Phone hacking morphs into who rules Brit TV as Ofcom wades in

By tomtom

Time for a Root and Branch Clear Out?

Time to make a brushfire of British TV and start all over again writes Tom Stack  as the Telegraph’s Katherine Rushton, Telecoms, Technology and Media Correspondent, speculates that Rebekah Brook’s time may be up? In ordinary times, Ofcom is a strict observer of protocol, she wrote and its chief executive Ed Richards eschews fiery statements or any ongoing dialogue with the press, in favour of rigid timetables and only speaking up when asked.

  This article is mostly gobble-de-gook, invention as a reporter sets out to establish credo, but inadvertently pinpoints an opportunity for a root and branch clear out of all the vanities. Speaking personally I never got roped into the News Corp thing, either buying Mr Murdoch’s newspapers or his Sky TV racket.

  I could never understand how people think it’s a good idea to pay to watch adverts twice over with a licence fee and a donation of as much as £50 per month to ‘Believing in Better’, which is mostly tripe and possibly the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the great unwashed.

  TV in it’s entirety has developed in ways that defy logic, the BBC especially, with its now infamous mantra of a left wing propaganda organ of dubious merit. The people who developed and refined the Beeb from it’s inception to pre-eminence across the world are long gone and the standards and independence they nurtured, sacrificed on a bonfire of indeterminate pedigree.

  This has happened by stealth, till we reached a plateau where the Beeb has fallen in to total disrespect. It’s a crying shame for all the great broadcasters who went before and it seems that at government level we lack the interest in using it for anything than other than a – ‘Jobs for the Boys Roundabout’.

  It’s time it was privatised, put out of its misery and launched into the real world. My long trumpeted suggestion is that the licence fee should be turned into a subscription based voucher system, where people could chose whether to use this voucher to decide what to watch – ITV, Sky TV or a privatised Beeb TV. This should share out the £3.5bn licence fee in a quite equitable way, with the Beeb freed up to advertise or not and the entire world of TV subject to the ultimate sanction satisfying the viewer.

With myself as the Fat Controller.

Watch this space I’ll be back!

Tom