A BBC with no vision is in danger

The BBC appears to be in crisis everywhere just now, but in Scotland it takes a particular form. There has been an almost constant stream of news coming from the redesign of Radio Scotland and there remains a different slant to the arguments of political bias.

Scotland does not have the power to do much about the BBC as it is a reserved issue, but at the same time Scotland does not have any serious thinking in place about what it wants from the BBC. Unless Scotland has a coherent strategy for the role and purpose of public sector broadcasting, it is hard to see how complaining about the current set-up is like to have any positive results.

Weeks of reporting from arts and cultural figures and an interview with an academic expert on the media over the weekend highlighted a number of the problems.

First, the media retains a London bias, being largely based there, often recruiting staff mainly from there and granting issues that affect London greater significance. This feeds into a cultural understanding of everything from what 'balance' looks like to who gets interviewed.

The second and arguably the biggest issue remains news values. The BBC at times seems to see itself as providing a showcase for a debate among the elite, with senior financial, business, foreign policy or military figures debating with politicians on what should be done. This foregrounds the interests of the elites; Iran is always a bigger problem than unaffordable housing, inflation always more important than unemployment.

The third and most visible problem is political. For an independent broadcaster, the BBC is very politically controlled and does appear to swing politically according to which government is in power. There is no question that the BBC swings behind the state on matters of war, foreign policy, security and the monarchy.

But given that its systems of governance are made up of political appointees and those have been increasingly party political in recent years, it is hard to see any aspect of the BBC as depoliticised now. The primary means through which politicians control the BBC is control of the finances and the continual threat of 'the next Charter renewal'.

The fourth is about the meaning of public service broadcast itself. What is a public service in the age of streaming and globalised content production? There seem to be two schools of thought; one is to produce things 'of value' that do not get produced by competitors while the other seems to think it means achieving maximum viewing numbers to justify the license fee.

In the former view, the world is not struggling for middle-of-the-road easy listening sing-along radio with cheery, pop-culture presenters but it is lacking in more erudite cultural and political content on Scottish arts and politics which would otherwise not exist. In the latter, that content gets small viewer numbers so is a threat to the BBC's existence.

One thing you can say for the new Radio Scotland strategy is that appears coherent in that it seems to be resolving all of these in the same direction. By producing unchallenging, middle-of-the-road content that avoids controversy and minimises politics altogether, the BBC becomes like any other commercial channel, presumably with the hope that it will minimise complaints.

Yet it is hard not to see this as a further rung down the descent into a society without debate where everything difficult is avoided and all content is measured for how little resistance it will face. In other words, precisely the kind of bland, unthreatening content that commercial sector is already delivering – and worse, which is also being delivered by influencers working on no budget from home.

There is no vision for what this would look like if it was better, and so nothing to guide the debate other than complaint. It is almost impossible to imagine that a Scottish Government (of any stripe) is going to resolve this via a commission or another working group. Frankly the politicians have their own vested interest in neutered or compliant public sector broadcasting.

Perhaps the solution would be for public sector broadcasters themselves to set an agenda. An independent commission led by broadcasters who have a genuine commitment to public sector broadcasting on culture, society and politics might create the vision for the future which is clearly sorely lacking.

As it stands the BBC is in trouble, not least because it is under all-out assault from the well-funded right-wing interests which would like to own all means of communication themselves. But as it stands it looks like the current direction of the BBC in Scotland and across the UK may be in the direction of oblivion. That deeply unhealthy for our society.