3/10/2023 0 Comments Bbc news northern ireland![]() Kate Moss looks incredible in sheer dress with plunging neckline - after stumbling over her words during speech at WSJ awards ![]() Jennifer Aniston, 53, flaunts her incredible figure in a TINY Chanel bra on the cover of Allure - as she opens up about desperate struggle to have kids It concerns a fundamental question: does the United Kingdom want to retain its influence worldwide, or is it content to forego its international voice to save the salaries of a few Gary Linekers? If Global Britain is to be anything more than another of the dead slogans which litter this country’s political history, Government and Parliament know what they should do.Matt Hancock's arrival goes down like a lead balloon! 'Speechless' I'm A Celebrity campmates grill MP on why he 'isn't at work' But the question of the World Service’s future is one which goes beyond the Corporation’s four walls. The Government is understandably not keen to give the BBC more money, especially in light of its position on the licence fee. But given the BBC management’s previous record of bad judgment, they might actually believe their own press releases. There has been speculation that the announcement is part of a strategy to force the Government to increase its financial contribution. Now it is mainly financed through the licence fee, with government grants making up the rest. Its audience being overwhelmingly abroad, the BBC understandably sees it as an easy place to cut, without the fear of popular backlash at home.īut for almost its entire history, the World Service was borne on the Foreign Office’s budget, which reflected its status as a powerful instrument for British diplomacy. Broadcasts in most European languages other than English were axed as part of post-Cold War cuts, while another round of cuts in 2011 led to 650 posts being eliminated and services in several languages (including Russian and Ukrainian) being made online only. Those are not the first cuts to afflict the World Service. And there is of course the BBC management’s perennial obsession with elusive youth audiences, where it has limited competitive advantage, via promised investment in podcasts and the like. It promises that no language will lose BBC service entirely but is unable to explain how Chinese audiences, say, will be able to access its “digital only” service when BBC websites are blocked in the country. The Corporation’s vapid press release on the cuts speaks of the need to “accelerate its digital offering” and to “focus on impact rather than reach”, a poor euphemism for the shedding of audiences. So will the Chinese-language radio service, and the Indonesian one, and two central Asian ones, and others besides. No other international broadcaster comes close to having the same cachet.Īmong the casualties of these cuts will be the BBC’s Arabic radio broadcasts, established more than eight decades ago the Persian radio service, axed as Iran is engulfed in anti-regime protests and broadcasts in four Indian languages, spoken collectively by hundreds of millions and at a time when the UK is trying to deepen its partnership with India. In many countries, it has an outsized influence on the opinions of local elites, even those who are not otherwise ordinarily well-predisposed toward this country. To many living under repressive yokes, the BBC represents one of their few sources of independent information. Through wars and revolutions, it has been a trusted - though audiences are fully aware that it represents the British view of things - source of information. ![]() Originally established as an instrument to advance intra-imperial unity, the World Service today has an immense audience on every continent, reaching 500 million people worldwide at the latest count. Robert Conquest’s Second Law-that every organisation behaves as if it is run by secret agents of its opponents-has seldom been more apt. The Corporation needs to make cuts to its bloated budget but it is literally impossible to think of a worse place to make them than the World Service. All this will save a measly £28.5m a year, or about a week’s spending for BBC One, or a tenth of the new royal yacht’s projected building price. Nevertheless the recently announced cuts to the BBC World Service should cause alarm and concern to all.Īt a time when British soft power and influence matters more than ever for this country’s future prosperity, the cuts will kneecap the World Service where it matters the most, eliminating broadcasts in many of the world’s most spoken languages and axing several hundred posts. The BBC has for good reason, due to the political proclivities in its domestic programming, become something of a trigger for many conservatives.
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