Hanging the messenger

In an angry news conference in Bridgend, the chief of police produces a newspaper which has been speculating as to whether the recent series of 17 suicides of young people, all by hanging, were in any way related. "If there is proof, I'd like to see it" he says with real venom in his voice. The grieving mother of one of the latest fatalities is equally, at least apparently, certain where the fault lies: the press. But the fact that her words seem to be so on message with the official line gives us pause that the message may in fact have been written for her.
The fact is that there was little or no press coverage of this case until the past few weeks, before which time a dozen or so young people had hanged themselves. To put this into perepective, in the previous year, there were 3 suicides in the same age bracket and 3 in the year before that. I'm not sure if these were all by hanging but even if they were that is an increase of 300%, a staggering amount.
The fact that all these youngster have chosen the same method of dispatching themselves, and that a far from painless one, adds further suspicion to this odd mystery. It is surely the duty of the press to investigate any possible links. Rather than scape-goating the media (retrospectively in the cases of the first dozen victims), perhaps the police would be better served doing its own job.

What's the point of the BBC?

The argument for public service broadcasting has always been a similar one to the mantainence of public libraries: that all should be required to fund the upkeep and preservation of the highest standards of literature and learning regardless of whether one personally uses it or not. Generally speaking, everyone agrees to this, as regards libraries and other bastions of erudition, even if they never intend to set foot in one themselves. Actually I have never heard anyone, of any background or political persuasion argue to the contrary. Everyone accepts that these places of learning, although frequently unvisited, serve as bulkwarks against barbarity.
That line of argument would be somewhat, if not totally, weakened were one to enter a library only to witness an otherwise demure librarian peddling crack cocaine or racks of pornography replacing the once dusty cabinets of ancient Greek classics. It would be shocking indeed, if upon approaching the said librarian to enquire why, one received the curt answer in a chavy voice "well, this stuff's more popular".
Such is, extraordinarily, what has happened to the BBC in recent times.
It is futile to look at the reasons why. It is enough to say that the BBC is now producing a mass of material, much of it quite shoddy and a lot frankly imitative, that can in no way be said to be "informing or educating", two of the three words in its original mission statement. The third word "entertainment" is hardly enough to justify the license even if it were achieving a high standard in this. Unfortunately, the most entertaining programmes on British tv are the product of a society that has healthier and less patronising approach to subsidy, the USA. So what exactly are we paying for?
Let's look at the BBC's output. BBC 1 has always been the Beeb's populist channel but it was once famed for showing powerful documentaries. No longer. Panoroma has been cut to half its length and now engages in pop docs rather than more substantial. Gone to are the challenging Play-for-todays and other such programmes replaces by an endless diet of soaps. Perhaps the only good progs on BBC1 are now late on Thursdays night: Question Time and This Week.
Worse still, is BBC2 which was meant to be BBC's arts channel and is now taken up largely with interior design and cookery. Perhaps when it is commercialised (soon hopefully) the beeb will have the honesty to call it BBC lifestyle. Quite how far it has moved from its classic David Attenborough controlled ear of the 60s-70s (in which he was steadfastly against what he has termed "chewing gum tv") to its presentday incarnation can be seen by its Saturday morning branded youth programme SWITCH, which has a large and annoying ident in the corner for several hours. You have to pinch yourself to be reminded the BBC is meant to be a public service broadcaster. The last vestige of quality on this channel is newsnight, also noticeably latenight, which shows the journalistic standards long abandoned by the dreadful BBC1 6 0'clock news, one of the more regrettable chapters in the BBC's recent history. Like its sister BBC1, once groundbreaking documentary series like horizon are reduced to predictable pop culture fare.
BBC3 has the singular distinction of being not only the BBC's worst channel, but also by far the worst on British tv. This would be shameful enough for any company but for a "public service" broadcaster it is nothing short of scandalous. Quite how putting out such programmes as CAN FAT MEN HUNT?, THE MOST ANNOYING POP SONGS EVER and DAWN GOES LESBIAN can be justified as being produced by license payers' money, I cannot imagine, but it is sobering to cotemplate that when the beeb was faced with cuts it chose to downsize its news department rather than this festering dungheap. This tawdry channel seems to be a long suicide note by the BBC and shows how out of touch its presentday fashion-victim creators are from its original ideals. But satisfyingly enough, although this channel is geared totally (I mean like Totally) towards teenagers, most young people I know would rather watch imports like Smallville or Reaper (or indeed, the one import on BBC3 Family Guy, the quality of which shows how lame the rest of this disgraceful channel is). Kids really do know quality when they see it, and the fact that all these imports are the products of commercialism show how ridiculous the notion of public service broadcast has become.
BBC4 might be held up as being closest to the old BBC ideals with the occasional classical and Jazz concert and foreign language film. I suppose in some ways it is a bit like the old BBC2 only with much more repitition. Increasingly though, it is resembling a "cult" tv channel (indeed, they have a whole strand of programming entitled "The cult of" which they seem to think lends it some sort of creditibility), somewhat like Bravo and some other cash-strapped broadcasters. This tendency became very noticeable at the beginning of this year, with BATMAN being shown, an evening dedicated to LOST IN SPACE creator Allen Irwin and a month-long series about Pop music. It now seems that most of the evening schedules are being filled with repeats of old popular BBC2 shows, in a manner not dissimilar to its "Commercial" wing(see below).
The BBC's News24 service has long been a dissapointment. Considering that it is the largest news gathering organisation in the world, it seems remarkably slow and cumbersome, choosing many times to show long tape recorded programmes while its fitter rival SkyNews is busily (and quite properly) reporting breaking news. Breaking news is after all, what 24 news is about, if its about anything. Who wants to watch old news on a news channel? Why not put it on BBC2 (sorry that would mean taking off Masterchef or something).
In addition to these "free channels", the BBC puts out a number of via its "Commercial" branch (surely a contradiction in terms for a public broadcaster?). Three of these you have to pay an additional fee for. They also have commercials.
There are commercials too on the other two BBC channels available for "free". The first of these, UKHistory used to be an informative channel, which in spite of its many adverts, came as close to the BBC's remit as any of its official channels. Sadly (and prophetically) serious documentaries (ie THE WORLD AT WAR and A HISTORY OF BRITAIN to name but two) have been replaced by repeats of old dramas like TENKO and SHARPE. More suitable for a channel called UKFiction than one entitled UKHistory you might think.
Had the BBC continued its former quality material, then its recent decision to slash its broadcast hours from 7am-1am to 7am-6pm would have been deeply regrettable. But perhaps we now feel another airing of TENKA (and no doubt COLDTZ soon and perhaps a rare re-run of THE CLEOPATRAS during their Roman season?) is best put to bed early. Their reason for doing this has nothing to do with the impoverished standard of this channel, but rather that they reckon they can make more money from broadcasting their other advert-rich, "free" channel DAVE, which has the distinct advantage of being one of the most entertaining channels on tv, being that is a nonstop series of repeats of some of the most popular BBC2 (mainly) programmes of recent years. Entertaining though it is (and vastly better than the new programming on the abysmal BBC3), it is hard to see how this can justify a license fee since it is all old programmes and full of ads anyway.
Looking over the BBC's output honestly, one would be hard pressed to find an argument in favour of its continuing subsidy. As stated above, it has long since abandoned its mission to "educate and inform" and now merely clings to its "entertainment" clause as justification, but is easily outclassed by non-subsidised American imports which often have a level of intelligence about them lacking from the BBC. What could an advocate of the license fee now cite as proof of its necessity? Not BBC2, which would once have been the case. No longer even BBC4, which was a weak case even in its pomp, but is now going down market.
If however one was asked why the license fee should be abolished, one could reply simply "BBC3".
Yes, pornography and crack are now being sold in our public library.