A slightly unfortunate side-effect of Charles Allen's recent MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh is that it has reignited a rather annoying debate around the metaphorical water-cooler and elsewhere, on the future of Channel 4.
This is a debate one would rather not have, because the allowed options are, essentially, 'leave it alone' and 'privatise it'. Last time the latter was attempted was in the dying days of the Major government, and, thankfully, boarders were repelled (though Hague mentioned it again more recently). But not only is a future Cameron government, if any, likely to try it again: New Labour, with its centre-Right, 'Christian Democrat' values, is sadly unwilling to steer away from privatisation options, (let alone undo existing ones, dammit) and Tessa Jowell will only say that privatising C4 is not going to be considered during the life of this Parliament.
Astute observers will notice a core Conservative trait in this debate. When something publicly owned or funded is successful, there are calls to privatise it, the latter being an effective technique which automatically limits the success of the formerly publicly-owned body so that, preferably, it does as badly as the other commercial organisations out there that previously disliked the fact it was eating their lunch.
Of course the main reason their lunch is being eaten is that they aren't much good at keeping it.
Beyond that, the true Thatcherist approach is to take a successful public entity and screw up its funding and/or management so that it collapses in a heap in the corner ("look how ineffectual and badly-managed it is, after all," they say; "publicly-owned bodies are always like that...") - and then privatise it, all the time declaring that "The [insert your publicly-owned service here] is safe in our hands".
Channel 4 or BBC, the fact is that both these organisations are doing extremely well and as a result the commercial lobby is perennially up in arms about them in one form or another, and wants their wings clipped. ITV1 under Charles Allen is an obvious example of such a complainant, but there are others, mainly those with a Murdoch in the middle. It is these successful ones who are the problem (they argue) by making it hard to compete, and they resent the suggestion that it's actually because what they're doing is, to say the least, substandard by comparison.
I've said many nice things about the BBC, so this time, just look at C4: however much you (or I) may dislike Big Brother, it's interesting that this particular reality show beats the pants off ITV1's attempts. I would like to think that this is because the entire genre is on its last legs and the most successful one is the only one that can still command an audience, but I am probably wrong.
So look instead at More4's six hours a day of live broadcasting from Time Team's archaeological digs over the Bank Holiday weekend at Buck House, Holyrood and Windsor Castle and the detailed wrap-up on C4 each the evening. Definitely Public Service Broadcasting; definitely well-done; and most definitely great fun.
Of course, C4 is not without its problems. But it, like the BBC, is doing a great job - and long may they both continue to do so, untouched by the grubby hands of more lowest-common-denominator-inclined tabloid broadcasters who, as has been pointed out previously on these pages, do not seem to entirely like or respect their audiences, let alone value them.
May we ask that these latter companies leave public service broadcasters alone, and instead, get their own acts together and start (or remember how) to compete honestly, by making decent programmes themselves?
