Showing posts with label Stig Abell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stig Abell. Show all posts

Tuesday, 21 January 2020

Stig retreats


Here's a little Twitter chat to brighten up your breakfast involving TLS editor/Front Row presenter Stig Abell, the LSE's Charles Beckett and Today's Justin Webb:

Stig Abell: People would like the BBC more, if the BBC talked about the BBC less. Just a thought.
Charlie Beckett: Any evidence for that? People seem obsessed by the BBC on Twitter, at least. Shouldn't an influential organisation that takes billions of public money have an open conversation about its future and what it does?
Stig Abell: It should. But it shouldn’t self-obsess in public. The BBC’s transparency is laudable. But at the moment its boss has gone and there will be an open recruitment: a story, but it doesn’t need hours of self-conscious musing. Which is what it gets.
Charlie Beckett: You are a super-informed media insider, so it's dull for you. Yes, it can be indulgent, but I can't think of a moment where wider public debate was more needed.
Stig Abell: Anyway this is a short way of me saying, yes, I’m applying for the job.
Justin Webb: After half eight: more money for BBC Front Row - the biggest test for the candidates ...😎
Stig Abell: *bursts through the door, eyes gleaming*.

Sunday, 15 December 2019

A meeting of mind (in the BBC's defence)


Good news! The former editor of The Guardian and the present editor of the Times Literary Supplement agree to agree (isn't that lovely?):
Alan Rusbridger: BBC is due to celebrate its centenary in 2022. Quite easily - still - one of the most trusted institutions in Britain, if not the world. But apparently Dominic Cummings doesn’t like it, so, whatever.
Stig Abell: The problem is that it is hard to argue that the funding model is not anachronistic. If the BBC were to be invented today, it would not be funded by a licence on televisions. It is a small step to ignore the fact that state-supported broadcasting fills an essential function.
Alan Rusbridger: Agree. So we need to shore up the “essential function” argument and make people realise that is impossible if the BBC is essentially privatised.
Stig Abell: And the BBC needs to shore it up too.
Alan Rusbridger: True.