I KNOW! Another column that now just goes on and on about that cutting down the BBC to size thing, shutting down the things that aren’t value for money such as the radio’s indie service BBC 6 Music. People with long hair in their 30s must be in disgust. If you haven’t had time to make up your mind and gallavant on your twitter about the charade, never fear as there are two bandwagons you jumping on right now. You can either be screaming “OH JESUS CHRIST OUR MIGHTY LORD you cannot get rid of THAT BEACON of modern broadcasting” and start twittering in capital letters. Or you can be a munipulating Rupert Murdoch type who thinks that the CONSERVATIVE PARTY ARE AMAZING, so the BBC must be slimmed and watered down to a single guy moving levers up and down in a cold dark room whilst wearing a bow tie. Whatever your opinion may be, as there is a recession and, y’know, we have to stop drinking our tall soy chai lattes, changes and cuts need to be made somewhere. As the suggestions put forward so far seem to be more unpopular than Simon Cowell weeing on your great grandmother’s grave, let me be your Director General and make on some suggestions that will save the network millions… no wait BILLIONS. Screw the BBC Trust and kicker that Twitter… this is my proposition to make everything working again. Licence Fee AWAY!!!
1. Introduce the time in the middle of the day when the BBC says BYE BYE and goes to sleep for a few hours. It used to work. At one time the BBC television screen used to run out of programmes, the screen used to turn blank and then come back on for the Magic Roundabout several hours later. Within this time you would had washed some clothes by hand, peeled some potatoes over the sink using a blunt knife and had occasionally hidden under the stairs due to some impending air-raid. By bringing it back now it will not only save the network LOADS of cash, but it would also give us tonnes of extra opportunities. The timeslot would provide an excuse for us to have little nap during the day, provide us the adequate space for us to bitch to our housemates that there is literally nothing on, and it even makes it possible for us to look at the old BBC Testcard (you know the thing that has that girl with the chalkboard sitting there) and judge whether the girl’s eyes have moved if we stare for without blinking for a long period of time and judge between our friends whether she can possible still be alive.
2. Never make any new programmes on CBeebies. Four year olds don’t care about any new shows nor have the memory to think about what they did the previous day. All I remember from my young life is eating fish fingers with mushy peas on the side every Friday night, fighting with my sisters about who deserves to drink out of the special taller yellow cup (that holds a slightly larger quantity of water than all of the other cups in the cupboard) every meal time, being run over by a dog on my way home from school once and flying down the stairs skidding on my bottom roughly three times each day. Children want something on TV that has bright colours, silly voices and lots of lots of screaming regardless of when it was made. Trust me, when these elements of a show comes together they are as giddy as kippers. In fact, I want five year olds in ten years time to wonder why on earth they spent hours and hours watching Arthur and Rugrats thinking that they were the greatest shows ever when in fact it is now so boring that you think that everyone who made it was deeply sad, blind, amazing, divorced or drugged up to their eyeballs on ketamine.
3. Put adverts on the BBC. Yes I know this is a controversial move, but I think it can work if we, the people, are the directors choose what happens within them. They just foot the bill. You always watch that rugby match just because of that good looking guy always scores a try after going into that scrum thing? (That previous sentence highlights my in-depth rugby skills). Make him get half naked and talk about car insurance for five minutes. Think of it. Phil Tufnell can get hit in the go-nads by a giant mouse trap whilst he screams about the benefits of ringing NHS Direct. It is possible to put everyone on BBC Four on helium. We can also see if Lady Gaga’s head is so strong after wearing all of those head dresses that she can sustain an entire grand piano. I’m not sure whether she would have the ability to talk about low fat spreadable butter afterwards but they are paying, so it’s public service broadcasting.
4. Record all of the BBC News Bulletins on the 1st January of each year, to then repeat every single day of that next year. Recession. Recession. Recession. War. Blah blah blah. No difference.
5. Replace the continuity announcers with parrots, or drunk people, or just Morgan Freeman. He can make any show sound good, and sexy and inviting. “Coming up next, Jeremy Vine examines the trade barriers that are affecting New Zanzibar’s healthcare accountants livelehoods.” Our hearts would just melt.
6. Instead of having idents or promos for up-and-coming television programmes, just flash up the words YOU CANNOT ESCAPE. THERE IS NO WAY OUT. More people will watch. And if they don’t, close the borders.
7. After CBeebies have closed for the day, launch pay-per-view CBoobies.
8. Remove all of the toliets in all of the studios to make all the shows faster.
9. And finally, “If you put on your 3D glasses, you can watch them topless”.
Job done. What’s next? Poverty? Right…