BBC’s global ambitions risk relegating Britain to a backwater
Is Britain big enough for the BBC? Apparently not. Like British Airways in the 1980s and the Guardian and Barclays Bank today, the state-owned broadcaster sees the UK as too small and unimportant to contain the enormity of its role in the world. Accordingly, it has decided to go “global” – that is to say, American – reducing its staffing levels in Britain while increasing the numbers in New York and Washington.
The planned shift should come as no surprise. The existing BBC World News – a commercial venture funded by subscription and advertising, not currently available at home – is already the corporation’s largest and most important television channel. Now, through a merger with the home-based BBC News, due to be formalised in April, Britain will take its place as, at best, first among equals when the big decisions are taken each day on what is important and what is not.
Available in more than 452 million homes, millions of hotel rooms, 170 cruise ships, 53 airlines and 23 mobile phone networks, World News already dispenses a non-stop mix of international news, sport, weather, business, current affairs and documentaries. The UK is included in the mix, but the output in a typical day is more focused on what is happening in the US, Europe, Africa, India, the Middle East and China than on developments in Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff, or even London.
Though undeniably bland, the existing output is justified not merely in terms of revenue, but as a reflection of “Global Britain,” which is to say, a Britain in which diversity and cultural connectivity are seen as more important than anything lost along the way, including any sense of being the national broadcaster. What is shown on-screen may have little in the way of personality, but it makes up for it with its embrace of cultural inclusiveness, making self-conscious reparation through the breadth of its coverage for the evils of Empire.
It is not, needless to say, that Westminster, industrial unrest, the NHS, crime and the economy will cease to feature on the domestic schedule. There will still (as far as I know) be BBC Breakfast and the lunchtime, six o’clock and ten o’clock News. But in future, what goes on in the UK, and what we see on screen, will be measured increasingly against what is happening in the rest of the world, most obviously Africa and Asia and, of course, America. As Britain shrinks, so the news from elsewhere will expand to fill the gap.
A month ago, well-known presenters David Eades, Joanna Gosling and Tim Willcox, from Kent, Buckinghamshire and Somerset respectively, were persuaded to take redundancy. Others are now to join them. Out go familiar faces – Martine Croxall (Leicestershire), Jane Hill (Sussex) and Ben Brown (Kent) among them. In come Matthew Amroliwala (born in Leeds to Indian parents), Christian Fraser (from Lancashire but best known for his coverage of Europe and Africa), Yalda Hakim (an Australian, born in Kabul), Lucy Hockings (a New Zealander) and Maryam Moshiri (a British-Iranian, born in Tehran). Jane Hill has revealed she will be staying with the Beeb on main bulletin duties, and other presenters are in discussions with management.
The only surprise is that Huw Edwards is not to be replaced by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Eight UK-based correspondent roles will be created for world affairs journalists, with recruitment under way for presenting roles in Washington and Singapore, which in future will share hosting duties with London.
Few would deny that the BBC has to move with the times. Just as Andy Pandy and the Woodentops gave way to Shawn the Sheep and Pokémon, so news gathering was obliged to adjust to a world in which Britain is seen as provincial and events, no matter how remote from the everyday lives of its people, are available in close-up at the touch of a button.
The risk, as we are about to discover, is that we are being led by technology and what is possible more than by what actually concerns us. The question is not, should the BBC concentrate on events at home, with “foreign” as an optional add-on? We live in the 2020s, not the 1950s. Rather, it is, must we now consider what happens in the UK as ancillary, and subordinate, to events and trends in the wider world? In future, along with war, mass-immigration and climate change, the domestic agendas of every country and region that isn’t ours could be presented to viewers in Brentford or St Helen’s as if they were as relevant as levelling up in England or the fate of HS2?
Or think of it this way. How much news out of the UK is carried each day by the national broadcasters of the US, China, Kenya, Iraq, Mexico, India or Pakistan? My own experience, not least of America, is that news, like charity, begins at home. Tune in to any of the US networks, including the domestic version of CNN, and 90% of what you will see is home-based.
The exceptions are just that – exceptional – and usually rooted in war or political upheaval. Britain used to be taken seriously by the networks. Not anymore. If it’s not the Royal Family or Boris Johnson’s love-life or the latest ignominious collapse of the economy, their eyes glaze over. London in 2023 is of value to Washington and New York for three reasons only: its convenient time zone, Heathrow and the fact most of its residents speak – or at least understand – English. Good restaurants are a bonus.
The BBC is already a world leader in news. At least, that is what they’ve been telling us for years. Its correspondents enjoy a hard-won reputation for courage, insight and skill. So what is behind the changes about to be forced upon us, in which London will “hand over” each day to Washington and Singapore as darkness falls in W1A?
The answer is simple: money. The Tory government has threatened to freeze the annual license fee at something close to its present level of £3.8 billion. But the corporation already makes more than that – some £4bn – from overseas rights and advertising. Short of privatisation, future income growth is only possible by way of expansion into new markets, and that means the US, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. News follows the money. BBC America already makes and funds its own dramas, such as Killing Eve, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Watch. Others are in development. The News, fully integrated into an American world view, would become a prestigious loss-leader, adding gravitas to the mix.
Fast forward 20 years and the BBC could end up as the Baltimore Broadcasting Corporation, with the UK as little more than an important subsidiary.
Why not? The “B” in BP stands these days for “Beyond” Petroleum. British Airways, the nation’s former flag carrier, has since 2011 been subsumed into the International Airlines Group (IAG), along with Iberia and Aer Lingus. Its chairman, Javier Ferrán, and its CEO, Luis Gallego, are both Spanish. Barclays Bank, busily engaged in shutting down most of its UK high street branches, sees its future as a “multinational universal” bank. Its CEO is V S Venkatakrishnan, an Indian-born American. The Guardian has been pouring money and resources into its online US edition for years and now employs more than 100 full-time journalists, plus support staff, at its offices in New York, San Francisco and Washington under the direction of Betty Reed, a Harvard-educated New Yorker.
None of these, despite their former status as British brands, owes any statutory loyalty to the United Kingdom. They are purely commercial enterprises, in business to make profit. But is the same now true of the BBC? Just as it was once said of the Church of England that it was the Tory party at prayer, so the BBC was “Auntie,” the one, irreplaceable source of broadcast news to which the nation automatically turned in times of celebration or disaster, or just to understand what on earth had happened when the rest of us were at work.
But there could yet come a day when what happens in the US or Southeast Asia, or (who knows?) Dubai or Qatar takes precedence over events in London, Manchester or Glasgow. The “crawler” at the bottom of the screen will tell us that the British Prime Minister has resigned and sterling has collapsed and the presenter in Washington will promise more on this after these messages.
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