by the standard that was first set by the BBC - even that of the commercial channels - and it is vital that those standards are not allowed to slip. Those who complain about paying a licence for channels they seldom watch would do well to consider that fact.
The Ross and Brand furore is a good moment to consider the way we would like to see British broadcasting going in the future. In defending high standards we should also defend the BBC as an institution, even if it may be questionable just how hard it should chase ever higher ratings.
Nowhere I know of has the wonderful speech-based radio that the BBC provides and the Natural History Unit in Bristol makes wildlife films that are the envy of the world. BBC 4 Television too has won awards for
its programming and rightly so.
The reason is simple. They are able to choose programs on the basis of quality and originality instead of the amount of
advertisers' money they will get. That latter necessity is why American television is aimed at an average age of thirteen; it is simply the biggest audience. It is also the reason why Americans do not get unbiased news reporting. Big business corporations run television and big corporations have big agendas.
So, let us defend our public broadcaster whilst questioning some of its decisions. Paying £18 million to someone
whose professionalism at the level of kids sniggering behind the bike sheds is bad enough but to allow it to be used as a stick to beat and endanger yet another national treasure would be worse.
What is obvious too, is that most kids taunting one another behind the bike sheds are a good deal funnier than Messrs Ross and Brand, so maybe a bit of imaginative recruiting is called for; it would improve standards as well as saving some BBC money for the really important stuff.
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