Without a new director general with a similar appetite for radical, unpopular change, the corporation will merely manage decline
That the BBC is facing tough times is hardly news. After years of "continuing efficiencies", it is now required to save 16%-20% of its costs as a result of the last licence fee settlement. A lengthy debate and exhaustive internal review have ensued. Very radical options have been canvassed – closing BBC3 and BBC4 and reducing local radio to 5 Live opt-outs to name some – but ultimately rejected.
Management and the BBC Trust have agreed the BBC can wear this level of saving without cutting services or even significantly rearranging its portfolio, and, critically, without viewers, listeners and internet users really noticing. But this is the last time, they say – any more and the BBC will be seriously diminished. So that's all right then, bring on a new director general and with luck all will be well.
Well, perhaps not. For a start, programme-makers across the BBC are fearful that the quality of their programmes and services are already at risk – and will become more so as DQF (Delivering Quality First – the BBC's post-licence-fee-cuts programme) begins to bite. And were that to happen, the BBC's trump card in the face of political decision-makers of unreliable motivation – the huge affection audiences have for it – is put at risk too.
Meanwhile, there are strong indications that in spite of all the internal soul-searching, years of cost-cutting and very real pressure on frontline services significant pools of rank inefficiency remain virtually untouched and – more worrying still – apparently untouchable. In spite of the fact that since 2009 the BBC has reduced the number of those defined as "senior management" from 640 to 485, two recent reports suggest that over-management at the BBC remains a serious problem.
John Myers, Guardian Media Group's former head of radio, wrote those reports – one last year into the operation of Radios 1 and 2, and the other into BBC Local Radio, published the other week. They make for remarkably similar reading. Outstandingly committed and talented staff are delivering great programmes much beloved of audiences but over-management and a lack of transparency about costs are endemic.
That it took an outsider to see this is not so surprising – the BBC is far from alone in finding it hard to see its own shortcomings clearly. More of an issue is the BBC's apparent unwillingness to deal with it once Myers had pointed it out. Very significant cost savings appear within reach – in the case of local radio enough to avoid most of the service cuts proposed by the BBC management under DQF – but resistance to the radical delayering Myers suggested in both cases has been fierce. In any event, resistance to change appears alive and well, at least in some areas.But the real danger must be that without a more radical vision to drive change the BBC will end up, by default, managing decline.
The last time the BBC was radically re-engineered was by John Birt. He found a BBC that appeared inefficient, more than a little out of touch, with no strategy for the multichannel future – let alone the internet – and with very few political friends. In came Producer Choice – which allowed producers to choose between in-house and external crews, editors and facilities. This had the effect of significantly reducing the cost to licence-payers of the BBC's historic, but increasingly inefficient, resource base. A new commissioning system was introduced based on internal competition that for the first time gave channel controllers the whip hand over producers in terms of what got made – without which they would have become increasingly uncompetitive. And then there were the seemingly endless efficiency drives. He took money off traditional services to fund a 24-hour news channel and the BBC's advance on to the internet, and got rid of 8,000 staff in the process.
Needless to say, very little of this was popular with, or seen as necessary by, many long-serving staff. Without it, however, it is questionable whether the BBC would exist in anything like its present capable and competitive form, or indeed would have retained the huge affection of audiences for the programmes and services it delivers.
So the question is, as the BBC considers who to appoint as its next DG and with an eye on charter review and a new licence fee settlement in 2016/17, is it steady as she goes with DQF – with the attendant risk of merely managing decline – or something much more radical? And if the latter, along with eliminating structural over-management, what might that involve?
In Birt's day, it was the BBC's in-house resources that were cut in favour of external suppliers. Might Mark Thompson's successor have to consider something similar with in-house production? There is now, after all, a thriving and successful independent sector which, given its growing global success, might look like a better bet in terms of the positive economic benefits flowing from the licence fee the BBC so likes to talk up.
In any event, if the BBC's purpose is to deliver outstanding content to licence-payers wherever and whenever they want it – which increasingly is what they expect in the digital age – public and politicians are going to need convincing that everything it does is devoted to, and strictly necessary to achieve, that end. And whoever it is, this is most unlikely to be plain sailing for the next DG.