The other thing to understand is that the BBC is funded, not by an independent media tycoon, but by the British public, and is paid for by an annual television licence fee which is ‘charged to all British households, companies and organizations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts or to use its streaming service, iPlayer.’ In other words, even if you don’t watch or listen to any BBC channels or stations, you still have to pay the licence fee if you watch live TV from independent channels on any device. This fee (currently £169.50 per annum) is set by the British government and needs approval by parliament. The revenue raised from the licence fee in 2022/23 was £3.741billion.

These assets may be huge, but so are the BBC’s outgoings. In the UK alone, the corporation owns (at the last count) 154 buildings in all corners of the nation with major production locations in Cardiff, Glasgow, Belfast, Birmingham, Salford (Manchester) and Bristol as well as London. In recent years however, many departments have relocated from London to Media City in Salford, but the capital still retains departments at White City, Maida Vale and its headquarters at Broadcasting House.

Broadcasting House is located at Langham Place/Portland Place, roughly half way between the tube stations at Oxford Circus and Regents Park, which meant that when building work started on the studio in 1928, it had to be constructed over the top of the Bakerloo Line. Designed by George Val Myer in the art deco style, the steel frame was faced with Portland Stone and completed in time for Henry Hall and his BBC Dance Band to record the first broadcast here on 15^th March 1932. It was officially opened two months later on 15^th May 1932.

Adorning the outside of this Grade II listed building are several carvings by Eric Gill. Apart from being a renowned sculptor, he was also responsible for designing the Gill Sans typeface amongst other things, and as he was also a religious man, there was no reason to think that his sculptures on Broadcasting House would become controversial, but they have.

His commission from the BBC was to carve five modern sculptures to compliment the modern-looking building; one in the entrance hall recording the names of the people involved in the building’s creation, and four on the exterior based on Prospero and Ariel, the fictional characters in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Prospero was to serve as a symbol of wisdom and benevolence, and Ariel, the invisible spirit of the air, as a personification of broadcasting.

During the winter of 1931-1932 Gill carved three ariel panels on the sides of the building –  ‘Ariel Piping to the Children’ on Langham Street, and on Portland Place, ‘Ariel Hears Celestial Music’ and ‘Ariel Between Wisdom and Gaiety’.

The sculpture that was to have the biggest impact was the one of Prospero and Ariel that was situated above the main entrance on the outside of the building. If we were to offer Gill the same benevolence that Prospero supposedly had, then it could be argued that perhaps the sculptor intended for the bearded figure of Prospero to represent the Almighty presenting his son to the world. Others saw it differently, not least because the size of a certain part of Ariel’s anatomy appeared to be over generous, and it became necessary for Gill to get his tool bag back out again and chisel a bit off. Even then, there were calls for it to be removed (the statue I mean).

The controversy didn’t end there though because Gill kept some personal diaries which only came to light after his death with the publication of a biography by Fiona MaCarthy in 1989. Those diaries revealed that Eric Gill wasn’t as righteous a person as he would have people believe. In them he described how he sexually abused his adolescent daughters, had an incestual relationship with at least one of his sisters and even practiced sexual experiments with a dog.

Following the revelations and the exposure of other high profile paedophile cases, there were calls for the removal of Gill’s public works, and that included Prospero and Ariel at Broadcasting House, but the BBC decided to leave it where it was. In January 2022 a man climbed up to the statue with a hammer and started trying to remove it himself and was arrested for his trouble. The following year another unsuccessful attempt was made by someone else who thought it shouldn’t be here – but it still is.

Instead of removing the statue altogether, the BBC has spent upwards of £50,000 repairing it, but they say that the costs won’t fall on licence fee payers as the damage is covered by insurance. Their argument for repairing rather than removing it is that the actions of an artist has to be separated from his work, and to save you the trouble of travelling up to Broadcasting House to judge for yourself, I’ve included a couple of pics of the controversial Prospero and Ariel below.

In order to save costs, the BBC decided to transfer most of its London operations to Broadcasting House, and beginning in 2003, it embarked on a major renovation programme which included building a new extension and refurbishing the old one.

The first of two phases involved renovating the old building and building an extension to the east, which was initially called the Egton Wing (after the Egton House offices that were originally here if you really must know). Completed in 2005, the new extension was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 20^th April 2006, and in 2012 was renamed the John Peel Wing in honour of the well-known disc jockey.

Phase two involved the creation of a large wing to the rear which joined the old and new buildings together, and at the same time provided a plaza that could be used for outdoor events. This extension was also opened by Her Majesty on 7^th June 2013.

The combined complex now houses (with the exception of Radio 5 Live and Radio 5 Sports Extra which have moved to Salford Quays) the entire television and radio operations of BBC News and World Service.

Ever since the BBC has been broadcasting news, it has maintained its desire for impartiality, and it’s something I not only applaud, but also endeavour to practice myself when blogging about controversial subjects.

The corporation has a massive task on its hands where this is concerned because as the medieval English poet John Lydgate once said (and later adopted by Abraham Lincoln) “you can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. It’s no wonder then that occasionally the broadcaster has found itself involved in criticism. That said, I think it’s fair to say that for most of the time most people have accepted most of what the BBC has broadcast as being mostly impartial – but times are changing.

These days, there are many more places to find out what’s going on in the world. Mainstream Media (MSM) has found itself in competition with social media and other sources, some of which are dubious to say the least, but it’s led to people questioning the information that we’re constantly being given, and I have to admit to being one of those people.

I rarely accept one source of information as the correct one, and spend umpteen hours referencing and cross referencing different sources before I’m satisfied that I have a trustworthy account of something I’m researching. All this delving has led me to the conclusion that MSM is only telling us what they want us to hear.

There’s nothing wrong with that of course providing we have a choice of paying for what we want to read, watch or listen to, and there have been calls for the licence fee to be scrapped and replaced with subscription-based channels. In 2022, there were 40,654 people who were prosecuted, given a criminal record, fined up to £1,000, and still had to pay the licence fee when they refused to pay it.

On winning the general election in July, the new Labour government immediately re-affirmed its commitment to the licence fee until at least 2027, presumably when the charter comes up for renewal. In the meantime the public will have to continue paying the licence fee if they don’t want to fall foul of the law.

Interestingly, outside the John Peel Wing is a statue of a former BBC employee –  George Orwell. I’m sure most of you will know that he was the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel about a future world where three totalitarian states control the world and are constantly at war. One of those states is Oceania which is ruled by a regime that has unswerving obedience to its leader, Big Brother, and is subjected to that obedience through brainwashing, propaganda, and a crackdown on dissent.

Above the sculpture by Martin Jennings is an inscription from Orwell’s proposed preface to Animal Farm which calls for the idea of free speech in an open society – “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.

I’m guessing that those who support the BBC as a public broadcaster see that statement as freedom of expression, but the question has to be asked if that only works if you agree with the news reports that come out of Broadcasting House.

POSTED – AUGUST 2024