Grumpy Old Ex-DGs
Former DG... blames 'dumb' programmes on women execs
Much as one can admire Alasdair Milne (left, in a photo from some time ago) as a programme-maker (eg Tonight in the 50s) and for standing up to the Government (over coverage of the US bombing of Libya and the Panorama investigation into Tory MPs' alleged neo-fascist links in the 80s), he does seem to be on somewhat of a sticky wicket blaming 'dumb' BBC programmes on women executives.
Greg Dyke made a policy of encouraging women - and minorities - to go for important executive positions in the Corporation and as a result the former 'glass ceiling' has (or at least had) vanished: the two major channels have both had female controllers, along with some important departments. In Milne's view, this has led to declining standards and too many 'dumb' makeover and lifestyle programmes.
Milne has certainly identified a disturbing trend, not that this observation is particularly innovative, but many will feel he's pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Like a great many of Dyke's activities while DG, encouraging women to executive positions was a Good Thing all round. The tendency towards, dare I say the phrase, "dumbing down", which I have criticised here previously, is unlikely, in my view, to be a result of such appointments.
What is more likely is that we are seeing the unfortunate dominance of pandering to the perceived taste of the audience. Note that I say 'perceived taste'. These days, programme makers have to be sure of more than the immediate usage of their work: projects are instead often co-productions with third parties who will be showing the programmes themselves sooner or later. Programmes made for BBC One will turn up on UKtv and BBC World, for instance; material originally shown on BBC Two may appear on the Science Channel. As a result, there is a strong temptation to produce programming at a level that programme-makers conceive to be accessible to all potential audiences. The nice phrase for this is "lowest common denominator". A nastier way of putting it, at least from the point of view of the intelligent BBC viewer, is "dumbing down".
This tendency is particularly evident in factual programming, and I have mentioned Horizon in this context before. There are exceptions, of course (and note that these generally tend to be British-specific programmes which will thus naturally be a little limited in export potential), such as Alan Titchmarsh's excellent British Isles: A Natural History. Here, a serious budget has been aimed specifically at a British audience, showing what you can do if you you try.
But when Milne criticises copycat lifestyle programmes one can hardly disagree: these surely represent lowest-common-denominator programming at its most banal.
Now there are of course programme-makers who hold the view that the ability to give the audience what it wants is central to today's multichannel, multiple choice broadcasting environment. But there are several questions here: who is the audience, do you really know what it wants, and how relevant is what they want anyway?
There is more to this than simply asking viewers or potential viewers what they would like to see more or less of. Consider what you would have said if, in 1983, someone had asked you what you would like to see improved in a personal computer. A bigger screen, perhaps, you would have answered. Colour. A faster processor, or more memory. A larger-capacity floppy drive. What you wouldn't have thought of was the kind of rewrite-the-rules computer that was the Apple Macintosh: you simply didn't know it could be done. Asking people what they want can actually exclude innovation and encourage 'more of the same'.
So the BBC's programme makers, who do know what can be done, need to do more than merely pander to their perception of the audience's wants or do what was successful last time: they need original ideas of quality and the resources to bring them to air, irrespective of whether the audience thinks it wants them or not.
At the BBC, they are in a double bind, too, as a result of the hoary old problem of ratings versus quality. If the Corporation does something accessible, popular and successful, whether it's a sitcom or bbc.co.uk, complaints come in from the commercial sector that it shouldn't be doing things that they could be doing (even if they aren't) and that as a result they are wasting the licence fee. If the BBC produces important, meaningful programming that people ought to watch but don't, then there are complaints about wasting the licence fee because nobody's watching. They can't win. Sometimes one side of the argument leads, sometimes the other.
Personally, I'd say - at least half the time - never mind the ratings, feel the quality: what's needed is a balance, after all, and you can probably have too much of a good thing, even if the shade of Lord Reith might not concur. But while Mr Milne and I may agree that dumbing-down is a problem, I regret that I believe him to be barking up the wrong tree when he blames women executives.
And after all, where would he have been without Grace Wyndham Goldie?
