Stupid cow(s) 

29 June 2005 tbs.pm/386

Broadcasters Voice Their Ideas on Future BBC [The Scotsman]

What has politics come to?

Edward Heath once called television a plant that was continually being plucked out of the ground to see how its roots were doing. Nothing has changed.

That’s not true. Something has changed.

Once upon a time, an investigation into television would have involved getting experts in to examine and recommend. The results would be ignored, but at least experts were asked.

Now politicians do the examining for themselves, deciding to be experts on something they never use except to appear on it. Politicians don’t watch television. Yet they do comment about it.

Take Tessa Jowell (please – anywhere). Stupid cow number one doesn’t own a television. She doesn’t understand the issues behind television. She doesn’t know what the most popular programmes are or why.

She thinks she understands business (she doesn’t, but she thinks she does) so she can pontificate on how the BBC should run its business.

Into the ground, it seems. Ultimately, it should be ready for privatisation because that has produced a dynamic media sector in the UK, with over 500 channels of crap.

Stupid cow number two is even worse.

I don’t know if she owns or watches a television. Probably neither. But Teresa May, the shadow culture secretary, does have some very clear views on it. Well, some muddy and ill-thought-out views on it, actually, but this amounts to the same thing.

She is a Tory. This means, unlikely Labour, she doesn’t want the BBC privatised later. She wants it now.

?I think that the challenge here is that over the next few years, as broadcasting changes and we move to complete digital switchover, and the BBC?s share of the market falls … then there is a question mark as to whether, in that environment, the licence fee is the appropriate way to continue to fund the BBC,? she waffles.

What the hell does that mean? How is she judging this? What is her basis for comparison?

Of course, it doesn’t really matter. Viewers are just voters, and voters don’t matter. Oh yeah, perhaps once every four or five years we do, but only for three weeks and even then we always make the wrong decision by someone (and will be punished immediately by the victor and later by the vanquished).

So Tessa and Teresa will argue the toss over the future of the BBC, ignoring the experts and ignoring the viewers/voters. The ultimate result will be the end of the BBC, for no adequately explained reason. Another result will be further apathy from the viewer/voter come the next election: when the pols are this thick, what’s the point in voting? It only seems to encourage them.