BBC should get over idea it's the 'nation's moral backbone' says former Top Gear producer
The BBC should @get over@ the idea of being a public service broadcaster, and consider other models like advertising, says former Top Gear producer Andy Wilman.
“The BBC has got to get over itself about that Reithian stuff,” the producer of The Grand Tour told The Telegraph. “It’s almost like they’re an amorphous blob in Star Trek: they live in a higher universe with more resonance and meaning. It doesn’t resonate with the younger people.”
He went on to argue that to survive, the BBC has “got to align [with the marketplace] and trim down its output. If it gets over the Reithian stuff, the next thing to get over is that it’s this provider of a public service.”
As part of a feature on the future of television, he gave insight into the events that led to the creation The Grand Tour for Amazon Prime. Wilman left the BBC in 2015 with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, in the aftermath of Clarkson punching a producer on Top Gear. He believes the BBC’s didacticism contributed to worsening relations.
“I remember when everything went wrong for us at the end with Top Gear. One battleground was the phrase ‘it’s the BBC, things are different for us.’ And I used to go, ‘actually, no, they’re not.’ At the end of the day, you’re an employer and broadcaster. It’s absolutely in their rights to punish, to censure, to take action adhering to the normal standards of the workplace,” he said.
“But they added another layer: ‘We are the BBC, we are held to a higher account.’ I think it’s got to get over the idea that it’s the nation’s moral backbone. It’s got to get over that s___ and be a broadcaster.”
Furthermore, he argues that the BBC should consider other funding models such as advertising, saying that “when the public rally to the defence of the BBC, it’s not necessarily because they like the licence fee.”
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Nevertheless, he leaves the door open to returning to the corporation, saying he would be “very happy” to go back.
“We’re all mates. Our rows, my rows, were with certain elements of management from the past. The main mass of the BBC, I loved it. It was a dysfunctional family, but it was quite a funny dysfunctional family.”
Wilman was speaking to the Telegraph as part of a larger article on how coronavirus has affected television. In it, he also reveals how global travel restrictions, and his own contracting of the virus, interfered with the new series of The Grand Tour, and how new guidelines might affect production moving forward.
“When you slap down the latest guidelines versus what we normally do, you go ‘oh f___ I’m going to empty my bowels now.’”
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