Kirsty Lang: THE BBC UNDER PRESSURE

Tessa Szyszkowitz in conversation with Kirsty
Lang


THE BBC UNDER PRESSURE
How public broadcasters adapt to the 21st
century


 


The British Broadcasting Corporation BBC is considered to be the
best public television and radio station in the world. But is it
still? For years “Auntie Beeb” has been struggling with adapting
to the changing landscape of media in the 21st century. Younger
viewers leave TV for other, newer, faster media. Subsequently the
discussion about the license fee has been gathering speed. Should
every household pay a yearly fee to support professional,
balanced, high-quality television – including high quality news
programs which seem ever more important in uncertain times, when
fake news floods our information channels.


Public broadcasters and their financing models are under threat –
not only because they need to think about new financing models –
should they allow advertising or not? There is also political
pressure on the BBC – heightened during the period of the
populist Brexit government under Boris Johnson – but public
broadcasters always have to fend off undue influence. These
developments are difficult challenges not only for the BBC, but
all public broadcasters like ORF and ARD. Kirsty lang will
discuss in conversation with Tessa Szyszkowitz how the BBC is
dealing with the situation and which lessons different public
broadcasters could learn from each other.


 


Kirsty Lang is a journalist, broadcaster and
former foreign correspondent with wide ranging global experience.
She spent most of her career in the BBC working as a reporter, a
foreign correspondent, and a TV news anchor. She also presented
BBC Radio’s flagship arts programme Front Row for 19 years. She
is also a regular contributor to the Sunday Times and the
Financial Times (for whom she has written about Vienna’s social
housing model) Kirsty also chairs the boards of the BALTIC Centre
for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Newcastle and the
environmental NGO, Global Witness.





Tessa Szyszkowitz, journalist, author and
historian, is a foreign affairs commentator and UK correspondent
for Falter. Her last book was Echte Engländer, Britain &
Brexit (2018). She is also Distinguished Fellow at the Royal
United Services Institute in London.