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.
 

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

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.