What do Qadeer Abdul and Dr. Zeeshan have in common?…

They are the Alpha and the Omega … the first and last people (alphabetically) who, as of today’s date, had submitted responses to the BBC Charter Review Consultation. Oddly enough, both Abdul and Zeeshan have something else in common: both apparently live in the U.S., but took the time to participate in the consultation. Unlike Ofcom, the DCMS is placing the responses to its consultation on its website.

I reviewed 15 to 20 responses today (seems like a decent percentage are British expats). Most, sadly, are just people’s opinions on the BBC’s programming and really do not go to the issues of funding or governance the DCMS might otherwise be looking for. But maybe that’s the real issue: people don’t care - they just want great programming. Maybe the result of the consultation will simply confirm that television is not terribly dissimilar from other goods and services.

A few random thoughts on other comments:

Winner of the Most Thoughtful Comment award: Mark Gray.

Winner of the Flippant Salutation award: Andrew Moffat (’Dear government people’)

And my personal favorite, so far: JA Spencer, who writes in part:

There seems to be a complete lack of cost control and efficiency in the BBC. For example, if there is a major news event anywhere in the world, it seems that about 50 BBC crews attend! In the Iraq war, even the US commander made the public comment broadcast around the world that “you (the BBC) have more people than we (the US Army!) do here…”. Every 2-bit department, no matter the audience size, seems to have their own “News Editor”, “Political Editor”, etc etc. Is it too much for the BBC to share resources across departments, even if the same interviews, etc get repeated over different programmes? . . . . Also, BBC editors seem to love sending people to the most exotic locations for the most obscure and least popular programmes. (Treasure Hunt in Australia? How much did that cost per viewer?)

I’m very impressed with the DCMS. Regulatory transparency with the click of a mouse.

Why can’t Ofcom do this on scores of smaller and simpler public consultations? ‘End the culture of secrecy’, says the Guardian.