Interview: Kelvin MacKenzie, TalkSport (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
KELVIN MacKenzie has gone soft. He wants the Tories to embrace the gay and ethnic communities, and considers Michael Howard so Rightwing as to be unelectable.
For all his hatred of the BBC, he says he would love to offer Greg Dyke's son a job at talkSPORT. And even as he wages war against Rajar, the body that measures radio audiences, he phoned its departing boss this week to wish her well. Could a multi-millionpound fortune and a Cote d'Azur villa have mellowed Fleet Street's most famous Rottweiler?
At 57, the former Sun editor and current boss of the Wireless Group admits to being "vaguely more liberal" these days. "All that old 'pulpit poofs' stuff was 15 bloody years ago," he says about his days writing gay-baiting and Frogbashing headlines at The Sun (which is "very good these days"). "I'm just older now and I've moved on," he says. "Mind you, I did used to enjoy aggravating everybody..."
Tomorrow, MacKenzie will sink his teeth into a target he has never tired of tormenting. In an Intelligence2 debate at the Royal Geographical Society, he will argue that the BBC should be abolished. With Gerald Kaufman and the media historian Brian Winston on his side - against Rod Liddle, Michael Grade and Heather Rabbatts for the corporation - MacKenzie is clearly relishing the fight.
"There's a Left-of-centre viewpoint across the BBC's output," he begins, thumping the desk in his South Bank office. "The 26,000 employees remind me of council tenants in the Seventies who used to vote Labour to keep their rents down. In the BBC's case, they have a natural Labour view in order to keep their jobs." But what mainly bothers MacKenzie is the £3.2 billion the BBC has "sploshing about" each year that it uses to distort commercial markets.
"If they want to stop me getting radio rights to the Premiership, they can put their hands into a magic honeypot and pull out millions," he says. "Last time, they bid more than I take in revenue." He is a consummate performer, energetic and engaging as he gets into character, interrupting his flow only to walk to the sales floor and make a joke. His anti-BBC performance is a familiar one, rehearsed across the Murdoch press - although MacKenzie, who went from The Sun briefly to run Sky in 1994, insists that he does not know Rupert Murdoch's views on the BBC, and has certainly "never heard him rail against it". (Murdoch, for the record, owns a chunk of the Wireless Group.) Like Jonathan Miller, the Sunday Times columnist who has refused to pay his television licence ("I very much admire him," says MacKenzie), he does not see how programmes such as EastEnders can be justified as public-service broadcasting.
"It should be about supplying programmes where there is market failure," he says. "The BBC spends £130 million every year on overseas programmes such as Neighbours; but why doesn't it invest that money in our hard-pressed independent production sector?" Even when the corporation commissions indpendent production firms to meet its quota, it squeezes out competitors, he claims. A contract for televised darts was recently awarded to TWI - which had agreed to use the BBC's in-house facilities. "It's a fix," MacKenzie claims, "a total bloody racket." (BBC Sport defends the deal as a "fast-track" way of bringing in an independent production firm at short notice.) He sees BBC News as offering "a Left-of-centre, Hyde Park demo" view of world affairs; even Radio 4, which MacKenzie accepts might be justified if under Arts Council control, currently sees its duty as providing "documentaries about the history of the teapot".
The answer, he says, is privatisation. "The only people who want to pay a licence fee are academics and people with strange sweaters. An investment banker friend worked out that you'd get somewhere between £4 and £5 billion. That's £250 for each licence-payer. If Michael Howard wants to become the next prime minister, that's all he has to announce. Forget health or education - if he said, I'm going to privatise the BBC, and 90 days after I'm elected I'll send you a cheque for £250, he'd win by a mile."
Short of that, MacKenzie believes that Howard will never win an election. "It's preposterous that the Tories have moved into a position where the ethnic vote and the gay vote aren't naturally theirs. I'm puzzled that they're not a bit more embracing." Is this the same Kelvin MacKenzie who was once condemned for his paper's homophobia? "Look, the gay issues, the ethnic issues are yesterday's issues," he says. "We're a very potpourri society now." On this week's other pressing media story - James Murdoch's appointment to BSkyB's top job - MacKenzie is uncharacteristically bland.
He has done a "fantastic" job in Asia and made Star TV profitable. Besides, nepotism is a virtue. "I like hiring people who have the genes in the family - if Greg Dyke's son came for an interview, I wouldn't hesitate to offer him a job on that basis. It cuts out a lot of the learning curve. I'm not sure about employing Greg Dyke, though."
BUSINESS has been good to MacKenzie. Broadcast magazine recently estimated his wealth at £4 million, and his French house is reported to have cost £1 million. So how much is he worth? "I've no idea. I'm not interested, and that's that." His other obsession is an impending courtroom challenge to the Rajar measurement system, which he claims underestimates his station's reach. He is having fun imagining who would ever want to follow Jane O'Hara, Rajar's departing MD.
"It would have to be somebody who's out of work and pretty compliant. That leaves... well, Iain Duncan Smith... and probably, shortly [he laughs], Andrew Gilligan."
Even as a prosperous media proprietor, his new "liberal" credentials to the fore, the tabloid beast will out.
(Evening Standard, November 5 2003)
KELVIN MacKenzie has gone soft. He wants the Tories to embrace the gay and ethnic communities, and considers Michael Howard so Rightwing as to be unelectable.
For all his hatred of the BBC, he says he would love to offer Greg Dyke's son a job at talkSPORT. And even as he wages war against Rajar, the body that measures radio audiences, he phoned its departing boss this week to wish her well. Could a multi-millionpound fortune and a Cote d'Azur villa have mellowed Fleet Street's most famous Rottweiler?
At 57, the former Sun editor and current boss of the Wireless Group admits to being "vaguely more liberal" these days. "All that old 'pulpit poofs' stuff was 15 bloody years ago," he says about his days writing gay-baiting and Frogbashing headlines at The Sun (which is "very good these days"). "I'm just older now and I've moved on," he says. "Mind you, I did used to enjoy aggravating everybody..."
Tomorrow, MacKenzie will sink his teeth into a target he has never tired of tormenting. In an Intelligence2 debate at the Royal Geographical Society, he will argue that the BBC should be abolished. With Gerald Kaufman and the media historian Brian Winston on his side - against Rod Liddle, Michael Grade and Heather Rabbatts for the corporation - MacKenzie is clearly relishing the fight.
"There's a Left-of-centre viewpoint across the BBC's output," he begins, thumping the desk in his South Bank office. "The 26,000 employees remind me of council tenants in the Seventies who used to vote Labour to keep their rents down. In the BBC's case, they have a natural Labour view in order to keep their jobs." But what mainly bothers MacKenzie is the £3.2 billion the BBC has "sploshing about" each year that it uses to distort commercial markets.
"If they want to stop me getting radio rights to the Premiership, they can put their hands into a magic honeypot and pull out millions," he says. "Last time, they bid more than I take in revenue." He is a consummate performer, energetic and engaging as he gets into character, interrupting his flow only to walk to the sales floor and make a joke. His anti-BBC performance is a familiar one, rehearsed across the Murdoch press - although MacKenzie, who went from The Sun briefly to run Sky in 1994, insists that he does not know Rupert Murdoch's views on the BBC, and has certainly "never heard him rail against it". (Murdoch, for the record, owns a chunk of the Wireless Group.) Like Jonathan Miller, the Sunday Times columnist who has refused to pay his television licence ("I very much admire him," says MacKenzie), he does not see how programmes such as EastEnders can be justified as public-service broadcasting.
"It should be about supplying programmes where there is market failure," he says. "The BBC spends £130 million every year on overseas programmes such as Neighbours; but why doesn't it invest that money in our hard-pressed independent production sector?" Even when the corporation commissions indpendent production firms to meet its quota, it squeezes out competitors, he claims. A contract for televised darts was recently awarded to TWI - which had agreed to use the BBC's in-house facilities. "It's a fix," MacKenzie claims, "a total bloody racket." (BBC Sport defends the deal as a "fast-track" way of bringing in an independent production firm at short notice.) He sees BBC News as offering "a Left-of-centre, Hyde Park demo" view of world affairs; even Radio 4, which MacKenzie accepts might be justified if under Arts Council control, currently sees its duty as providing "documentaries about the history of the teapot".
The answer, he says, is privatisation. "The only people who want to pay a licence fee are academics and people with strange sweaters. An investment banker friend worked out that you'd get somewhere between £4 and £5 billion. That's £250 for each licence-payer. If Michael Howard wants to become the next prime minister, that's all he has to announce. Forget health or education - if he said, I'm going to privatise the BBC, and 90 days after I'm elected I'll send you a cheque for £250, he'd win by a mile."
Short of that, MacKenzie believes that Howard will never win an election. "It's preposterous that the Tories have moved into a position where the ethnic vote and the gay vote aren't naturally theirs. I'm puzzled that they're not a bit more embracing." Is this the same Kelvin MacKenzie who was once condemned for his paper's homophobia? "Look, the gay issues, the ethnic issues are yesterday's issues," he says. "We're a very potpourri society now." On this week's other pressing media story - James Murdoch's appointment to BSkyB's top job - MacKenzie is uncharacteristically bland.
He has done a "fantastic" job in Asia and made Star TV profitable. Besides, nepotism is a virtue. "I like hiring people who have the genes in the family - if Greg Dyke's son came for an interview, I wouldn't hesitate to offer him a job on that basis. It cuts out a lot of the learning curve. I'm not sure about employing Greg Dyke, though."
BUSINESS has been good to MacKenzie. Broadcast magazine recently estimated his wealth at £4 million, and his French house is reported to have cost £1 million. So how much is he worth? "I've no idea. I'm not interested, and that's that." His other obsession is an impending courtroom challenge to the Rajar measurement system, which he claims underestimates his station's reach. He is having fun imagining who would ever want to follow Jane O'Hara, Rajar's departing MD.
"It would have to be somebody who's out of work and pretty compliant. That leaves... well, Iain Duncan Smith... and probably, shortly [he laughs], Andrew Gilligan."
Even as a prosperous media proprietor, his new "liberal" credentials to the fore, the tabloid beast will out.
(Evening Standard, November 5 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, November 05, 2003
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