Category: media

Steven Erlanger explains for us overseas folks the controversy surrounding the public broadcaster and the Conservative government’s plans for it.

“In a few days, the culture secretary John Whittingdale will release a white paper making recommendations for a total overhaul of the way the BBC is run.” Among those recommendations: “The organisation that regulated the BBC, the independent BBC Trust, will be abolished. There will be a new BBC board with a chair and deputy chair appointed directly by the government.”

“Ministers have considered plans including a £1bn selloff of the broadcaster, which on Tuesday reported record revenues of almost £1bn and the first audience growth at its main channel in a decade. But they are now understood to have dropped plans for a full sale of the state-owned, commercially-funded broadcaster, instead focusing on selling a minority stake to a strategic partner such as BT.”

So is Mark Rylance. But all is not well: “Upon receiving the award for best drama series, helmer Peter Kosminsky attacked the U.K. government’s treatment of the BBC, warning that its future was ‘under threat, make no mistake about that.'”

“The studio said, ‘can you make her more likeable?’ … And we said absolutely not. I will not make her more likable. This is an actual depiction of a female girl and look how well she’s been received. So they can suck it.”

“Calls for a greater number of female directors in the Cannes programme were voiced long before Jane Campion spoke out passionately in 2012 at the premiere of Bright Star. Last year just two women competed for the main prize and, although organisers denied there was a rule on heels, many women were outraged at reports that those in flats at the premiere of Todd Haynes’s Carol were asked to step aside.”