Published: Thursday, 29th July, 2010 9:30am

Letter: Leave Auntie alone, Maurice!

by Correspondent

Comments (1) | Print | Email

Maurice O'Brien, in his typically acerbic column (Reading Chronicle, July 15), was right to lambast Jonathan Ross, who treats interviewees like trampolines to bounce jokes off, and Alan Hansen, laziness personified as a football pundit.

But then he goes and spoils it all by using these overpaid clowns as a stick to beat the BBC with.

For reasons that escape me, Ross and Hansen are good for ratings and the Beeb would be castigated if it did not respond to popular demand on its mainstream television channel.

But elsewhere it offers so much more. What about Newsnight on BBC2, and no self-respecting political commentator could fail to tune into the Today programme on Radio 4 where you can also find Woman's Hour (yes, men are allowed to listen), Desert Island Discs, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue and Test Match Special to name but a few.

For easy listening without ads, turn to Radio 2; for the Proms, turn to Radio 3; for sport turn to Radio 5 Live; and for insomniacs, the incomparable World Service.

Radio 1? I'm too old to judge but there was an outcry when the Beeb tried to drop its 'minority' station, BBC 6 Music, and the decision was reversed.

If the licence fee protesters, led by Kelvin MacKenzie and co, had their way, the airwaves would be full of anodyne music interrupted every five minutes by someone trying to flog a new detergent and political content would be reduced to the kind of populist rants given by LBC talk show host Nick Ferrari on last week's Question Time.

Am I a broadcasting snob? Maybe, but many others share some or all of my 'minority' tastes which would be ill-served by a commercial free-for-all.

The £145 licence fee does indeed seem a lot at first glance, but when you look at the multiple services it helps to fund - to which must be added excellent news and sports websites and local radio - it's an absolute bargain and chicken feed compared to the £35 a month I've been paying Sky Sports because of their Test Match monopoly and pick of the Premier League's live games.

The smug new Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, appears to agree with Maurice, having announced his intention to cut the licence fee. This is no surprise as the Conservative Party has long regarded the BBC as a bloated bureaucracy run from Moscow.

My message to him is: By all means chop super-rich management staff and TV presenters, but cut services at your peril.

Anthony Crispin

Appletree Lane, Spencers Wood