The BBC began life as the British Broadcasting Company, formed on October 18th 1922. Only in 1926 were the company’s assets transferred to the non-commercial (and Crown Chartered) British Broadcasting Corporation. Shortly after the new company made its first broadcast, John Reith (later Sir John Reith, later Lord Reith) was made its first General Manager.
A Scottish Calvinist, Reith put his moral tone onto everything the BBC did. Anything lighthearted and frivolous was frowned upon, and anything ‘popular’ was treated with suspicious reserve. Reith was determined to avoid what he saw as the free-for-all of American radio, where stations competed to cover events that attracted large audiences, and therefore drew in advertising revenues.
The BBC, when it was a company, never carried paid adverts, but did carry sponsored programmes funded by British newspapers. When it became a corporation, it banned advertising or sponsorship of any kind. The BBC came to be funded out of taxation, called a licence fee, which everyone using a radio, and later a television, was obliged by law to pay, or face criminal prosecution. The advent of the transistor radio in the 1960s killed off the radio licence as unenforceable.
The BBC maintained a fierce independence, but expressed Reith’s own beliefs. It pretended neutrality in the General Strike of 1926, but banned broadcasts about it by the British Labour Party, and delayed a peace appeal by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Its moral tone reflected Reith’s, banning all mention of sex or infidelity.
Reith’s outlook was firmly highbrow. He believed it was the BBC’s duty to educate its audience into refined, as opposed to popular, tastes. It covered middle and upper class interests, featuring the Oxford and Cambridge Boat races, along with tennis and equestrian events, but severely limited air time covering football and cricket.
The BBC today attracts much criticism. It made a bad judgement that still influences its output, thinking that it could only justify the continuation of its compulsory licence fee if it attracted mass audiences. Once it was competing for listeners and viewers with commercial stations, people questioned whether they should be taxed to provide mass audience shows that were provided at no cost to them by independent stations. The BBC spends a great deal of money trying to win weekend audiences from commercial stations. Had it made its brief public service broadcasting, not readily fundable from commercial sources, it might have made a case on cultural and educational grounds.
A more serious charge levelled today is that BBC personnel, editors, producers and presenters, overwhelmingly represent a narrow metropolitan left wing outlook. Its recruitment adverts are placed in the Guardian, and what it thinks are the only ‘respectable’ views never look beyond the Westminster and Media bubble. Its ‘bubblethink’ pursues a relentless anti-tory, anti-business and pro-EU stance. Its presenters see themselves as a political opposition, interrupting speakers before they can answer questions, and it engages in ‘investigative journalism’ that does not belong in an impartial public service institution.
The BBC licence fee’s days are numbered. It will become a subscription service, and those who do not pay its fees will be disconnected, rather than imprisoned. Its politically correct ‘woke’ agenda might change when it loses viewers and subscriptions from an audience no longer forced by law to fund it. Lord Reith would no doubt turn in his grave at that prospect, where he not already spinning there in disbelief and shame at what his creation has become.