State Broadcasting - A Commercial Liability?

State Broadcasting these days seems to be something of a dirty word. Well, two dirty words, actually. The days when the BBC called for Nation to Speak Peace Unto Nation seem a distant, sepia memory, relegated to the attic of the world's broadcasting conscience along with the Ovaltineys and the Andrews Sisters.

The BBC in Britain comes under increasing pressure to be competitive, lean and mean. Barely a day goes by without the UK Press sounding off about how wasteful/incompetent/bureaucratic the BBC is. Curiously these same newspapers rarely mention that they're major shareholders in the BBC's competition from commercial TV and satellite broadcasters with a vested interest in knocking the BBC. But is the BBC all that bad? Is it broke, so does it need fixing? Can the organisation that brought you "Life on Earth", "Pride and Prejudice" and "Monty Python's Flying Circus" be that badly out of kilter?

When I worked at the BBC, I remember reading a headline that screamed how a government audit had discovered a quarter of a million pounds being wasted across the Corporation.

What the article FAILED to mention was that the sum of money involved was a tiny fraction of one percent of the BBC's annual turnover... and the actual conclusion of the report was that the BBC used its funds very wisely. But politically it would not have been expedient to say the BBC was good value for money. It's much easier to make a fast political buck by twisting the statistics.

Take a look at the situation in Australia. The ABC, like the BBC, was state funded from a license fee, and took no advertising. It held its own for many years against fierce competition from commercial broadcasters. But gradually, the funds have dried up. The ABC, once a true repository of Australian culture, now seems to be entirely reliant on the income generated by the Bananas in Pyjamas as it staggers from crisis to crisis. Is the viewer well served by constant fiddling with ABC budgets by politicians? I don't think so.

Move across the Tasman to New Zealand. New Zealand's state broadcaster, once called the NZBC, prided itself on being the 'BBC down under'. For a tiny nation, it produced excellent, local material. The government split TV and radio up, and sold off all the commercial bits. TV became a State-owned-Enterprise, dedicated to making a profit. Radio New Zealand, which once operated a chain of highly successful radio stations up and down the country along with the nationwide National and Concert stations was reduced to just the latter two. What does the viewer see now? Very little locally produced material, and a vast swathe of cheaply imported shows from Australia, America and the UK.

In America, the PBS system is reduced to begging for its supper. It shows the highest possible quality television, provides the most outstanding radio programmes... and gets little support for its efforts. And yet, without PBS, the world would never have seen and heard some truly great programmes.

So where's the answer? I don't believe there's a simple one. Left to their own devices, State Broadcasters tend to become flabby, bureaucratic and dull. Exposed to too much competition, and they wither and die for lack of an audience. Somewhere in the middle there must be a happy medium which gives us, the viewers, the highest quality and the most choice without costing us the earth.

Perhaps the last people who should be in charge of broadcasting should be our politicians. After all, when do they get to listen to the radio or watch TV - except of course, when they're on it? But that's another story...

If you want to take a look at state broadcasters (and their competition), have a look at some of the links on this page.