Plus ca change at the BBC..........

The appointment of George Entwhistle (sounds like a Yorkshire comedian) as DG of the BBC has caused raised eyebrows but little surprise. There were three front runners (all Lefties, natch), and Lord Patten, the Chairman of the Beeb, finessed it so that the apparently least lefty got the job.

In the commercial world, there would have been intense competition for one of the world’s most important media jobs. Instead it went to  BBC insider who has never been anywhere else. No surprise there, then.

So let’s see if there is the overdue culture change with a new skipper on the bridge. But don’t hold your breath. This is the munchkin who was in charge of the Jubilee celebrations that were mostly a disaster for the Beeb.

The needed changes are blindingly obvious but what are seen as faults by the license-payers are seen as virtues by the inhabitants of that other planet, Broadcasting House.

Time was when the BBC’s world-wide reputation was tops. People listened to news broadcasts, for example, because they were relied upon as being impartial and unbiased. The TV output was famous everywhere.

Not anymore, and for a long time. The BBC is constantly bombarded with complains about leftist bias and lack of objectivity. I would add triviality, celeb stuff, and poor news selection. We gave up on BBC news a long time ago, but we were forced back last week when Sky-news, Aljazeera, and CNN were disrupted by weather conditions. Nothing had changed.

It is an oddity that there are no business or current affairs programmes in primetime to match CNN’s ‘Quest means Business’ or the must-watch ‘Jeff Randall Live’ on Sky, when once they had Peter Jay’s excellent ‘Money Programme’, ‘The Week in Westminster’ and ‘What the papers say’, all informative, educational and entertaining in the best Reithian tradition.

Programme content? They have a gift for devising a popular format and then messing it up. And over-using the same ‘personalities’, like Allan Titchmarsh, their sniveller-in-chief. They had an unexpected winner in ‘Spring Watch’. Then they brought in a woman with hair like an explosion in a mattress factory who thought we wanted to listen to her not look at wildlife. In a one-hour programme I recorded 38 minutes of yak-yak. It is now ‘Spring Unwatchable’.

‘Countryfile’ used to be excellent, dealing with country matters as the title suggested. They decided it needed more appeal for yoof, so they got rid of the mature women who knew what they were talking about and replaced them with young ones who don’t.

Last week their fit young blonde was visiting an exhibition of Churchill’s paintings at Chartwell.

Her opening was ‘I never knew Churchill was a painter!’ You couldn’t make it up!

In one week, BBC2 screened 165 repeats. BBC3 managed 73 in a shorter period. How many highly-paid BBC jobsworths does it take to change a tape?

And it has an obsession with yoof. Has nobody thought to tell them that the young don’t watch telly? But then the BBC glitterati are detached from the world that the rest of us inhabit.

So here’s a few suggestions, George.

Go back to Reithian principles in the newsroom.

Stop broadcasting endless sport on BBC1 and 2.

Convert BBC3 into a sport-only channel. It only appeals to the feebleminded as it is at present.

Put BBC World on BBC4. Its quality is so superior one would think that it came from a different organisation – excellent news coverage, discussions like the ‘Doha Debate’, ‘Hard Talk’ except when it is being presented by Sakur who fancies himself as another Paxman and ain’t, current affairs and documentaries.

And remember, George: there’s no more money!