Bolton’s sacking is a sinister signifier of BBC brain drain
Sometimes you just have to conclude that the BBC is determined to cut its own throat. What in heaven’s name are they doing sacking Roger Bolton from Feedback?
Bolton is one of Radio 4’s most accomplished, trusted and likeable presenters. For 23 years now he has skilfully walked a tricky line – championing the BBC’S millions of listeners and holding the BBC to account, on-air, on their behalf. In the current series alone, he has tackled Radio 4’s head of drama on editorial standards and the current emphasis on “younger” storylines in The Archers.
He grilled the BBC’S Scotland editor on impartiality in the Scottish independence debate, reflected the public upset over Radio 5 Live’s ditching of the classified football results, and hauled the Today
programme over the coals for failing to challenge a contributor’s apparent linking of hooliganism and the Hillsborough disaster.
In his last programme on Friday, Bolton led with a hugely informative interview with the BBC’S China correspondent on how he’s coping with covering the whole of that vast country, currently, on his own. Bolton was one of the few means available to BBC consumers to express their disquiet, curiosity, anger, and – equally regularly – their joy and appreciation of much of the BBC’S output. He delivered as many listener bouquets as brickbats and was nothing if not scrupulously fair in his coverage.
So, why sack him? Bolton certainly didn’t want to go, saying on Friday: “The BBC decided it was time for me to stand down” and “Obviously, I’d have liked to have continued.” At the same time, he served up a swingeing – and deserved – rebuke to those BBC bosses who “more often than not” refuse to come on the programme and defend their decision-making to listeners. Had he put someone senior’s nose out of joint? So far, all that’s been reported is that the BBC have appointed a new production company to make Feedback.
Some of us are old enough to remember the furore that accompanied the sacking of Bolton’s predecessor, Chris Dunkley, in 1998, at a time when the Radio 4 schedules were being rejigged (ie ripped apart). Dunkley, also always keen to reflect the anger of listeners, was unceremoniously dumped by the BBC, who claimed: “It was time for a fresh approach.”
Or was Bolton’s sacking another example of what looks, to many, like a wave of ageism sweeping through the BBC just now? And a determination to slough off anyone difficult among their brightest and best. So far, the ongoing talent “brain drain” has had a certain tinge of inevitability about it. If Andrew Marr and Emily Maitlis decide that voicing their own opinion is more important than impartiality, then fair enough, let them run off into the arms of commercial TV and radio. And if they make more money, or come a cropper, in the more brutally meritocratic commercial world, so be it.
So too with Vanessa Feltz who’s departing her early-morning Radio 2 show to move to Talktv, looking forward to “the chance to have a personal passionate point of view at last.” Fair enough, let’s hope her massive £400,000 BBC salary is redeployed to bring on some fresh talent.
Elsewhere in Radio 2, though, there’s a sense of more sinister forces at work. Paul O’grady, age 67, whose much-loved show felt a bit like Sunday Afternoon with Gran (fun, but still gran) quit a couple of weeks ago, after being told he had to continue sharing his slot with comedian
Rob Beckett, 36. Steve Wright, 68, is leaving his prestigious afternoon slot (the revived version of which he’s held since 1999) in September to make way for Scott Mills who’s moving over from Radio 1 after 24 years.
There is an argument – not palatable to loyal listeners, understandably – that a certain amount of churn in the media landscape is healthy. And that if Radio 2 is to have any chance of attracting a new generation of listeners they need to clear space for voices that will appeal to a slightly younger audience. Debatable as that is, it’s an argument that is not equally applicable to Radio 4 and certainly not to 76-yearold Bolton’s case, whose impeccable journalistic skills and long experience are the very things that enable him to be a fearless rattler of cages in a BBC that can sometimes seem, like too many other publicly funded institutions in this country, to think itself too important for scrutiny and accountability.
So why make it easy for the BBC and simply say that Bolton will be missed? What we should be doing is demanding they reverse this unjust decision that serves no one, least of all listeners, and bring him back.