The fact is, things are bad - really bad. If we ever want to see a proper grown-up media sector in the Midlands region again, there’s a lot of ground to cover, a lot of assumptions to challenge, and a lot of attitudes to confront. Locally, a toxic combination of laziness, arrogance, bad thinking and poor decisions has sped the process along.
Why does everyone hate Birmingham asks the BBC website bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-… Er, I didn't know they did.
— Adrian Goldberg (@adriangoldberg) February 17, 2013
Just over a week ago, I picked up this tweet from Adrian Goldberg about the BBC website carrying a rather sweet piece about the good in Birmingham in its opinion section. But they just couldn't resist the awful headline: Why does everyone hate Birmingham... even Jane Austen? And as Adrian said, I’m not at all sure that they 'hate' Birmingham.
If hate is the wrong word, how about ... disdain - or condescension? Metropolitan condescension for the regions does exist. It always has. It's a given; it’s never going to go away. And it’s the same the world over: New Yorkers rush to heap abuse on New Jersey, which has produced, proportionately, way more than its fair share of megastars: Springsteen and Sinatra just for starters. I'll add Jon Bon Jovi if you insist. And why Jersey? Simple: it’s the first place you hit after the bridges and tunnels, and, to be fair, the bit you see coming out of New York is pretty ugly, carrying as it does much of the hideous industrial infrastructure… that New York needs to sustain itself.
Here in the UK, the West Midlands faces that same problem: it’s the first conurbation you reach when travelling north from London. So it, too, takes more than its fair share of London condescension. Manchester, competing for its slice of regional funding, is only too happy to join the party.
Mind you, Manchester adds flash and swagger to its proposition, and Birmingham certainly doesn’t. That may be exactly why Manchester has some appeal to metropolitan purse-string holders: they're sparkly and brash enough to be noticed, but far enough away not to be irritating. Interestingly, Manchester has had a solid local political base, with the same party (Labour) in charge for decades. Over the same period, Birmingham has flip-flopped, with overall control changing regularly. That’s not a great basis on which to build.
So the West Midlands has dithered, while Greater Manchester has built on solid foundations. And over the decades, the damage has been done. Now? Here’s some figures which illustrate the problem perfectly. They are absolutely horrifying.
Midlands region BBC Licence fee contributions: 25% of the national total
BBC spending in the Midlands region:2.5% of the total BBC budget.
These figures are for the BBC definition of Nations And Regions; here, Midlands means both East and West Midlands, and East Anglia: a total of 10 million people, the largest population group of all the Nations and Regions, larger than, for example, Scotland and Wales combined. And of course the region also takes in our two most celebrated University cities. You can see another set of figures in the graphic above.
Something’s not quite right there, is it? The Midlands region gets the smallest spend. But it's got the largest population. So it has the most license fee payers. So it contributes the most funds to the BBC. And what does it get back? The smallest spend, and the biggest proportion of job cuts.
Now, these are all figures for the year 2011/12, collected from the BBC’s own documentation and rigorously analysed by the team at Campaign For Regional Broadcasting Midlands. If you want to know more, visit their site: it's bristling with information and argument.
What now? I don’t quite know. The damage has been done. If it is to be fixed, it's down to a lot of us. Certainly, I feel that the figures above are evidence of a disgusting and shocking imbalance in funding. It's the horrible result of a whole confluence of factors and decisions.
I’d like to see a rebalancing of the funds, of course. I’d especially like to see a fair slice of that go back into radio, at network and especially at local level. Because radio can work creatively, cheaply and speedily, that’s where you would see the fastest results. It’s going to take years and years to rebuild the televisual craft and skills base that has been destroyed along with the infrastructure, and we need quick wins.
But let’s not forget that while our local broadcast infrastructure has been ripped apart, creativity continues, powered by the unstoppable flow of grass-roots imagination and artistry in local writing and our stage, music, film and video sectors. While regional broadcasting continues to decline, the production of content in the regions is richer, more inspiring and more diverse than ever. When the inevitable change in thinking rolls around – this is the BBC, after all – that content will be waiting. Some of it will have found new ways to reach its public.
We - that's you, me, anyone who has a sense of fairness, or pride in our region, anyone who resents their license fee being so disproportionately spent - need to talk. To anyone who is prepared to listen.