![People stand outside the Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/columnists/2024/07/12/TELEMMGLPICT000357806754_17207833175520_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq_4lZL6XGyKd1IzVfh-3zqkklW67ZKazFSUg_RL8azUI.jpeg?imwidth=680)
![People stand outside the Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/columnists/2024/07/12/TELEMMGLPICT000357806754_17207833175520_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq_4lZL6XGyKd1IzVfh-3zqkklW67ZKazFSUg_RL8azUI.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Imagine having such magnificent power. You’re somewhere deep inside that gleaming, modern and super high-tech BBC HQ of Broadcasting House, on London’s Portland Place. Around you are the lush, expansive and comfortable studios of your radio output, be it One, Two, Three, Four or Five and their various add-ons – from stations to podcasts. You have some of the most formidable brains in the business, producers, researchers, IT people and, the best-known broadcasters.
You rule the airwaves. You are the national broadcaster, you occupy the central ground of that digital dial, your app – BBC Sounds – has that swirling clock of choice: music, live sport, news, channels linked to every region, and podcasts from crime to comedy.
Sure there are budgets and audiences to chase, BBC rules and regulations, mantras and a mission. But you can trim and tweak, slash and burn, you can rip up schedules, ditch big names, sign up new ones. You can discard long-serving presenters and create a roster that, within the above confines, befits your own strategy. And such has been the approach of Radio Two, as I’ve written about here previously. And while we – I specifically – may rail against the dumping of Ken Bruce, Steve Wright, Paul O’Grady et al, it is completely reasonable for the bosses of that radio station to fashion the station with the powers they have. Their numbers and their audiences will be carefully scrutinised and they will be held to account and be responsible for those successes and failures.
Such is the unique power of the BBC, at the gift of us, the licence-fee payers. Which is where it gets sticky. And is where these bosses need to be told “this far and no further”. Because look at this latest spectacle: how irritating it must be for that powerful BBC boss to peer at the likes of Boom Radio and Greatest Hits Radio and see their damn listeners, their BBC listeners surely, decamping. Trooping off to Ken Bruce’s new patch – 10am to 1pm each day at Greatest Hits – or to David Hamilton in the afternoon – broadcasting cosily from his Sussex farmhouse – on Boom.
You wonder what to do about it before landing on the genius plan of wrestling them back by simply launching another station, a “pop nostalgia” one. And it’s dead easy because you only need to commandeer one of your own studios, and load up a bunch of songs, throw in some links and hey presto you can lasso back the punters. And there’s no grubby commercial hassle of having to sell ads, let alone invest in a whole radio station and raise a marketing budget and roll out a PR strategy. As all you need to do is bung it on the BBC Sounds app and then cross-promote on your existing monopoly of channels.
Those BBC podcasts from Today to Gangster – their quality aside – are unfair competition enough. But whole new stations to batter the commercial rivals?
Quite right, then, that Ofcom has apparently screamed “woah” and instructed the BBC to submit the proposal to a full public interest test. Although no such test has been enforced on the “Let’s kill Classic FM” Radio 3 “chill” service, which has the go-ahead.
A public statement from Ofcom is imminent, but I would urge them to be strong, to hold firm. The BBC should not be allowed to devise digital stations to suck up wandering listeners like blotting paper. They should not be enabled to steal the clothes of commercial channels, to use them as free testing grounds, then mimic those services and without the need to pump out pesky ads. Their huge arsenal and monopoly is big enough and they should not be allowed to wreck private enterprise and pull the rug from under risk-taking entrepreneurs.
The BBC must not use its licence-fee billions to squash Ken Bruce
By attempting to rip off rival radio stations’ content, the broadcaster is showing its arrogance