BBC New Broadcasting House
The culture minister John Whittingdale may not have succeeded in giving himself the ability to re-schedule the BBC’s programming to save ITV from the perils of competition in prime time. However, the government’s White Paper does redefine the Corporation’s mission as something more than the holy trinity ‘Educate, Inform, Entertain’. The BBC now has a new remit: “To act in the public interest, serving all audiences with impartial, high-quality and distinctive media content and services that inform, educate and entertain”.
In fact, the term “distinctive” is liberally sprinkled throughout the document. Lying behind this of course is the idea that the BBC should opt out of popular programming, and confine itself instead to providing programming and content to make good market failure. The White Paper is explicit on this point, referring to concerns about the BBC’s distinctiveness and “the market impact of its more mainstream services” and setting a framework which will allow the Corporation to “focus its creative energy on high quality distinctive content that differentiates it from the rest of the media market”.
