The Continuity of Change

Abstract

The BBC by the late 1980s represents what we might designate as the moral model of public service broadcasting. It was the very first in the world to be established on principles which were not orientated towards profit or propaganda; it was, by 1988, among the last left more or less intact. Those principles were that:

• Broadcasting should be universally available;

• It should in its output, cater for a catholicity of tastes;

• There should be universality of payment;

• Broadcasting should be distanced from Governments;

• Broadcasting should be distanced from commerce.

To those basic first principles others, less important, have been added. As time has passed it has become more and more difficult for the BBC to fulfil its own brief . One reason has been finance. If, as the BBC still argues, it has to provide under the first heading — for everyone, everywhere — then the costs are horrendously high.