The Existential Conundrum at the Heart of The BBC
Two years ago, on my blog, I argued for the abolition of BBC One on the grounds that it existed almost exclusively as a refuge for those of such a fragile and enfeebled disposition only the most tepid and formulaic televisual gruel could possibly be withstood; insipid, predictable, completing unenterprising shit for the stroke prone, the easily confused and those for whom a backwards worn baseball cap and “Ice, Ice Baby” still represent the height of iconoclastic edginess. Watching a comedy on BBC One is like peering into a parallel time stream where Chris Morris died as a child and Michael McIntyre rules over Broadcasting House with an iron fist of wacky inanity.
Maybe you just read that paragraph and are now vigorously nodding your head up and down like a cheerleader on prom night kneeling in the footwell of a Ford pickup truck overlooking Lovers’ Point. Or maybe you’re shaking your head from left to right and then back again slowly and dryly like some smartass Wimbledon cunt.
The truth of the matter is though that either and neither of these reactions are simultaneously completely legitimate and also completely not. BBC One is artless garbage; but it’s also accessible, non-elitist and provides hours of escapist joy to millions of people every week. It can’t be got rid of based purely on a lack of artistic merit because artistic is not necessarily what the BBC is for, or at least it’s not what that part of the BBC is for, because the BBC is, for the most part, for everyone.
Take BBC Four for instance; what a snooty, smartass gem of a channel that is, crammed with informed and well researched televisual artistry like some clever-dick bastard waving his engorged cranium all over the shop and just generally trying to teach you things and make you a more rounded and informed individual. The History of the C Major Arpeggio Scale in 12 two hour episodes? Could there possibly be a better spent waste of taxpayers’ money than BBC Four? Brilliant. Shite. Inspired. Dross.
BBC Four is definitely not the most watched channel on the corporation’s roster; in fact I’d hazard a guess that after BBC ALBA and BBC Parliament it probably draws in the smallest ratings of all the channels. But of the three elements that make up the BBC’s mantra, to “educate, inform and entertain”, it adheres to the first two more precisely and directly than any other. It’s also most representative of a large part of what a public broadcaster is duty bound to be; an alternative to the ad-agency pandering, ad-revenue dependent private sector, airing the type of programming commercial channels might not be monetarily motivated to pick up.
It’s this truth that commentators misunderstand when they justify axing or saving channels based on ratings or the nicheisity of special interest programming.
But if BBC Four must be retained because of its elbow-patched tweed-cladded chin-scrathery, then BBC Three, scheduled for closure in autumn next year, must be saved for its diametric brainlessness. Neither can justify its own existence without the other’s counterweighting presence. As there can no good without evil, so there can be no BBC Three without a BBC Four. Axe the former to save the latter and Auntie’s a snobby elitist, do the opposite and she’s a dumbed down, low rent sad old wench pandering to the whims of the increasingly fuck-witted “yoof demographic.”
Personally I’m suspicious of anything branded as “youth orientated” because in my experience the only youth culture worth shit is created and consumed by people in spaces hierarchical establishment institutions like the BBC don’t even know exist. But in the same way the BBC is obliged to acknowledge the existence of people who insist on acknowledging the existence of Andrew Marr, so they are obliged to acknowledge the existence of “the youth”, and then cater for them, or at least try to.
Most of the population probably don’t care about BBC Three because, save for the odd satisfactory comedy, nearly everything it airs is repetitive formulaic bilge featuring teenagers talking ineloquently about shit most adults have long ceased considering, like whether they’ll be a fashion designer or a professional power-boater when they graduate, or whether Red Bull is better than Relentless, or Annie Mac, or Ben 10, or whatever the fuck those supple-jointed idiots are into these days. Why should our taxes go towards making television programmes for people who care what Russell Kane (aka Russell Brand Lite) or Greg James (aka Richard Hammond heir apparent) have to say?
Because, myopic idiot, the BBC is for everyone or it’s for no one. That’s the only way it can possibly be fair. In the eyes of the BBC a drunken media studies undergrad crawling into his/her second year hovel for another stupefying fix of American Dad and Great Movie Mistakes (understandably preferable to spending any time at all contemplating the patent uselessness of their degree and the mountain of debt they’ve incurred to earn it) is just as valuable as a prune and custard sucking Middle English Antiques Roadshow watching Octogenarian old biddy.
To say that one channel is inherently more worthwhile than another misunderstands the constant existential conundrum that the BBC struggles with day in day out, year on year, of trying to please every one of the 60 million self-entitled, selfish assholes that make up this withered nation we call Team GB. To take just one part of the corporation away lessens the legitimacy of the whole, because it weakens its national representativeness.
It’s also worth remembering why exactly these savings need to be made in the first place, and who created these circumstances. It wasn’t the crusty middle aged rocker watching another BBC Four Deep Purple documentary. It wasn’t me and you watching Stewart Lee on BBC 2. It wasn’t those students I just mentioned watching anotherSnog, Marry, Avoid? rerun. Why should a single Family Guy episode be sacrificed when the government continue to subsidise the greed of landlords and bosses through benefit pay outs? Why should we be deprived of a single second of Live at The Electric when psychopaths continue to pay themselves quadzillion pound bonuses at a bank weown 80 percent of?
Much of BBC Three might not be worth saving, but the principles underlying its existence definitely are.
