Editorial: The future looks tough for public broadcasting, but its independence must not be compromised
There is no doubt that it is a commercial challenge for the corporation to keep up with competitors that are leaner and meaner, because they don’t have such a wide range of obligations. They include not only rival broadcasters but online providers and audio services.
However, this is a negative way of framing a challenge that is not merely financial but also intellectual, political and strategic. At the time of its foundation, in the aftermath of a world war, the national broadcaster was seen as a way of by “spreading throughout the world a doctrine of common sense”. In this context, all those channels that the auditors regard as an inconvenience lie at the heart of its identity.in 1932, a decade after the BBC, and now supplies news to 458 million people around the world every week, in 43 different languages. Its Persian subsidiary alone has an average weekly audience of 18.9 million, with radio reaching a further 1.
Debating its future in the House of Lords last month, the crossbench peer Lord Alton asked how the World Service could be expected to compete with Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing. “Why should we expect a listener in Liverpool to pay via their licence fee for services in a language they do not understand?” This is a reductionist argument that does no favours to the people of Liverpool.
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