David Timoney Profile picture
Autonomous vehicle. Self-assembly required. May contain traces of critical theory. Retweets not necessarily a WTF.

Sep 29, 2020, 5 tweets

The BBC has a global role, but it's over-inflated in the domestic imagination by WW2 films. The Nazi hegemony in Europe meant that local radio was collaborationist, so the BBC secured a continental near-monopoly on "truth" in 1940. After 1945, that largely evaporated.

The Cold War allowed the BBC to maintain its role in Eastern Europe, but it increasingly played 2nd fiddle to the US (VoA & RFE/RL). Most of the BBC World Service in the postwar era was directed to the Empire & was intended to facilitate anti-communist decolonisation.

Though the BBC World Service remains the largest national-to-international broadcaster by audience, this reflects its history. It was directly funded by the FCO till 2014, since when it has been largely a cost to the BBC. It is likely to shrink, even if the BBC is protected.

BBC TV's "soft power" is predominantly directed to the anglosphere & tends to be nostalgic, if not downright reactionary (costume dramas, old sitcoms). At best this is superfluous, given the other cultural channels available (film, music, books etc), at worst misleading.

The chief problem with the BBC internationally is that it has long been associated with local elites & compradors. This wasn't just a feature of the colonial era but of the neoliberal as well. The irony is that it has become the voice of the collaborationists.

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