Peter Salmon, who unexpectedly quit BBC Studios earlier this year. Credit: Dave Thompson / PA Images
Well the dust is settling after the launch of the government’s BBC White Paper. Yet the headline language of victory and defeat is not particularly enlightening and fails to take the serious and subtle question of the future of public service broadcasting into account. As a former BBC producer and commissioning editor at both the BBC and Channel 4, I am deeply committed to that future, and I have become convinced that we in Britain take our hugely successful broadcasting ecology for granted at our peril.
A fragile economy under attack
The whole tone of the narrative expressed in the government’s White Paper seems to be about ‘putting the BBC back in its box’: ensuring that it is not anti-competitive, increasing regulation and financial efficiency, while mouthing platitudes about how wonderful it is. Meanwhile, the privatisation of Channel 4 remains on the agenda, which, in the words of its current Chief Executive David Abraham, is a ‘solution in search of a problem’.
