Thompson too dominant says Hunt

More conjecture on what will happen to the BBC if the Tories win the next election comes from this mornings Indy.

Media editor Ian Burrell interviews shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt who tells the paper that Director General

Mr Thompson was too dominant within the corporation and suggested that the director general should face greater internal scrutiny on whether he was worth his annual remuneration package of £834,000.

A shadow cabinet spat over Eastenders

Jeremy Hunt and Tim Loughton have been engaging in debate over whether Eastenders is the sort of television the BBC should be making, or whether it fails to 'portray real life'.

The shadow culture secretary and the shadow children's secretary have been discussing the issue,the later fresh from taking part in the current Channel 4 series, Tower Block of Commons.

He writes that

the influence of television and soaps and so-called ‘reality TV’ in particular, is huge, especially on young people. The truth is that in the Christmas Day TV ratings more people tuned into the Queen Vic to witness the gory murder of Archie Mitchell than to Queen Liz talking about the ultimate sacrifices made by our servicemen in combat zones.

Whilst the Shadow culture secretary reacts to Mark Lawson's Guardian piece by saying that far from being hated by the Tory front bench he praises it for

have consistently tackled difficult social issues, and crucially reached large audiences in doing so, ever since. So happy 25th Birthday

Incidently the show celebrates its 25th anniversary with a live show on Friday

Future vision for the BBC under a Tory government

Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is interviewed by the Sunday Times this morning and gives a fair indication of what a future Tory government may do to the BBC.

He told the paper that
the public broadcaster could be dramatically slimmed down under a Tory government and

warned that the BBC’s bureaucratic waste had become an “absolute nightmare”.

Hunt said that it had been “obscene” of the BBC to demand an inflation-busting licence fee increase despite the squeeze on family incomes. “The BBC should have waived its increase this year,” said Hunt. “Why did it have a £68m inflationary rise when there is no inflation?”

He was very sceptical of the corporation's niche channels with BBC Three and BBC Four, as well as digital radio stations such as 1Xtra, 6 Music and Radio 7 coming under particualr scrutiny.

The BBC needs to make a better case for investment in some of its new digital channels which have very low audiences but do cost a lot of money.

Hunt says Tories will abandon plans to tax phone lines

Apparently the Tories would reverse two of the main proposals in the government’s Digital Britain bill and are considering plans to rip up the BBC’s royal charter.

This morning's FT reports that shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt,in an interview with the paper said a Tory government

would scrap a proposed 50p a month tax on all telephone lines, aimed at raising about £175m a year towards the cost of funding superfast broadband to UK homes, “as soon as possible” after the election, expected in May and,also promised to reverse government plans to force the BBC to share £130m of the television licence fee with other broadcasters.