The BBC has never seemed more under attack. But what provokes such passion? In the second of a series of essays on the corporation's past, present and future, Charlotte Higgins asks why the critics seem to come from within as often as from outside
Part one: What can the origins of the BBC tell us about its future?
The BBC is like the Greeks Hydra: vast and many headed. The same organisation that made Sherlock frittered away £100m on a failed IT initiative; it runs five orchestras, the Today programme and the World Service; it inexplicably buys and then sells for a much smaller sum the Lonely Planet guides. While Kenneth Clark was pacing the streets of Italian hill towns, filming Civilisation for BBC2, Jimmy Savile was presenting Top of the Pops on BBC1, and Stuart Hall was informing, entertaining and abusing in the north of England. Whatever qualities it has, it often seems to embody the opposite, too. For most of us, there are parts of the BBC we couldnt live without, much of it that we enjoy, vast acreages that we take for granted, and characteristics that we find irritating, infuriating or even loathsome.
Some of the most outspoken critiques of the BBC come from within it. One cold sunny morning I visited Jeremy Paxman in his flat in west London. As he padded around filling the cafetière, he railed against the BBCs closed corporate culture. He said: It is smug. I love the BBC in many ways, but at the same time it has made me loathe aspects of it, and thats a very odd state of affairs. When I see people being given £1m merely for walking out of the door, when I see £100m being blown on that DMI [digital media initiative] thing, a stupid technical initiative like that, I start wondering: how much longer are we going to test the publics patience?
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