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London calling

The national broadcaster announces plans to invade North Korean airwaves

The microphone: mightier than the sword

IN JULY George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, accused the BBC of becoming “imperial in its ambitions”, before effectively lopping about £650m ($1 billion) off its budget by making the corporation take on the cost of the free television licences that are given to the elderly. The message was clear: in these austere times, do less with less money.

The BBC’s director-general, Lord Hall, seems to have decided that attack is the best form of defence. In the first of four speeches he is due to make setting out the BBC’s case for the renewal next year of its royal charter, on September 7th Lord Hall promised new services and, in an accompanying policy document, proposed 100 more local journalists to be shared with newspapers. Cuts will apparently be announced in due course. But for now, Lord Hall offered a sunny vision of the 93-year-old institution recommitting to its public-service values.

Most eye-catching were the announcements on the World Service, the BBC’s international operation. Arguing that it had a mission to uphold the values of “democracy and liberty”, the corporation said it would set up new shortwave services to broadcast into those countries with a deficit of both, namely North Korea, Eritrea and Ethiopia. It will boost its digital presence in Russia, where it may set up a satellite-television channel, and beef up its Arabic service. Furthermore, Lord Hall asked the chancellor to help pay for all this—cheekily, as the cost of the World Service, about £240m a year, was transferred from the Foreign Office to the BBC only last year.

Perhaps Lord Hall was intent on appealing to MPs over the heads of a more sceptical cabinet. The World Service is still cherished by many as perhaps Britain’s best weapon of “soft power”. There has long been a campaign, supported by some Tory MPs, to get the service into North Korea (where, unlike most Western countries, Britain maintains an embassy, as well as an outpost of the British Council, its cultural organisation). Experts agree that although the North Korean government manages to block most of the stuff that foreigners try to broadcast into the country, shortwave radio can slip in. North Korean defectors often say that they do everything they can to listen to foreign broadcasts.

However, commentators such as Ed Williams, a former head of communications at the BBC now at Edelman, a PR agency, argue that by concentrating on North Korea and Eritrea, a country which some licence-fee payers may never have heard of, Lord Hall missed a trick. In this prelude to what will be fraught negotiations over the BBC’s future, with some MPs willing to jettison the licence fee altogether, Lord Hall “needs to galvanise public support rather than leap into the weeds of news services”, Mr Williams says. Polls show that the BBC remains popular. But that probably has more to do with “Strictly Come Dancing” than its reach in Asmara.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "London calling"

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