The Coalition’s ideas for the BBC (including the COI debate) are random and haphazard

Raymond Snoddy declares himself gobsmacked by the changes taking place at the BBC at the behest of the Government…

It is not often that only one word will do. Gobsmacked! is that word. In more than 40 years as a journalist I have never seen the like of it. Over the years there have been peaks and troughs of media policy but you could easily detect the patterns, the continuities, and a certain rational process at work, which you could either agree or disagree with.

Now the affairs and future of the BBC have been conducted by the Coalition with all the subtlety of an Irish horse fair, or the brutality of a drunk surgeon who, when confronted by a patient who doesn’t want a leg off, instead asks whether an arm would do instead.

Now we know why defence specialists almost in unison argued yesterday (Tues) that the defence strategic review has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with cuts.

This is random Government of the sort we have never seen before in living memory.

Somehow the BBC, which has little to do with the public sector deficit, has been entangled in this melee.

How can one take seriously a Government that, until 24 hours ago, was suggesting that the BBC should start paying for the free television licences of the over 75’s at an annual cost of more than £550 million and then dropped the idea in the face of opposition from the BBC?

And what about the policy of requiring the BBC to take public service advertising to the consternation of both commercial radio and television? That apparently was also live until the past few days – until the most recently invented rabbits were pulled out of the hat.

Last week Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt was expressing astonishment that the previous Government had taken nearly two years to complete the last BBC licence fee settlement. He said he had no intention of taking so long.

Secretary Hunt is obviously a man of his word.

Assuming that the Government is serious and doesn’t come up with a new set of policies by Friday lunchtime, and setting aside the method by which they reached their destination, what are we left with?

They may be difficult to spot but there are actually a few small morsels of comfort for the BBC resulting from this haphazard process.

The first of course is that the licence fee has survived and has been protected at least for the next six years. The fact that it has been frozen for that period will not come as much of a surprise to BBC executives. There were realistic worries, encouraged by Hunt, that it might have been cut, not just in real terms, but actually, seriously cut.

There is no reason to doubt the Culture Secretary’s sincerity when he states that nothing must be done to undermine the editorial independence of the BBC.

There is absolutely nothing silly about asking the BBC to fund the World Service instead of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Although there have been some mild attempts over its history to interfere with the editorial independence of the World Service, usually in times of war, what has been remarkable was just how independent the programming has been.

There has been a low-grade problem of perception, particularly by countries which have only a loose grasp of democratic institutions. It’s paid for by the Foreign Office therefore it must do the bidding of the Government, they believe.

One would like to think the Government was motivated by the niceties of enhancing the perceived independence of the World Service but this was entirely caused by the desire to shift £272 million off the FCO books.

It will be interesting to see how much influence the FCO tries to impose on the World Service once it and the Monitoring Services at Caversham are paid for from the licence fee. If the BBC has to cut some of the services we will know exactly where the responsibility lies.

Genuine savings could flow from a more integrated approach.

Likewise the near £100 million cost of S4C – which must also now be paid for by the BBC – is a crude attempt to shift the money away from DCMS which until now has funded it by grant. The BBC will have no control over the Welsh language channel whatsoever.

Then there is the BBC help for broadband Britain.

There is only one problem with all of this and it also can be summed up by a single word. Wonga. Or rather the lack of wonga.

Overall the BBC will hardly be smaller, although it will have less money to spend on mainstream programmes.

The obvious problem is that the Corporation will have to take on an additional £340 million a year of responsibilities on the back of a licence fee that will shrink in real terms year after year.

Cumulatively it will amount to a 16 per cent cut in budgets. Not even Margaret Thatcher in all her glory cut so fast and loose with the BBC.

Another triumph for the Libs Dems in what is top-slicing by another name.

We are into serious potatoes here – a problem that will not be solved by the symbolic defenestration of a few members of the executive board of the Corporation.

The number of big-ticket programmes will have to be reduced and then shown more often. No bad thing. It’s impossible for any normal human being to keep up with all the good things on TV and radio.

Big star salaries will have to get the short back and sides treatment when contracts come up for renewal and some will be lost to the BBC. Before they go they should think of the plight of Christine Bleakley. She may have got £4 million out of ITV but it could be at the cost of any meaningful television career.

If the stars the BBC already has won’t play ball, create other more cost-effective stars. But then again all of that is unlikely to be enough. It is difficult to see how cuts in services can be avoided and we all know from 6Music what happens when the BBC tries to do that.

That is a story for another day – only no thought should be given for a second to closing or emasculating BBC Four. Increasingly the channel stands out as the best thing the BBC does.

That’s the BBC dealt with now its time to get on with some more random government.