Stop building an empire, BBC told by own viewers
THE BBC’s viewers want the corporation to stop building an empire and look after its existing services instead, according to BBC Trust research.
In an embarrassing blow to the broadcaster, a survey of more than 11,500 licence fee payers found many are worried about its expansion plans. Viewers fear the corporation will end up spending money it can not afford on new online projects, rather than saving its existing line-up of television channels and radio stations from the axe.
BBC boss Lord Hall laid out plans last September to expand its website, including a new children’s iPlayer, and an online news streaming service. He also announced a plan to expand the World Service by launching new TV and radio stations overseas, including in Russia and North Korea.
Now it seems licence fee payers are far from convinced by the proposals.
One viewer said the plans sound ‘lovely to do if you had loads of money’ but were not ‘worth cutting other things for’. Another said: ‘I think the BBC should concentrate on its TV and radio output and programmes they can sell to make money rather than cutting some services to create a children’s iPlayer and broadcast to North Korea.’
The report, compiled by polling agency ICM for the BBC Trust, the broadcaster’s governing body, said: ‘There is a strong feeling that new ideas, if realised, should come as additions to existing services, rather than replacing them. Fear of possible cuts to existing services is enough to put some respondents off the new ideas entirely.
‘In some instances, particularly in relation to the World Service, there are questions over whether the BBC should fund certain services at all.’
Older licence fee payers were also worried the BBC could end up alienating them by focusing too much on its online services.
‘[They] fear that creeping digitalisation means they will be excluded from BBC services in the future,’ the report said.
It is not the first time the BBC has come under fire for expanding its web presence too far. Last summer, George Osborne accused the corporation of being ‘imperial in its ambitions’.
In September, Lord Hall insisted the BBC was not trying to spread its wings too far, but admitted that it was ‘inevitable’ that some operations would have to be ‘scaled back’ to pay for his plans.
He did not say which services would be in line for the chop, but BBC4 and the BBC News 24 channel are both thought to be potential casualties.
AS temperatures plunge and pensioners shiver, the ruthless profiteering of the energy companies can surely be endured no longer.
True, the Big Six have to spend large sums on renewing gas mains and other infrastructure. And, yes, their duty to plan ahead means they buy wholesale fuel at prices fixed months in advance.
But when every conceivable excuse has been taken into account, they have no justification whatever for the monstrously raw deal they offer customers.
Indeed, over the past two years, wholesale prices have plummeted by 50 per cent. Yet the average household bill of more than £1,300 has come down by only 14 per cent, while the competition watchdog says consumers are overcharged by an outrageous £1.2billion a year.
At the energy firms, meanwhile, profits are soaring – at SSE, by a startling 48 per cent last year – while the bosses of the Big Six pocket seven-figure pay packages. Among them Iain Conn, the new boss at Centrica, which runs British Gas, stands to make up to £6.3million this year.
Meanwhile, a survey finds that sky-high bills will force almost five million over-65s to turn down their heating this winter, at grave risk to their health.
As long ago as May, Energy Secretary Amber Rudd wrote to the suppliers asking them to cut prices. Yet so far, only BG has complied, reducing gas tariffs by a miserly 5 per cent. And since Miss Rudd’s letter, wholesale prices have plunged another 22 per cent.
Until proper competition is introduced to the energy market, making it simpler to compare tariffs and switch suppliers, tougher regulation will be the only way to ensure a fair deal. The days of asking nicely are over.
FOR years, this paper has said the BBC should stop empire-building (which threatens to crush all competition) and concentrate on the programmes at which it excels. Now its own survey of licence- fee payers delivers the same message. So will the Corporation rip up its grandiose expansion plans? Dream on.