Industry | 2010.03.09
Libby Purves: BBC should stop playing it safe
Radio 4 presenter says the corporation must overcome its \'failure of nerve and taste\' and put faith in its in-house talent
The BBC Radio 4 presenter, Libby Purves, said the corporation should back intelligent, risk-taking content rather than "fretting how to get an extra million idiots" watching programmes such as BBC3\'s Snog, Marry, Avoid? "on phone screens the size of a dog biscuit".
Purves, who presents Radio 4\'s Midweek , urged the BBC to get over its "failure of nerve and taste" and "crisis of confidence" and back its in-house talent.
She said the corporation "sometimes scrabbles for audience before excellence" and said the licence fee "need not be an embarrassment but a spur to exploration and risk".
Purves made the comments in the today\'s issue of Radio Times, in the wake of the row over the BBC\'s spending priorities after director general, Mark Thompson, announced he was axing the BBC\'s digital radio station, 6 Music , along with the Asian Network and half of the BBC\'s web pages.
Digital TV channel BBC3 was praised in Thompson\'s strategy report for its "innovation and originality" .
"The minutiae of cuts are a distraction: we shouldn\'t be squabbling over 6 Music or bits of website but looking at the wide blue sky and asking what the BBC is actually for," said Purves, who is also a columnist for the Times.
"It must define its function. Does the BBC want to be the fattest tiger in the jungle, or a national resource; anxious to help rather than desperate to imitate, blazing trails, chasing quality not quantity?
"Go for the high ground. The licence fee need not be an embarrassment but a spur to exploration and risk. It\'ll take courage, because the word \'quality\' gets twisted to mean elitism, snobbery, worthy droning for posh gits and stroppy minorities. Yet it just means doing everything brilliantly. Not just news and documentary, but drama, comedy, music.
"Surely it is just as good to make Outnumbered or Strictly, as to unveil a scandal on Panorama or run a Prom. Conversely, it is just as unworthy to put on a dreary-but-safe bonnet drama or the umpteenth series of a stale comedy as it is to dumb down the news or copycat a format."
Purves said the BBC was "more emotionally insecure about ratings" than its commercial rivals and "sometimes scrabbles for audience before excellence".
"The BBC can do quality," said Purves. "For all its failures of nerve and taste, for all the baroque absurdity of its management systems and its obsession with compliance, the BBC has some stonkingly good in-house producers and some canny commissioners who help independents to shine."
She added: "Talking of talent, it needn\'t poach, bribe and overpay. From Tommy Handley to Terry Wogan, from Dimbleby to Paxman, it has a track record of finding and polishing stars. The crisis of confidence making it chase star signings is an aberration. Nobody is bigger than their programme; it\'s all about practice, exposure, the right vehicle and a producer with authority and nerve."
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