Managing the (R)evolution

BRIAN MORTON suggests that the BBC could learn valuable lessons from its counterpart in Canada

I SUSPECT this may be an urban legend, or a factoid cooked up by anti-Gaelic cadres in BBC Scotland, but it used to be said that it would be cheaper to post a tape of Radio nan Gaidheal programmes to every Gaelic speaker in the country than it was to broadcast them.

Even if there is a grain of truth, so what? Even in a BBC pulled umpteen ways by the challenge of new delivery formats and by a proliferation of rival carriers and networks, no one would seriously question the need for or the vitality of the BBC’s Gaelic language output.

Intriguingly, though, there was once just such a practice, initiated not to save money but to deal with an even more complex geography and demography, and not in Scotland but over the Atlantic in Canada. The process was known as “bicycling”, by which copies of programmes were dropped into remote communities, copied and passed on.

To make the situation even more complex, the English-French linguistic divide was only the start. Radio and later television programmes were required in Inuktiut, Dene and other languages as well.

Radio nan Gaidheal and Gaelic television less resemble flagships than flak-catching outriders to a corporation that is under serious but clandestine attack

November 2, 2006 marks two significant broadcasting birthdays, the establishment seventy years ago of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and on the same day of the BBC Television Service, which eventually (in 1964) became BBC 1.

Both have in some senses reached the end of their biblical lifespans, certainly in the sense of having been overtaken and to a degree superseded by other suppliers. Both, however, make continuing efforts to remain relevant and responsive.

There are parallels and there are sharp differences in the two stories, but this piece is in no way intended to offer up shaming comparisons at the BBC’s expense, but to point to a few general lessons that might be drawn from respective experience, particularly as it might relate to our “northern territories”.

Inevitably, the complaint that has most frequently been levelled against both the BBC and CBC down the years is their “monopoly” status. This is largely meaningless when there is no immediate market rival, but becomes a central issue once commercial networks come on the scene.

CBC has intervened on several occasions in recent years over commercial franchise applications to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. It isn’t unusual for broadcast organisations to do this, but CBC’s efforts to keep down its upstart rivals have been seen as undue and inappropriate. The corporation, affectionately known as The Corpse in some quarters, has also had to deal with accusations of political bias – one politician repeatedly refers to the Communist Broadcasting Corporation – and of poor on-air representation for minority groups.

The situation in Canada, as regards linguistic reputation at least, is obviously very different given the political authority of the francophone community and a majority of French speakers in a politically significant centre like Quebec.

No parallel situation applies in Scotland, where the “minority” status of Gaelic, in broadcasting terms at least, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ironically, CBC’s application for a third French-language network in Montreal was declined in favour of a private broadcaster, which may have weakened arguments about monopoly status, but also ironically reinforced the impression of CBC as “white” (i.e. English) and liberal-centrist in bias.

One profound difference between the British and Canadian systems goes far beyond discussion of the licence fee and into constitutional matters. There is clear blue water, further guaranteed by the Broadcasting Act of 1991, between CBC and the Canadian government. The arms-length position is absolute and irreducible, as it should be here.

No aspect of BBC policy so directly answers to government requirements than the so-called Nations and Regions structure, supposedly devolved and autonomous, though only in the way Manchuria was “autonomous” in the 1930s.

The appointment of John Birt as director-general by Margaret Thatcher was one of the great scandals of recent political history. Birt came to the BBC more like one of Cromwell’s major-generals, witch-hunting “bias” under cover of a policy of retrenchment and rationalisation.

The cravenness of BBC staff in not resisting Birt’s revolution – or if it could not be resisted, simply looking for work elsewhere – is in sharp contrast to the volatility of CBC staff, who in 2005 were locked out for a period. In a further twist of irony, the network became known as “BBC Canada” because it was forced to rely so much on imported programmes.

These issues might seem remote to a Northings reader, but the simple truth is that the structure imposed by Birt and sustained by his more affable and humane successor, Greg Dyke, has had a disproportionate impact on so-called minority or specialist broadcasting.

There is not less of it – yet – but it has become, in sharp contrast to the Canadian model, steadily detached from the mainstream broadcasting culture. Just as Birt-ism imposed a false economy, this is false autonomy, easily reversed, easily scrapped, increasingly hard to defend.

At a creative level, we are perhaps starry-eyed about Canadian investment in vernacular culture and in home-grown talent. A quota system, such as applies in Canada (and France) for music broadcasting is relatively easy to subvert, and denies the audience an enriching range of styles and forms in favour of a purely quantified approach.

As the Scottish experience proves, ghettoising native music militates against the inclusion of Gaelic music, say, in mainstream programmes. I was once told, gently but firmly, that I could not include Gaelic singing in a Radio 3 ‘In Tune’ coming from Glasgow, not because it would offend Home Counties listeners who were already listening to choral music in Latin, Polish, and Hebrew that day, but because Gaelic music was “handled elsewhere”.

The separation of broadcasting from government in Canada – albeit weakened by the rapid growth of a private sector – provides some guarantee that specialist and minority interests within broadcasting retain a measure of real independence and self-determination.

No such situation applies in Scotland, where Radio nan Gaidheal and Gaelic television less resemble flagships than flak-catching outriders to a corporation that is under serious but clandestine attack.

There are lots of worthy models for cultural autonomy, from primum inter pares to coalition-of-opposites, but one feels increasingly that within the present day BBC, Radio nan Gaidheal has moved ever closer to that historical absurdity “separate, but equal”, and you only need a scant knowledge of world history to know what evils were perpetrated on those terms.

There is another urban legend about CBC, that a tired anchor man one night identified it on air as the Canadian Broadcorpsing Castration. Whatever the origin, it stuck, but with it so did a recognition that CBC was largely responsible for its own ills, or at least for its own growing impotency.

There are too many insulting variants on BBC to bother with here – banal and boring being just the polite ones – and too many political agendas to address to come up with a simple but non-anodyne solution. The sad truth is that, at 70, CBC maintains a level of creativity and independence from American culture that should be our envy.

It also sustains a linguistic and cultural diversity which, despite the dramatic difference in geographical size, or rather because of it, could easily be sustained here, but only if “minority” or “specialist” programming is regarded as part of the mainstream rather than spuriously devolved.

If Jeremy Paxman really is the barometer of British political culture – which is all about concealing cynical uniformity under a spuriously adversarial veneer, and there is no more sycophantic or accommodating a broadcaster in Britain – then Paxman’s notorious hand-off to ‘Newsnight Scotland’ is just a symptom and a warning of how the logic of devolved broadcasting works: indifference tinged with envy at each stage.

The fight is not so much for status or recognition any longer, as for restored membership in a meaningful confederation. The BBC is currently in denial about its own future. It needs root and branch reform, of which the iconic licence fee is but a part, and not the most important part, but in which the role and standing of Scottish and the Gaelic broadcast services will be absolutely vital. And if that is so, we should be casting our eyes across the Atlantic to see how CBC at 70 is managing the (r)evolution with relatively little blood-letting.

© Brian Morton, 2006