BBC director general: Auntie's new man
The world's greatest programme-making enterprise has rightly been entrusted to an experienced programme-maker
The appointment of George Entwistle as director general is an expression of confidence in the BBC's public service mission. The hacking fiasco and its Levesonian aftermath have tainted many media rivals who do things very differently – reminding a nation why it holds an infuriating but brilliant institution so dear, and cautioning enemies in business and politics against all-out assaults for the moment. The bean-counting school of creativity – which subjects every production to cost-benefit analysis – is less appealing in these circumstances. The outgoing director general, Mark Thompson, has also done a good deal for the mood; the BBC Trust has rightly decided to entrust the world's greatest programme-making enterprise to an experienced programme-maker.
For that is what Mr Entwistle always was, before the last half-decade or so spent in management took him to the heights as head of vision, or – in less pretentious parlance – the boss of BBC TV. After starting out as a journalist in Michael Heseltine's magazine empire, he launched into a BBC career, with an initial focus on current affairs that culminated in editing Newsnight. There have also been spells on The Culture Show and Tomorrow's World, and more recently – from the commissioning seat – there was support for a year of science programming in 2010, and indeed for an opera season in the same year, which took arias to the airwaves right across BBC stations and channels. The CV, then, speaks to arts and science as well as politics. Think of Greg Dyke's charismatic populism, or the management-speak that preceded him, and Mr Entwistle's arrival could prove to be the boldest reassertion of Reithian values in a generation.
We must wait and see whether Mr Entwistle will use the top job to set the corporation off in the sort of educative direction which his résumé might suggest. If that is his plan, it is a noble one, but no editorial strategy will succeed without a dash of business and political acumen. The pressure on this BBC career man to demonstrate both will be all the greater because every senior post he has ever held has been within Auntie's shadow. The most immediate if most prosaic managerial challenge is restoring staff morale, which – as across the public sector – is being tested by cuts, as well as by the unavoidable strains of the great northward migration to Salford. More fundamentally, Mr Entwistle will need to swim with a tide of technology that will surely advance just as fast under his watch as under his recent predecessors. John Birt may not have been able to communicate the benefits of his digital investments, but the corporation is surely feeling their benefit now. The iPlayer is surely one of Mr Thompson's greatest legacies to the BBC. His successor must also respond to a world in which more and more screens are stowed in the pocket and viewed on the move.
Keeping ahead of the technology is principally a question of remaining useful to a paying public who foot the bills through the licence fee. But it is also a question of sustaining this spring that sustains all BBC life. A modest poll tax, it is a hard sell in hard times, and unless great care is taken it could become uncollectable as viewing shifts from traditional televisions to other devices. If you doubt the difficulties, just glance at the baffling guidance on when iPlayer users are required to pay up. A flat and compulsory licence fee could hardly be more out of kilter with the culture of a free-for-all and individualistic web.
Tricky as it may be, the case for a licence fee – or something very like it – is the case that the unknown Mr Entwistle will have to make if Britain's proud and distinctive tradition of public service broadcasting is to survive through the next twists of the communications revolution. The argument should be winnable: just as financial scandals create space for the Co-operative Bank, so those Leveson revelations demonstrate afresh the urgent need for something like the BBC. Mr Entwistle's record suggests that he understands as much. He must step forward from the back office and make the case.
Barclays: advantage Diamond
The Treasury select committee unwittingly made a compelling case for a judge-led investigation into banking
Where they needed forensic detail, the MPs preferred bluster. Instead of acquiring expertise, they gladly professed ignorance. Two of the 13 committee members had been directly employed by Barclays; another, we were reminded, is still a director at a City money broker. Yet this experience did not strengthen the MPs' questioning, but seemed to make them even tamer, as Mr Diamond addressed them by their forenames and dead-batted the most polished questions.
The session should have been so different. This week began with the revelation that Barclays staff thought the Bank of England had given them licence to fiddle the system of setting Libor interest rates. But the MPs did not press very hard on that area. As the hearing began, George Osborne was flinging around accusations that Gordon Brown's lieutenants were "clearly involved" in the scandal. Again, Mr Diamond was not asked to address those charges. Instead, he talked a lot about how much he "loved" Barclays, the Quaker-founded conservative institution he turned into a giant casino bank, before stewarding it to the largest fine in the history of British financial regulation. The years Barclays staff spent rigging the money market made him "physically ill". Apart from these made-for-TV soundbites, the biggest revelations were that Mr Diamond thinks other institutions were involved (as regulators warned last week) and that he intends to take his payoff of £22m. However sad this last revelation, it is entirely true to Mr Diamond's form. As Lib Dem MP John Thurso observed wistfully towards the end, "If you were an English cricketer, you would be Geoffrey Boycott. You have been occupying the crease for two and a half hours and I am not sure we are any further forward."
This will surely not be the last public interrogation of Mr Diamond. But it does show just why we need a forensic and concentrated examination of what's been going on at Barclays and throughout the banking industry – and among the regulators and ministers who have allowed one of Britain's leading industries to become serially scandal-ridden and disastrously costly to the rest of us.
In praise of … The Italian Job
It is unblinkingly sexist, chauvinist, and touchingly loyal to the crocks of the car industry, but the British caper film The Italian Job still endures
It is unblinkingly sexist, chauvinist, and touchingly loyal to the crocks of the car industry, but the British caper film The Italian Job still endures. Its latest incarnation is the installation on the De La Warr Pavilion – a replica of a twin-axle Harrington Legionnaire-bodied Bedford VAL coach perched over the side of the building. This is the literal cliffhanger (gold from robbery on one end of the fulcrum, gang wot nicked it on the other) which produced Michael Caine's best line: "Hang on a minute, lads, I've got a great idea! Err …" But the fact that thousands will see a coach teetering over the side of a building and get the joke is testament enough to the 1969 film. What makes its ending British enough to be used as a flag-waving exercise in the Olympics? Is it the sight of the red, white and blue coach teetering over the edge, or more simply the thought that, after all that effort, the gold is out of reach and the result a botch?
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