Sunday 25 July 2010

S4C: Death by Cuts?

This is my 100th Blog so it seems appropriate I cover old themes.

The reports that S4C will be seeing an overall cut of its budget over the next 4 years is of great concern. but it is interesting to see the reaction of both the Tories and Lib-Dems.

Glyn Davies seems to be denying (a la Peter Black over Rail Electrification)) the media reports: but puts a case for shifting the responsibility to the Assembly thereby placing any negative reaction to cuts soley with the  Welsh assembly government and not his own.Meanwhile at Subordinate Central Eleanor (Who) Burnahm makes the plea that:

While this is just speculation at the moment, if these cut have to be made, S4C must ensure that the quality and standard of Welsh language programming are not affected. S4C need to make efficiencies in backroom functions to limit cuts in what we, the viewers, see on the channel. S4C must look at cuts in management and senior staff salaries as some of the pay in the higher echelons are out of touch with people living in the real world.

More Tory speak from the Lib-Dems.

Both attempt to tie S4C to Plaid Cymru. I suspect that they hope we monoglot English speakers, who support or vote Plaid will take umbrage if the Welsh language does not suffer from the savage cuts and respond by abandoning Plaid.

The problem is that they can’t see  that S4C could not survive a 25% cut in its budget over 4 years  it will lose viewers and this will  lead to  calls to end  all financial support from either government.
What we need is for S4C to expand to bring English speakers by buying Foreign Language films as I argued in one of my first ever blogs. These can then be seen using subtitles. The popular series Wallander it its original (and to my mind superior) Swedish Language version is being repeated on the BBC4 . There must be other such series worth seeing and S4C could be the vehicle for this.

Perhaps readers of this Blog can make suggestions in the comments section?

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