Shades of Caruso

Cutting Off Our Nose To Spite Our Face

Before I get into this next set of Lessons Learned From Bad TV, I just want to write a few words about the recent announcement of cuts within the BBC. Without getting into specifics, I just want to say that the Corporation is very dear to me, and not just because I really enjoyed The Shadow Line this year. The BBC has had a transformative effect on my life more profound than high school or college or university or unemployment. The Corporation saved my life. It was somewhere I could hide from the crummy realities of the world, surrounded by people with a very specific worldview and attitude. You hear critics of the BBC act like it has an elitist air about it, and it does. Because the people who work there actually give a damn about what they’re doing.

I met some of my favourite people there. Every one of them, even if they weren’t in a creative job, had an attitude that they were building something. Every brick mattered in the edifice that was the BBC. That energy was obvious everywhere. Even when a job got you down, I reckon the majority of people working there would put up with it just for that feeling of community. It’s a feeling I’ve carried with me since, partially because the people I met there continued to shower me with kindness and affection even after I was gone. Yes, it’s a club. But it’s a club that let me in, and looked after me, and trusted me. That counts for a lot.

And so Delivering Quality First has been revealed, and it’s bad news for everyone working at the Beeb, even if their jobs are safe. The Corporation is undergoing the death of a thousand cuts that anyone who loves it has always feared. The enemies are massing outside the walls and they’re rubbing their hands with glee. And yet numerous commentators in the right wing press want more cuts, channel closures, sackings. The BBC is one of the most trusted brands in the world, spreading an image of tolerance, fairness, and unique cultural quirkiness from one end of the planet to another. But apparently we must diminish it, because it wants to kill Christianity or capitalism or fox-hunting (spoiler alert: it doesn’t want any of that).

The mewling shit-merchants of the right wing press clack their demon hooves together and they get their way because bullies almost always get their way when they find some good people to torture. And when they don’t get everything they want, when the BBC doesn’t slash itself to pieces by closing down services intended to provide The Youth Of Today with unique content tailored just for them, the shit-merchants clack harder, baying for blood and calling for the BBC to be stripped down until all that’s left is Ed Stourton and Susannah Reid sitting in a church somewhere reading Evelyn Waugh novels into a ribbon microphone, while the barely-audible ghost of Robert Robinson apologises for all eternity for the BBC’s obvious Satanistic leanings.

Well fuck every single one of these sneering, self-destructive clowns. You’re crowing over job losses, families turned upside-down, futures ruined, opportunities closed off. You’re calling for the punishment of my friends just because you think the BBC is yours and yours only, and must be punished for not doing exactly what you want. If you could all just shut up for a while you might finally understand that when you say the BBC is for everyone, that means EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY, not everyone in your bridge club.

It has to cover as many bases as it can. It can’t just be The Archers And World Service Corporation. It speaks for us all; what these cultural vandals, these useful idiots, these Lord Haw Haws of the British Soul don’t realise is that the BBC doesn’t get that output right first time. It’s a process of discovery, finding out what the country is thinking and trying to articulate. The BBC is the voice of the country, and to hear what it has to say we just have to listen as if we were waiting for King Colin Firth’s stammering mouth to get to the point. Criticising the BBC for not getting it right first time is like telling the King to get to the point. It’s unpatriotic and kinda disgusting.

Okay, I’ll get back to the rest of my mini-series about bad TV in the next post, after once more saying this; to my BBC brethren, both former and future, those gone but not forgotten, those who have passed through my life and changed it, and those who are still around and very dear to me, I wish you the very best of luck, because you made me a better person and I thank the Lord (Reith) that I got to have that experience.

October 7, 2011 - Posted by admiralneck | BBC