While the ITC was, alas, killing off News at Ten the BBC’s board of
governors were wrestling with another testing issue. How to restructure
the UK’s currently most watched programme, the Six O’Clock News, to cope
with devolution.
In its way devolution, and the huge change to the UK’s constitutional
balance it implies, is the hottest of potatoes for the BBC to handle,
causing splits right through the hierarchy.
It also goes to the heart of the big issue: everyone in public service
broadcasting wants to revive audiences for television news, and thinks
the solution lies in a more eclectic range of stories, beyond
Westminster politics. The easy bit, for the BBC, lies in committing
substantial extra resources to newsgathering to do just that, and
pledging a new late night TV news for Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland.
The hard bit is dealing with the basic question: does the BBC not have a
duty to bind the UK together by delivering the same, considered resume
of national and international news, at key points during the day?
The reality is that it is under intense pressure from the Scottish
lobby, and many of its own staff, to allow a ’Scottish Six’, an
hour-long programme, in which editorial control is vested in
Scotland.
When Ariel, its award-winning newspaper, was handed over to a special
staff team this month, the ’Scottish Six’ was awarded a double-page
feature.
This template, if agreed would probably be copied by the Welsh and
Northern Ireland services. Yet the governors are cautiously holding back
from making a commitment, opting instead for further consultation and
close monitoring.
It’s a great shame because the London-based agenda we’re all subjected
to needs to be broken. It doesn’t even serve the population of the
South-East that well. I’m a frequent customer of BBC Wales and was
frustrated with the Six O’Clock News coverage of the recent floods: as
with so many big (but regional) television stories, a sweeping overview
comes near the top of the bulletin, but you are made to hang on for the
key information - which specific valleys are flooded - for another 30
minutes.
Further, if the new national assemblies are to take root and if people
are to have more of a say over their lives, a way has to be found of
giving political and public affairs a fresh start: through sensible,
relevant TV and radio coverage.
I recommend a provoking book, Politics and the Media, devised by The
Political Quarterly in which concerned writers ponder the national
media’s failure to follow the migration of power to powerful quangos. It
also contains a shrewd contribution about the way a huge number of media
outlets, from regional news bulletins to free newspapers, publish
speeches and issues raised by local MPs. It’s one way ahead.
