The BBC and other Great British Anachronisms

I suspect Rod Liddle’s analysis of the BBC and, more especially still, the mentality of its top brass is acute and persuasive:

My suspicion is that it will become increasingly difficult to justify a license fee when the balance of the BBC’s output is tilted so far in favour of populism and ratings chasing. This is the point I made to Alan; that times have changed, the market has changed and that no matter how fine a “product” Radio Five, say, or Strictly might be, they can easily be done elsewhere.

You would have thought I’d suggested rogering his grandmother; there was an immediate bristling and a refusal to engage with the issue. Just a blanket denial that the corporation chases ratings, is stretching itself too thinly, etc etc. And a weird defensiveness; the suspicion that the interlocutor might be saying this sort of stuff because he’s in the pay of Murdoch and therefore wants the BBC destroyed.