Fans of the sitcom W1A, this witty satire of BBC jargon, will be happy to know that they have recorded a new episode, which takes place in Lords. I was lucky enough to find a studio audience (surprisingly small) in which three performers played parodies of themselves: CEO Tim Davy, who thinks everything is great; President Richard Sharp, who is another Jimmy Saville far from a heart attack; and Claire Sumner, director of politics, who just talks nonsense.
The first question from Baroness Stowell, Chair of the Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies, was: “What is the future of the BBC?”
“This is, as you all know, a centuries-old institution,” Sharpe said, starting badly, confusing it with a monarchy that “has the potential for value for generations to come, not only for this nation but for the world.” So why don’t young people watch it anymore? “Young people need to be indiscriminate in the media,” he said, his mind turning to the horrific monkeypox epidemic that began in the sauna, but in the end it was “how we affect the ecosystem.”
Tim Davey agreed with Lord Lipsey that the BBC should not “lean towards the young … Universality … does not mean doing everything for everyone”. Rather, the BBC should be a “public service that is targeted, accessible.”
“Affordable rather than universal?” Baroness Stowell asked. Well, I prefer to think of it as “differentiation and focus,” Davey explained, and Sumner helpfully noted that universality has “three different prisms.”
We need to look at “all options … no prejudices,” Sharpe insisted. But it is always important to develop a strategy before dealing with a favorite organization (which, let’s not forget, dates back to before Magna Carta). “When you make a change … you have to be incredibly careful to assess … the unintended consequences against the intended consequences.
Warming up his topic and probably encouraged by the silence in the room, he said: “We must think of ourselves as national reciprocal … The priorities of our values lead to what is distinctive in the totality of the value proposition we represent before the nation and before the world. ”
At that moment, Baroness Buscombe, who had listened to all this with the expression of a woman receiving complex Swahili instructions, asked: who will “interpret” what you are saying to the general public?
Admittedly, I thought almost the same thing. Although the dialogue on this scene was very amusing, surely even these characters could see the irony in using words like accessibility and universality in a way that makes them completely inaccessible and special? As a general rule, the more complicated the excuse for spending other people’s money, the weaker the argument.
“In terms of debate,” Sumner concluded, “in terms of being really clear about what we mean, as you say, a kind of cut, part of the clarity, so to speak, be clear.”
Baroness Buscombe nodded politely. One hopes that this episode will be broadcast with subtitles.
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