There are three things everyone knows about the BBC and the Hutton report. First, this has been "the biggest crisis in the corporation's history." Second, Greg Dyke was a great director general. Third, the Labour government and the BBC were at each other's throats over an issue of real substance. All three are wrong.
What we have just seen pales into insignificance in comparison with Margaret Thatcher's attack on the BBC in the mid-1980s. Re-elected in 1983, with a huge majority of 144, her government went for the corporation. Neil Hamilton successfully sued the BBC in 1984 after Panorama broadcast allegations linking him with right-wing extremists. In 1985, the Real Lives documentary "At the Edge of the Union" was withdrawn by the BBC governors under home office pressure. BBC employees took to the gates of Television Centre with protest placards (sound familiar?). The Peacock committee was set up to consider alternative sources of revenue to the licence fee, threatening the lifeblood of the BBC just to make sure it got the message. When the chairman, Stuart Young, died in 1986, he was succeeded by Marmaduke Hussey in what was widely seen as a political appointment. The same year, Conservative party chairman, Norman Tebbit, attacked Kate Adie and the BBC at the Tory conference over their coverage of the bombing of Libya. Later that winter the "Zircon" affair erupted, ending with the sacking of director general, Alasdair Milne. Compared to this barrage of attacks on coverage, and veiled threats to the financial independence of the BBC, the complaints of Blair and Campbell are as nothing. Yet the history of the mid-1980s has been forgotten.
As for Dyke's legacy, it is worth looking at the BBC news on the day he resigned. On the Six O'Clock News there was one foreign news story in half an hour: a two-minute report on a suicide bomb attack in Israel. There was six minutes of foreign news coverage during the Ten O'Clock News, but it began only 18 minutes into the bulletin. This parochialism was symptomatic.
Both news bulletins made reference to Dyke's achievements in bringing sport back to the BBC. This at a time when Grandstand is on its knees, and when the BBC was showing the African Cup while its main rivals broadcast the Champions League and Premiership live. Most seriously, Dyke presided over the dumbing down of BBC television: the virtual disappearance of intellectuals, the banishing of arts coverage to the digital ghetto of BBC4, and of Panorama to its graveyard slot, late on Sunday night. Religious programming on BBC1 and BBC2 during the week Dyke resigned consisted of Songs of Praise and The Heaven and Earth Show, at 10am on Sunday. There was not one arts programme that week on BBC1 and none in prime time (8-11pm) on BBC2. Television highlights this year have been elsewhere: on Channel 4 (Shameless, the final series of Friends, Frasier and Sex in the City, Angels in America and the new series of Six Feet Under), Sky One (Nip/Tuck, 24) and ITV (Director's Commentary). What has the BBC shown so far this year to compare?
As for the battle between the BBC and the government, it was always a fight between two bald men over a comb. The government got to distract attention from policy failures (tuition fees, schools, the rail service). And the BBC got to look as if it was doing a serious news job, so we wouldn't ask what happened to all the arts and ideas programmes. The Hutton report has allowed both to posture. Gavyn Davies, Dyke and Blair are not arch-enemies, fighting over principle. It is hard to remember a time when the chairman and director general of the BBC have been so enmeshed, in their lives and friendships, with members of the ruling government.
Who should replace Dyke? The Hutton report and all the self-serving guff about the BBC's independence has distracted us from the real issue: a commitment to original public service broadcasting. Jana Bennett, director of television, and the two current channel controllers have shown how little that matters to them. Mark Thompson, the Oxford intellectual and Channel 4 pornographer, is damaged by his lack of achievement at Channel 4 (all but one of the programmes I mentioned earlier are American imports). Mark Byford, acting BBC director general, is a man of integrity and has handled recent events well, refusing to fudge the key issues, but shows no obvious appetite for exciting new kinds of drama and comedy. Michael Jackson, the prince over the water, has the flair the others lack, but his golden age as head of music and arts, then at BBC2, was underpinned by others - Alan Yentob, John Whiston and Laurence Rees - and he never pulled off the same trick at Channel 4 without them.
My choice would be the most imaginative television executive of his generation: John Whiston, trained at the BBC and now at Granada, with Mark Byford as deputy director general and editor in chief. Failing that, the BBC headhunters should look for someone with the passion of Jeremy Isaacs, the analytic intelligence of David Elstein and the commitment to public service broadcasting of Melvyn Bragg.
