Blessed, or often plagued, with a mind that is never idle, I stream BBC Worldwide through cheap, Chinese-made, noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones during workouts via the wifi system at my gym, Mondays through Fridays, while continuing to torture an old, quasi-cybernetic, combat-injured former US Marine body. At this age, and with my background, it is incumbent upon me to call bullshit when I see or hear it. So, when such is being flung without the British Broadcasting System, aka. “BBC” (an abbreviation my internet-raised, millennial kids screw their faces up and LOL upon hearing), I have no qualms about invoking the unabashed counterpart phrase in modern day England that is “Bollocks”. For the sake of levity exhibited under their own Regnum Intellectus, the moniker would be better consigned to that of the “Blathering Bollocks Collective” – Think of The Borg with no pants – to curry the point of this article.
In fairness to the great majority of those who toil away at Broadcasting House in Central London under ever-increasing far left management, most of what listeners around the globe enjoy in programs such as Business Daily, People Fixing the World and The Interview (formerly the magnificent Stephen Sakur’s “Hard Talk”) is useful, neutral information of the sort that made BBC the most popular radio entity in the world, bar none. But then came Donald Trump, and the wheels fell off. Literally.
In the middle of 2024, when it became obvious that Joe Biden was riddled with dementia and his riant word-salad hyena of a VP was passed the baton far too late in the election process – without so much as a primary, to boot – the Whigs ensconced in upper BBC management became catatonic with TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). The screaming became louder when the recently appointed News Chief, Deborah Turness, who had built a cordial relationship with The Donald in a previous tenure as head of NBC News during her decades in the US, chose not to chastise him upon his election win, submitting rather, “…this was a dramatic night that changes everything…” in an internal memo to traumatized BBC staff.
Ms. Turness was brought aboard by the BBC board, which she joined in December of 2023, in response to broad spectrum criticism that the broadcaster had devolved into the sort of biased propaganda peddling that NPR in the US was shown to be guilty of. That by itself in view of leftist demeanors held by MSNBC, ABC and CNN would not have been an impactful indictment were the BBC, like her US counterpart, not funded by their respective governments, aka. taxpayer money. Hearing Trump threatening to pull the plug on NPR, and Prime Minister Starmer getting on with him so well, the highly paid denizens of “Auntie B”, arta. “The Beeb”, were beginning to fret their cushy little positions might be nigh unto redundancy.
Some conjecture that, in response to this, Sackur’s show was cancelled. That freed up exactly 24 million GBP, a cost reduction mark the UK Parliament had set in January of 2025, three months before the programming was terminated. After 38 years of his life dedicated to the BBC, Cambridge and Harvard-educated Sackur resigned in April, later issuing scathing compte rendu on his former bosses. Also rumored was that Hard Talk being nixed before any of the others may have also had something to do with its staff, and Stephen himself, taking a noticeable left turn after the November 2024 US election, and particularly following the amiable Trump-Starmer meeting in February.
In Hard Talk’s former time slots now appears a revised version of “Americast”, originally designed to offer BBC Worldwide listeners political perspectives from the United States. Deviating 180 degrees from Hard Talk’s professional, egalitarian, one-on-one conversational theme, the hosts - Sarah Smith, Justin Webb, Marianna Spring, and Anthony Zurcher – instead deliver snarky, anti-Trump gotchas in an embarrassing circle jerk of abject disdain. The twangy, hickish country music tone of their theme song, which could be entitled “America is made up of nothing but hillbilly idiot MAGA’s and should be laughed at”, is overlaid with cringeworthy voice clip snippets of Joe Biden and Jasmine Crockett lamenting what they perceive as the death of democracy.
Looking at the show’s name, one would assume it would feature mostly home-grown, American commentators, as it would be logical to expect the converse in a hypothetical program called “Eng-Er-Landers”. For reasons unknown, however, there is only one, a conundrum (born in Californian, raised in Texas and educated in Washington DC.) by the name of Anthony Zurcher. The remainder, with Justin Webb playing the role of potential centrist, are avowed Brit leftists. Zurcher’s Democratic Party credentials are unmistakable in his high-pitched, snotty-nosed mode of speech, lame attempts at denigrating levity when invoking Trump, and sad obsequiousness lavished upon his British co-hosts. It is, of course, unsurprising that Americast is recorded in Detroit, Michigan, a city as solidly “blue” as Washington DC, where the NPR studios are barricaded.
Lately, I have been wondering what happened to the BBC of old, the BBC that sent hope to Europeans across the English Channel during the Nazi occupation and coded messages to resistance fighters working bravely against unfathomable tyranny. As an American listener I long for those days. In present times, beyond all the Trump bashing are interviews with Iranian officials condemning the US and Israel, then wild, unfounded claims of genocide in Gaza by the IDF, and giddy reports extolling the virtues of the Chinese Communist Party showcasing its attempts to do away with poverty (and why Western governments don’t care about their poor) in Beijing.
First-time tuners-in would be easily confused about what it was they were listening to: Is this the International Woke Propaganda Ministry or Xi Jinping’s very own “Goebbels Schnauze” designed to foment hate and discord within Western societies in line with his master plan to Sinoform the world? Ms. Turness would do well to take a serious look at these issues, as the Beeb’s fabric of reputation has undoubtedly begun to fray. Whereas, until just recently, the BBC Worldwide would automatically stream in my gym headset or car sound system, I find myself reacting like my millennial kids more and more often, screwing up my face in an expression of distaste, and switching to other online streaming new services for relief. And, believe me, I am not alone.
