New Mandate for the BBC: Put Entertainment First

NEW MANDATE FOR THE BBC: PUT ENTERTAINMENT FIRST
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Sarah Lyall]
The last few years have been rough for the British Broadcasting Corporation. It lost a bitter fight with the government and suffered the resignation of its top two officials in 2004 over its news coverage of British intelligence leading to the Iraq war. It has reorganized itself up and down, begun to lay off thousands of workers and worried endlessly about its viability at a time when the broadcasting landscape is changing at a dizzying pace. But this week the government threw a crucial lifeline to the Beeb, as it is familiarly called, pledging that it could continue to be financed by the license fee — an annual charge levied on all British television owners — at least through the next decade. Presenting a so-called white paper setting out the government's plans for the corporation, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said on Tuesday that "we are optimists about the BBC" but warned that "it cannot take its position for granted." In a major reorganization of the way the 84-year-old corporation is run, the government also said that it would scrap the BBC board of governors, which serves as both the BBC's champion and its regulator. Under the new system, the board's responsibilities are to be split between an executive board, which will run the corporation, and a separate group, known as the BBC Trust, that will represent the license-fee payers and to which the executive will have to answer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/arts/television/16bbc.html
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