15-04-2021, 11:36 AM
Thatcher talks about this briefly in her autobiography. She was very keen to see the BBC funding model replaced, possibly with a subscription-based model. The Peacock report was intended to reccomend scrapping the license fee, but as we know instead came back with the blind auction for ITV franchises. She felt she needed to break what she saw as "the broadcasting establishment" and in particular felt that "new talent" was being kept out of the system.
The BBC would undergo some changes but again not until Major was in power. In came John Birt, internal markers and "Producer Choice." But there were also radical changes that needed doing, the most famous example being the repositioning of Radio 1. The station was, quite literally, too successful with talent that had frankly been there too long and gotten a bit too comfortable. The audience had grown with the station. Whilst the headline JICRAR and RAJAR figures would tell you ratings fell off a cliff, the numbers tuning in under the age of 25 soared, so it was actually a successful project albeit not without some pain.
However, in a stunning lack of joined-up thinking the displaced audience were homeless until Jim Moir revolutionised Radio 2, which really should have happened when Radio 1 was changed. Instead, the mid-90s were boom years for commercial radio, with new stations sprouting up like mushrooms. Sadly, a lot of these simply struggled with viability when Radio 2 got its act together, and the refreshed network started reclaiming that audience. The result was a struggle for an audience and advertising; the result of that is the commercial network we have today following multiple rounds of deregulation.
The BBC would undergo some changes but again not until Major was in power. In came John Birt, internal markers and "Producer Choice." But there were also radical changes that needed doing, the most famous example being the repositioning of Radio 1. The station was, quite literally, too successful with talent that had frankly been there too long and gotten a bit too comfortable. The audience had grown with the station. Whilst the headline JICRAR and RAJAR figures would tell you ratings fell off a cliff, the numbers tuning in under the age of 25 soared, so it was actually a successful project albeit not without some pain.
However, in a stunning lack of joined-up thinking the displaced audience were homeless until Jim Moir revolutionised Radio 2, which really should have happened when Radio 1 was changed. Instead, the mid-90s were boom years for commercial radio, with new stations sprouting up like mushrooms. Sadly, a lot of these simply struggled with viability when Radio 2 got its act together, and the refreshed network started reclaiming that audience. The result was a struggle for an audience and advertising; the result of that is the commercial network we have today following multiple rounds of deregulation.