The outgoing director-general of the BBC has said the corporation must move to regions to reflect more views.
Lord Hall claims the BBC must embark on a “big push” to move the majority of its staff outside the capital, to improve the diversity of opinions in the corporation.
The director-general believes 70 per cent of BBC’s personnel and budget should be in the regions to better reflect the views of the licence fee-payers who fund it.
He insisted that the BBC was and is not “the woke corporation” after a decision not to sing Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory at the Last Night of the Proms led to accusations it is out of touch with its audience.
Lord Hall said the way to ensure the BBC best reflected the views of its audience was to base more staff and activity outside London to get away from a “metro elite” and try to attract people from more diverse social and ethnic backgrounds.
He said: “You don’t want people who all think alike. So you need diverse voices around the table; that could be diverse because you’ve got black, Asian, minority voices around the table, that’s important. I’ve got a thing myself about social diversity.
“And the second thing I think is really important is that we can and should be more out of London. We’re 50 per cent in London, and 50 per cent out of London, in spend and people. I think we can do much better than that. I think we can get to 70 per cent out of London.”
He continued: “What we’ve learned from Covid is that you don’t need as many buildings as you think, therefore you can be more diverse in where you centre people.
“I think we can do a big push to get more out of London, and that changes the dynamic of the discussions you have and therefore – I hate using the word relevance, but I will do – your relevance to the people that are paying for you.”
He added: “Our job is not to take sides. We should not pander to any particular group; we should be giving everybody, whoever they are, something. We should try to be the calm centre in what is a very stormy situation that we find ourselves in.”
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Editor-in-Chief | Carl D. Pearson has been involved in British politics and media from an early age, with the key knowledge of what it takes to run a news organisation for the 21st century. Mr Pearson, as Editor-in-chief, is responsible for supervising the daily tasks of publishing media and content to UNN’s website and various platforms.
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