Reithian values

‘It’s a potential social menace of the first magnitude,’ declared John Reith, founding father of the BBC, in an interview with Malcolm Muggeridge in 1967. He was horrified by the way that his single broadcasting station, set up in 1922 by a group of techie engineers who were looking for ways to market their newly developed wireless sets, had expanded into a huge corporation with four radio and two television channels. Far too much time, he thought, was already being spent listening to a small Bakelite box. What would he make of our 24/7 access not just to radio and TV but also to the baffling new world of webcasts, podcasts, streaming and downloading? There’s no longer just a radio and TV in every room; some of us are even taking our laptops to bed so that we can drift into sleep while listening to nightmare-inducing replays of David and Ruth’s meltdown on The Archers, or watching John Humphrys reporting from Basra via a Today programme webcast.