The BBC lurches from existential crisis to existential crisis, and yet fundamental questions about its remit and structure are rarely addressed during the frenzied bouts of self-flagellation that Britain’s public broadcaster indulges in at times such as these.
Although its latest crisis – widely described as its greatest since the last greatest one – has sprung from its news department, any structural review should ask whether the time has come to spin out sport from the BBC’s core enterprise.
For a few short months back in 2006, I presented the business sections of the BBC’s Today programme every Friday. The gig was brought to an abrupt end when I was appointed chair of UK Athletics. The Beeb’s hierarchy cited a potential conflict of interest. The Today editor explained that it would be incongruous if Paula Radcliffe failed a drugs test and UKA was declining to put up a spokesperson for interview in the sports slot immediately following the business news that I had just presented.
At the time I was miffed, and wasn’t alone. The sports minister, Richard Caborn, even made a call to intercede on my behalf, but to no avail. Of course, the decision was correct. However, it only served to rile me further whenever I came across any conflict of interest between the BBC and athletics in subsequent years – and believe me there were quite a few.
Needless to say, every time the BBC has wounded itself in mishandling conflicts in its wider business, I’ve chuckled ruefully at the irony of the decision taken over my own modest side-hustle.
BBC future
It may well be that the BBC is fundamentally ungovernable, is too complex and unwieldy to deliver its public service remit in a modern media age in which conflicts of interest brazenly trumpet their existence and accusations of bias mushroom across every social media platform. The broadcaster’s best hope is surely to become a slimmer organisation focused on a clearly defined purpose. News need not necessarily be a core offering, but neither may entertainment – either light or heavy, mainstream or niche. Sport is certainly a product that no longer needs to be part of a stripped-down Corporation.
It is generally accepted that the BBC ‘does’ mega sporting events well. The mix of celebrity talking heads and athlete backstory VTs that it wraps around the action at Olympics and football tournaments may not always be to hardcore fans’ tastes, but coverage of these stop-the-nation events succeeds because it is aimed at a mass casual audience.
Remember, though, that these competitions are not exclusive to the BBC, which is now a secondary operator underneath Discovery for the Olympics and which shares the flagship Fifa and Uefa tournaments with ITV. It is easy to imagine a world in which live sport – even these cornerstone assets – disappears from BBC channels. The sporting events on the protected list that must be shown free-to-air in the UK (the so-called ‘Crown Jewels’) have other potential homes, including on digital channels that could be made available free and be monetised by advertising and sponsorship.
Lack of coverage
Insiders within BBC Sport tell me that its current hierarchy is too in love with football and that other sports are suffering as a consequence. This is being felt in reduced staffing levels devoted to the provision of news and colour on more minor sports, as well as a diminishing portfolio of TV broadcast rights.
In a Sport inc. earlier this summer, I highlighted the lack of live coverage of the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore. I could as easily have written about a slew of other major champs across Olympic and Paralympic sport in recent times. If the BBC is to remain funded in part by a compulsory license fee, then surely it should be obliged to deliver exposure for a breadth of sports to reflect the heterogenous interests of the British public. And not just in sport, but the arts and documentaries too.
The BBC’s plan for 2025-2026 includes 1,350 hours of sport on TV, 1,450 on iPlayer and 3,000 hours of live sport on radio. It is not possible to file the total cost of this undertaking from the Corporation’s accounts. Nor what percentage of hours or finances that football accounts for.
I am grateful to the BBC that it regularly churns out online news and comment on my chosen football team. However, most of what it delivers is already available through other channels. Rarely is it first with this news.
Contrast that with the thin gruel that it serves up across many other sports that form part of my tapestry of fandom. Here the BBC can be the first source of information and the most easily accessed to boot. But sporadic delivery undermines confidence that all key news will be delivered, and once this seed of doubt is sown, BBC Sport’s authority is shot.
New BBC Sport approach
A bold Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport would oblige BBC management to model the creation of an entirely separate BBC Sport enterprise. This would include web news products, 5 Live Sport radio, and a production arm capable of delivering live and magazine output for broadcast on any platform. This could include the BBC’s own terrestrial and digital channels on an arms-length, commercial basis. A brave BBC leadership would get there without being asked.
Yes, such an enterprise would be ripe for a takeover approach from a commercial rival or new market entrant, but that need not be a bad thing. The key, if any politician is reading this, would be to construct a detailed mandate obliging any owner of BBC Sport to deliver the variety and quality of sporting coverage that the nation deserves and which sadly it is no longer receiving.
What could an independent BBC Sport be worth? If constructed smartly, it could certainly go a long way to settling Donald Trump’s threatened $1bn lawsuit against the Corporation.
Second best option? Impose such a mandate on the BBC itself and police it rigorously. Expect pushback on the cost of delivery, but its new leaders – whoever they might be – could resolve that issue by cutting back on expensive talking heads to invest in more journalism and dedicated digital sports channels.
Either way, something has to change. Conveniently, consultation on the renewal of the BBC’s Royal Charter is due to start imminently. On your marks…