I love BBC but my daughter and other youngsters don’t… that is its problem

THERE is a generational moment coming for the BBC and nothing Nadine Dorries, Gary Lineker nor anyone else can say, do or tweet will stop it.

Because the young do not watch the BBC.

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My daughter, a 19-year-old under-graduate who is obsessed with current affairs, the arts and the future of our planet, never watches the BBC.

Her entertainment, information and arguments all come from elsewhere.

It would not cross her mind to switch on the BBC.

And there are millions like her. And they will be the BBC’s nemesis.

The defining generational moment coming for the BBC is when those youngsters born in the 21st century are instructed to click on to their online banking accounts and shell out for a service that has never even been on their radar

The game will be over. The debate will be done. The ludicrously inflated BBC salaries will be no more.

The BBC trough will be drained of public money.

And the concept of a BBC licence fee that we are all legally obliged to pay just because we own a TV set will be an anachronism.

The generational mo- ment coming — quite soon! — for the BBC is when young men and women are ordered to pay a telly tax for something they do not watch, do not want and, crucially, have never been taught to love.

“The BBC is revered, respected and envied around the world,” said Gary Lineker after Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries announced the licence fee would be frozen for two years and the corporation must find some other way to fund itself from 2027

“It should be the most treasured of national treasures,” insisted Gary, who would no doubt feel exactly the same way even if he wasn’t paid £1.36million a year to present a football highlights show. And I agree with Gary.

But the BBC is a lot like the British monarchy, which also has a generational moment coming when Queen Elizabeth II is replaced by King Charles III.
Tipping point

When the Queen dies, the British monarchy can never be quite the same again.

Because we will have lost the monarch who was the living embodiment of our national story.

And that generational tipping point is inevitable.

And so it is with the BBC.

I grew up with the BBC. I have watched it, worked for it and loved it.

But what has changed over the past five years is that it — like those other great British institutions, the Church of England and the Labour Party — now alienates the very people who care about it and love it the most.

Dara O Briain, another BBC advocate who coincidentally sucks lustily on Auntie’s generous, big-nippled teat, tweeted that it was amusing to see how those who complain that the BBC is biased cancel each other out.

Meaning that the BBC faces accusations of bias from both sides of the political debate, thus proving it is gloriously impartial.

I wonder if Dara actually believes this crap?

If so, he should test his theory by boasting in the Broadcasting House canteen that he voted for Brexit and Boris.

And see how many lucrative BBC commissions come rolling in.

David Dimbleby, 83-year-old BBC legend, notes, “the BBC has wandered from the path of public opinion” on issues such as immigration.

OVERPAID PRESENTERS

The BBC was, and should be, a broadcaster for all the nation.

Like the monarchy and the Church of England, it should always rise above the grubby arguments of politics.

But from BBC2’s Newsnight to Radio 4’s Today show, it is now as partisan as any newspaper.

It has ceased to be representative of the entire nation.

The BBC will never forgive Boris for Brexit.

And the ludicrously overpaid presenters are so puffed up with their own sense of self-importance that they are incapable of hiding their feelings.

This infuriates someone like me because the BBC, as Gary Lineker suggests, has a unique place in the heart of those of us born in the 20th century.

The BBC is still capable of greatness.

I watched in awe as Sophie Raworth politely made Sir Keir Starmer squirm on Andrew Marr’s old sofa, gently pointing out how remarkably similar his beer at a “work event” looked to what those tone-deaf Tory oafs did in Downing Street.

I am no hater of the BBC. I doff my flat cap to much of their journalism.

But it does not matter what I think.

And it does not matter what BBC beneficiaries such as Dan Walker, Armando Iannucci and Victoria Coren Mitchell think.

And it doesn’t matter if Nadine Dorries’ promise to terminate the BBC licence fee will actually come to pass or if it is yet another loud, headline-grabbing Tory promise that will be quietly forgotten down the line.

The only thing that matters is that the world is changing. And the funding of the BBC can’t help but change with it.

Andrew Marr, who so recently graced every Sunday breakfast on the BBC, suggests it “might have to have a subscription model”.

The cruel truth is that there will come a day when it is not even open to debate.

The young do not give a damn about the BBC, and therefore the BBC must come up with some alternative way of paying its way.

For someone like me, who grew up with Kenneth Wolstenholme and Top Of The Pops and The Likely Lads, there will be a pang of sadness that the company’s future will inevitably be curtailed.

But my daughter, and the millions like her who were born in the 21st century, will not even notice.

Don’t expect Adele to be like a Rolling Stone

ADELE tearfully cancels her Las Vegas residency, citing Covid disruptions.

She is now being unfavourably compared to those old troupers the Rolling Stones, whose show almost always goes on.

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The only times they cancelled were when Mick Jagger had heart surgery and when his girlfriend L’Wren Scott died.

Even the death of Charlie Watts could not get the Stones to cancel.

I understand the crushing disappointment for Adele’s fans, who had already flown into Vegas for the gig of a lifetime.

In Adele’s defence, she carries the weight of her show alone. It is different in a band.

And Adele famously suffers from crippling stage fright, so a long-running Vegas residency was never a clever idea.

Navy’s shore to help

THERE is something vaguely stomach-churning about the “red meat” policies that this embattled Government is tossing to its unhappy people.

Are we really meant to be ecstatic that the Royal Navy is going to be used to intercept illegal immigrants in the English Channel?

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I thought we were supposed to be taking control of our borders yonks ago.

It all smacks of total desperation.

The Royal Navy is not going to berate, bully or stop the dinghies.

More likely, they will kindly escort them to Blighty.

When will these tough-talking Tories ever learn?

By the time the boats full of illegal migrants are in the water, it is too late to turn them back.

A loaf well lived

REST in peace, dear Meat Loaf.

The only rock star in the history of music who actually looked like one of the audience.

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Novak… no idea

NOVAK DJOKOVIC, poster boy for anti-vax nutters, is said to be in talks with lawyers about suing the Australian government for “ill treatment”.

Novak is not simply living in cloud-cuckoo land.

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He is living in the past.

This is our world now

You get jabbed. Or you stay home.

Tape’s shaped Pammi

PAMELA ANDERSON, 54, has had six marriages, one of the most iconic roles in TV history and an unlikely friendship with Julian Assange.

And yet Pam is arguably best known for an eight-minute sex tape she recorded with her then-husband, Tommy Lee, the drummer of Mötley Crüe.

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Tommy Lee is proud of their tape.

“Let everyone know we did it first!” he preens. “Before the Kardashians, before anyone else! We broke the internet first!”

Pamela is less gung-ho.

She complains she has made “not one dollar” from what was meant to be a private recording, and wanted nothing to do with the new TV series Pam & Tommy, starring Lily James as our busty Baywatch babe.

Pam’s friend Courtney Love is scathing, saying the sex tape “destroyed my friend Pamela’s life. Shame on Lily James”.

Tommy and Pam met in 1994. She sent him schnapps. He licked her face and got her number.

She flew to Mexico. He followed her. Within days they were married on the beach.

And now both their lives are defined by an eight-minute recording of what they did on their holidays.

Marry in haste, repent your sex tape at leisure.

Fido for chop?

CHINA has shut itself off from the world and yet Covid cases are rising in the hermit kingdom.

And China is getting desperate.

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This week an estimated 2,000 members of Hong Kong’s hamster population were exterminated in a government-sponsored blind panic about animal-to-human transition.

Now wealthy residents of Hong Kong are desperately chartering private jets at £20k a pop to get their beloved pet dogs out.

Because if Beijing is slaughtering the hamsters this week, Fido, then who might they come for next?

It is ironic that China is so inept at learning to live with coronavirus.

After all, they invented it.