It doesn’t warrant the pearl-clutching response, precisely because it will achieve so little.
With Neil gone and other veteran journalists reportedly unhappy, ‘Britain’s news channel’ looks less and less like a news channel.
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has exceeded all expectations with his recent negotiations.
It is also politically shrewd – showing free market radicalism and compassion for the poor.
Huge funds are handed over to prestige schemes in the capital. But modest funds for projects elsewhere would provide better value.
Plus: Why call McCain a maverick?; the Labour MPs who deserve an award for courage; and who is the right’s Artist Taxi Driver?
A modernised internal structure, increased transparency, and oversight by Ofcom will help keep ‘Auntie’ fit for the coming decade.
They could at once increase viewer engagement, diminish the Corporation’s monopoly power, and reduce political involvement in its funding.
As a coercively-funded state organ of enormous influence and reach, political oversight of the Corporation is both just and necessary.
Tony Hall is challenged on the charge that, by covering the cost of free licences for over-75s, the Corporation has become an arm of the welfare state.
In the era of the internet who needs the TV broadcasters for an election debate?
And why should they shape the election campaign anyway?
Some of our best-known artists lean to the left. But there’s a strong case for the claim that we are the real party of culture.
I don’t believe that a private owner would freely choose to commission from as diverse a range of independents.