The Battle For The Future Of The BBC. Who Cares? For Welsh Nationalism The Battle Is For S4C/Radio Cymru

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Before I begin properly I will be repeating in this post a few things I have mentioned before about S4C. I make no apologies for this as it would appear that whilst the battle still continues the battleground has shifted.

Also for those who will say "Typical nationalist. Only thinking about the Welsh language and not English language programming in Wales" just remember that come independence the BBC as an organisation will not exist anyway. What the Welsh media picture as a whole should be post independence  is a discussion for another day.

So back to the BBC, whose current funding model is under threat from this Conservative Westminster administration. Many options have been put in it's place, the most talked about is a subscription service.

Now to be honest I'm not certain whether I would be interested in subscribing. Taken as a whole the BBC seems to be rather like Welsh Labour. An organisation with a glorius past that hides a reltively inglorius present. Leaving aside S4C/Radio Cymru for a moment I cannot say I watch/listen to a lot of BBC content anymore. Of course partly that's because the choice is a lot wider than when I was a child. But still there are less and less programmes now where I say to myself "I must watch that".

Nationalists of whatever celtic part of the country are no friends of the BBC believing it to have an anti independence agenda taking things as a whole.

Yet it's important that S4C and Radio Cymru (part financed by the BBC and advertising in S4C's case) is taken out of any subscription model that the BBC might eventually find itself in. It is a unique service providing information and entertainment in the Welsh language. It's also important to the cultural wellbeing of the nation.

Ah you say but S4C has low ratings. True. But as I've written about before the biggest problem S4C faces is not the langiage but the fact that it's just one channel. It has to be BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, BBC Parliament, BBC News Channel, Ceebies and CBBC in just one stream. As a consequence it cannot offer the same options as other media outlets can. It's why S4C needs, even if crammed full of repeats, a second TV channel so it can offer choice.

How can it be funded? Well why should decisions on the financing of a Welsh language channel be controlled by Westminster? Why can't it control be in the Senedd? Proper devolution of what is clearly a Welsh resource is not an unreasonable aim. A Welsh government would understand the dangers to the language of these channels going subscription.

So whatever the future holds for the BBC let it fight it's own battles. Let us just fight to protect what is clearly Welsh.

Until the next time.