BBC
Audio onanism
In Beeb-dominated Britain, the commercial triumph of podcasting — epitomised by Spotify’s recent £100 million deals with Joe Rogan and…
Who watches the watchdog?
At the beginning of April, I became so frustrated by the supine coverage of the government’s response to the coronavirus…
Beige-washed Burton
The BBC has been having a good pandemic. Stuck at home, a generation raised on podcasts and YouTube has discovered…
Homage to Avalonia
Televising Glastonbury has changed the festival, and in turn transformed television, says Graeme Thomson
Live and let die
Remember when 2020 was going to be Beethoven year? There were going to be cycles and festivals, recordings and reappraisals;…
The great Newsnight delusion
The Twitter feed of BBC Newsnight editor Esme Wren (remember, I read this stuff so you don’t have to) is…
The Spectator’s notes
At Dominic Cummings’s press conference on Monday, reporters tried two lines of attack. One was to behave like local detectives,…
Macbeth at the movies
The world’s greatest playwright ought to be dynamite at the movies. But it’s notoriously hard to turn a profit from…
Withdrawal symptoms
A TV play by Tom Stoppard, A Separate Peace, was broadcast live on Zoom last Saturday. I watched as my…
Watcher of the skies – and the coffee pot
‘To be recognised and accepted by a peregrine,’ wrote J.A. Baker in 1967, ‘you must wear the same clothes, travel…
Radio 3 presenters
Anyone who has listened regularly to Radio 3 over the decades — not to mention the Third Programme, which Radio…
A soldier’s life
First shown on BBC Scotland, Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War (BBC4, Wednesday) was the documentary equivalent of…
Letters
Musical inspiration Sir: The interview with Antonio Pappano was splendid for those of us who admire him in Australia but…
Real Life
One of the many technological things I don’t understand is, how come I’m paying to watch television? I know why…
Why the BBC licence fee makes sense
A consensus seems to be forming that the BBC licence fee is for the chop. In a digital age, the…
Letters
Devolved or decentralised? Sir: Paul Collier (‘Northern lights’, 22 February) conflates what devolution has come to mean, in UK terms, with…
Why are BBC dramas so obsessed with rewriting history?
If there was a Bafta award for Most Woke Television Drama, a BBC production would win every year hands down.…
The blindness of cultural Marxism
Words we are not allowed to use any more now include ‘cultural Marxism’. Suella Braverman, now the Attorney General, used…
How low can the BBC go?
Last weekend’s papers claimed that the government desires a ‘massively pruned back’ BBC. Former Conservative cabinet minister Damian Green and…
The BBC’s big problem is its obsession with itself
One reason people are disillusioned with the BBC is its obsession with itself. Here is the text of a question…
Citizenship is a privilege, not a right
A couple of people in the Hornsey and Wood Green Labour party have come up with a fascinating suggestion —…
The BBC has much to learn from Japan’s national broadcaster
NHK is Japan’s version of the BBC – it was actually modelled after the Beeb way back in the 1920s.…
Diary
After I took the editor’s job at Today on Radio 4 nearly three years ago I had to answer to…
Top bantz
So, you’ve fallen in love with a piece of classical music and you want to buy a recording. The problems…
A last chance to save the BBC
Whoever becomes the next director-general of the BBC should take a close look at last week’s Question Time. It came…
