Ok, so the BBC has recently announced that they will be scaling back the size of their website, as well as other elements of their broadcast, and it appears that the recession’s impact on the media industry is at the route of the decision. What’s next I axe? Is London Transport to stop the tube on Wednesdays and Fridays to give cabbies a better chance in the harsh climate of post recession Britain or the NHS to stop doing podiatry to give BUPA a fair crack at the foot fungus whip.
As you can see, I’m not a big fan of this politically motivated stance by the BBC. Now, instead of finding well written, BBC stories and entertainment in our search engines, we’ll be left to fend for ourselves in the ad heavy capitalist world of media. Surely the whole point of the BBC is to provide us with a bastion of hope, of respite from the jam of commercial breakdowns.
On top of the BBC website getting a good shivving, it is also proposing to severely reduce the amount of foreign programmes being commissioned. What’s going on? Has the BBC been overrun by a corporatist BNP supporter. Maybe that’s it. He’s in the BBC headquarters now, holding a nail gun over the heads of the powers that be at the BBC and forcing them to cut out a useful and free online service along with any johnny foreigners.
The exact details of this have not yet been released, but I don’t get the feeling that they’ll be positive. When a free speech service gets curtailed, a part of my mind turns to paranoid thoughts of distopian oppression. The BBC is by far the best media outlet in the world and that’s why it’s so important to make sure it stays class.
