Make the BBC Capitalist

Today’s beef is personal.

If you have started a media company or even a website, there is a good chance you may have found yourself in competition with the BBC. The corporation’s tentacles, backed by the British taxpayer, extend far and wide.

Mr. Chortler watches BBC television or listens to “Auntie Beeb” on his wireless all the time. The corporation produces some wonderful programs – I praised one in the previous post – and has some of the top reporters in journalism.

The BBC, though, is not fair to the free market. Say, for example, one has a brilliant idea for a website which will teach non-native speakers English. You might do your best to produce quality audio and text for students, but you can’t exactly compete with an entity which at any moment draw upon its vast public-financed resources to hire 100 people to do the same thing and more and then advertise said efforts on its radio, TV and websites.

Should media companies in a free capitalist society be in competition with a publicly funded organization? Of course not. The great irony that a some British companies are supporting through their taxes an entity that has a deleterious effect on their business.

In order to create a level playing field, one solution might be for the BBC to receive its funding through public donations, a la the-not-fully-realized ideal of NPR and PBS.