There is a lot to unpack from today’s BBC Annual Report. Michael Savage at The Guardian notes that a further 300,000 households have stopped paying the licence fee. That is a huge financial hit to Aunty. Meanwhile, the organisation still has a deficit of £132 million. It is also set for tricky negotiations with the government about its charter.
The Annual Report emerges at a challenging time for the corporation. Yesterday, an investigation was published that found a breach in editorial guidelines following the release of the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. A 13-year-old narrator was used, but the audience was not informed that he is the son of Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture. I wrote about the issues for The Spectator. Regulator Ofcom is now looking into it.
There is also the continuing fallout from the BBC’s disastrous Glastonbury weekend and issues surrounding Greg Wallace. As well as 45 of 83 allegations against Wallace being upheld by production company Banijay, an allegation that co-star John Torode used racist language was revealed.
It’s all pretty messy.
BBC Annual Report Focuses on Positives
The corporation will, of course, try to focus on the positive. It says that 74% of UK adults use BBC News on average per week, which is well ahead of anyone else. Somewhat amazingly, 36% of 12–15-year-olds in the UK follow the news with the BBC. This is again higher than anyone else and genuinely impressive in the age of the influencer.
Major news events like last year’s UK General Election draw in big audiences. The BBC even says its controversial reformatting of Newsnight has helped grow the show’s audience by 70% on iPlayer and over a third across all channels. Its radio stations win awards and attract big listener figures.
None of this is to be sniffed at. Tim Davie, BBC Director-General, said:
I am proud of the outstanding value we have delivered for audiences this year and the speed at which we are transforming the organisation to meet the challenges of a fast-changing media landscape.
Yet it cannot be denied that the corporation is also in a mess. It seems to be hit with scandal after scandal. Each one chips away at its credibility. Each one makes it harder to demand a payment from the public, enforceable by law. That credibility is going to be hard to rebuild, whatever figures the BBC chooses to highlight.
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