More Cracks In The Monolith

BBC functionary (apparently) Sarah-Jane in the B-BBC comments :

I have been working on some different projects one of which is about how programmes are made based on key audience insights. I now know for a fact that the audience insight driving 'Life on Mars' was that "people are fed up with PC".

And by strange chance, this story :

The BBC is to provoke controversy with a series of programmes this winter exploring Britain's "under siege" white working class.

I imagine the idea is to control the discourse rather than reflect it, but at least their existence is being acknowledged.

And perhaps most cheering of all, the Daily Mail's L-isomer, the Indie, seems still to be losing readers.

Writing in The Observer (November 11), Peter Preston comments that “the relaunched, more anorexic Independent on Sunday is 8.37 per cent off October 2006 (with only 132,000 UK readers prepared to stump up £1.80)” and that, at the newsstand, the “Independent, with not much of a net presence at all, is down 6.72 per cent in a year.”

The circulation of the Indie in August, 2007 was a mere 240,116 [according to the UK ABC (Audited Bureau of Circulations)], a 5.37% drop from November 2006, and way, way below The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Times.

Moreover, unlike The Guardian (c. 18 million unique users), the poor Indie is unlikely to be saved by its website, which must be one of the dullest in the world. The word ‘anorexic’ again crosses one’s mind.

Not much cheer, perhaps, on this day of gloom. But we need all the comfort we can get.