When Maggie Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, she brought new ideas for the BBC. The "Thatcherite" project called for more individualism and deregulation of broadcasting. Deregulating turned out to be "highly centralizing" and less individualistic by "delegitimizing, eradicating, and diminishing any institution or organization that had alternate views."

Maggie did this in two major ways. First, she appointed Governors to the BBC’s Board of Governor’s by first asking “Is he one of us?” She wanted people in charge of BBC to have the same views as she did so it would be run the way she wanted it ran. Power in the BBC quickly shifted, and people were fired because the board started to interfere with the major aspects of the Corporation. After Maggie appointed her board members, there was a change in programming, at least with the programs that Maggie felt were unsuitable. The Board seemed to dislike everything the Corporation was doing and had done, making it a very tense working environment. There were mixed views on whether this new policy of politically packing the Board would work, some thought that appointing the Governors should be based on their merits, not on their political stance.

The other way Maggie BBC was by cutting the license fee. The license fee is the fee that citizens pay when they buy a television and the annual fee they pay for using the BBC programs. By not raising the license fee, the government could hurt BBC profits greatly. During the 1980s, BBC’s production costs were rising, and there was no natural increase in the licensing fee to help them out because the government was determined to ‘change the nature’ of the BBC.

With all the new changes came new management principles. The first goal was to use resources more efficiently, “Part of the incentive for reform came from the need to cut production costs, and to use plant and people more efficiently. Prior to Maggie, BBC had to teach their people how to build sets, apply makeup, create costumes, among many other production necessities, but the new belief was all of this was wasteful. Also, the BBC discarded two of its studios, the on in Manchester, which had never been opened, and Elstree Studios was older and didn’t have the image that the new BBC was going for. Going along with the idea that BBC needed to stop spending as much, they decided that getting some of their programs from other places instead of producing it all themselves was a good idea. They eventually were receiving 25% of their programs from outside the Corporation.

The second goal was to ‘reduce dissent within organizations’. They believed that workers “have a right to do their own things in their own way as long as it is in the common interest, that people need to be well informed, well intentioned, and well educated in order to interpret their common interest.” So they allowed the workers at BBC to work on their own as long as it went along with the overall goal of the company. Curran believes that for real creativity a person needs disagreement, something to get ‘the juices flowing’. When the rules were changed and workers were given more freedoms, Curran believes the level of creativity went down because there was no longer a struggle “…the fertile argument, and sense of ideas flowing that encourage creativity, seemed so alien to the new, neatly managed structure.”

The third objective was to ‘demonstrate that organizations were willing to be managed better. BBC brought in four separate consulting firms to supervise reforms, and there was very little doubt that the Corporation needed to be renovated. Once the management consultants got into BBC, it became more about the managers and less about the programmers. Since the managers were considered to be more important and the programmers were trying to get to that same level of importance, they had less time to focus on their creative duties, greatly affecting the quality of the programming BBC produced.

Prime Minister Thatcher’s plans were not completely carried out for different reasons. William Whitelaw was a major player in the destruction of Maggie Thatcher’s plans. He was her closest Cabinet member, but he didn’t fully agree with her changes. He believed that “We should be most careful not to endanger what we have achieved.” He also didn’t believe higher standards could be met by deregulation and financial competition, two of Maggie’s reforms within BBC. Having someone on the inside in favor of keeping BBC proved helpful. Also, the fact that the public liked the programming that BBC put on made it impossible for deregulation. There was a “sense that programs reflect and shape viewers’ and listeners’ interests,” and people didn’t want to lose those qualities. Unfortunately for Mrs. Thatcher, her reforms helped BBC to become strong enough to stick around. With all the financial cuts that BBC had to go through, it was forced to learn how to continue to cut costs and run more effectively. So originally cutting costs was a downfall, but in the long run it helped them out.

In the end, BBC has not yet been ‘politically compromised’. It is still one of the major broadcasting companies in the world. To date, Maggie Thatcher’s administration was the biggest challenge that the BBC has ever had to face, and they came out the victor.

Alison Chernick '07