Source: Globe and Mail

At the recent BBC Showcase in Brighton, which is a kind of trade fair where the pinnacle of excitement is the unveiling of a new Doctor Who logo rather than a visit to lap dancers, television buyers from around the world gathered in a huge, dim hall to pick over the best (and worst) the BBC had to offer.

They sat all day, hunched over like diamond merchants jealously guarding the best gems from their competitors. But their tools were video monitors, not jewellers' loops, and while a great deal of the BBC merchandise they were perusing had a genuine gleam that would catch Elizabeth Taylor's eye – a modern retelling of Sherlock Holmes, a remake of Upstairs, Downstairs – some of it was zirconia. Fat and Fatter, for example, is a program about overweight people around the world; Fat Family Diet is about overweight people around the house.

Should the BBC, or indeed, any public broadcaster, be in the business of producing vapid reality-TV about competitive blubber-shedding or has-beens on ice or wannabes in musical theatre, no matter how easy it is to sell that kind of programming to domestic viewers and foreign customers? Fat and fatter – that sums up what many critics think is the Beeb's problem, and this week the world's largest public broadcaster embarked on the equivalent of getting a gastric band fitted. In order to fend off those critics – including Conservative politicians and some very powerful commercial TV rivals – the BBC proposed this week to slim down, to shed frivolousness and rediscover that corporate Holy Grail, "core values."

Among those values are a commitment to journalism and factual programming, original drama and comedy, which is what people here seem to expect for their licence fee, the equivalent of $220, which every TV owner must pay each year. Such stable, multiyear funding has allowed the BBC to take risks and to expand its radio and TV networks, but those ambitions have earned it enemies, not least the opposition (and perhaps soon ruling) Conservative Party. The heads of the BBC, not deaf to criticism, announced sweeping changes this week, including cutting its web pages by one quarter and axing its Asian Network and the cutting-edge radio station 6 Music (the radio decision caused an outcry, and is now under review).

There also will likely be fewer reality shows like How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? Why on Earth should the BBC subsidize Andrew Lloyd Webber, who already has more platforms than Paddington train station? Perhaps it's unfair to single out its reality shows, which make up only a tiny fragment of programming, but even that slice has been too large. As the BBC's director, Mark Thompson, said while announcing the changes (feel free to imagine him ducking behind a parapet): "We can't do everything." He argued for a "a more focused BBC doing fewer things better and leaving space for others."

There's little doubt about who those "others" are. One of the most serious threats to public broadcasting comes from competing commercial interests, which do not like to see anyone plunder the treasure chest before they do. This was spelled out with breathtaking clarity last summer by James Murdoch who, in a widely reported speech, blasted the BBC for its aspirations, declaring: "The size and scope of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling." Yes, he is that James Murdoch, whose father Rupert owns News Corporation, which in turn owns the BBC's direct competitor, Sky Broadcasting.

You can bet the world's other public broadcasters, including the CBC, are watching all this with a little anxiety. As the BBC's former head of global news, Richard Sambrook, told me this week, "there's an assault on public broadcasting going on around the world." In Europe, they're coming under tighter political control while being hounded by commercial rivals over slices of a lucrative broadcast and Internet pie. In Canada, the CBC faces ongoing belt-tightening – never mind viewer unhappiness with a nightly news format that had everybody hopping around like frogs on a griddle.

As newspapers and commercial TV expand into each other's territories, it may be the public broadcaster that's squeezed out. This might make cranky letter-writers in Sudbury and Swindon happy, but it would be a cultural disaster, unless you relish a world where the top five news items on each channel are about Angelina Jolie and every second program features somebody eating bugs in the jungle, or undergoing cosmetic surgery. Possibly while figure skating.

So this is a retrenchment, even if the BBC doesn't want to look at it that way. I asked Sambrook, who worked for the BBC for 30 years, what are the lessons for smaller broadcasters, such as the CBC, which haven't had the luxury of his former employer's global ambitions? Go back to what you're good at, he said, to whatever it is "that makes you distinctive and separate" from what the market is providing. In other words, lose the fat.

© Globe and Mail