Memo to the new BBC chair

I find it hard to overstate the importance of the BBC in ensuring a sense of continuity and cohesion in our national life. As an institution it is far from perfect, but it does continue to offer the possibility of an eventual victory for sanity over nihilism in the evolution of the nation’s media output. That may sound a little ‘over the top’, but having lived through a couple of weeks of Big Brother media excess it doesn’t feel all that much of an overstatement.

What’s certain is that the incoming chair of the BBC Trust will have a very great deal to think about. The ability of the BBC to be a serious contender for a renewed charter in ten years, along with an adequate licence-fee settlement six years from now, will crucially depend on the ability of this new body — the Trust — to establish an effective and robust form of governance.

The dangers of this untested system are all too obvious, but the opportunities that would flow from its success are enormous. Because the shape of media is only likely to become more complex as time passes, the Trust’s approach to regulation will need to be ever more sophisticated, and its understanding of what is meant by ‘public interest’ issues ever more acute.

In a fully digital era, the need to advance the public interest as a governing principle, underpinning the regulation of the whole of our public service media, remains every bit as important as it was in an analogue era, when scarcity rather than abundance of information was the dominant feature. That’s why it is critical that the chair and members of the Trust are extraordinarily well informed about the consequences of technological change.

The early signs are promising. Under the leadership of Nicholas Kroll, the Trust Unit, which provides the governors with independent advice and support, has already begun to acquire an intellectually robust reputation.