Editing David Attenborough (section)

===BBC and public service broadcasting===
Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the BBC, [[public service broadcasting]] and the [[television licence]]. He has said that public service broadcasting "is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here",<ref name="telegraph1">{{Cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1921592/Sir-David-Attenborough-enters-political-jungle.html |title=Sir David Attenborough enters political jungle |work=The Daily Telegraph |location=London |first=Andrew |last=Pierce |date=2 May 2008 |access-date=6 October 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141008095347/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1921592/Sir-David-Attenborough-enters-political-jungle.html |archive-date=8 October 2014 |url-status=live}}</ref> and believes that it is not reducible to individual programmes, but "can only effectively operate as a network [...] that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule".<ref name="bbc.co.uk">[http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/howwework/reports/pdf/attenborough_future_of_psb.pdf "The future of public service broadcasting"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190503092810/http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/howwework/reports/pdf/attenborough_future_of_psb.pdf |date=3 May 2019 }}. BBC. Retrieved 15 September 2019</ref>

{{blockquote|... the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. [...] The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts.<!-- Note to future editors: "swingeing" is not a typo. The definition is "severe or otherwise extreme." --> It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. [...] There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.<ref name="telegraph1"/>}}

Attenborough expressed the view that there had often been people wanting to remove the BBC, adding "there's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/multi-platform/news/attenborough-backs-ross/1925560.article |title=Attenborough backs Ross |website=Broadcastnow.co.uk |access-date=26 July 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120405100046/http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/multi-platform/news/attenborough-backs-ross/1925560.article |archive-date=5 April 2012 |url-status=live}}</ref> He expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by its director-general, [[John Birt]], who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation's output to private production companies.<ref name="new statesman 1998"/>

Although he said Birt's policies had poor results, Attenborough also acknowledged "the BBC had to change."<ref name="new statesman 1998">{{cite web |url=http://www.newstatesman.com/199812180019 |title=The New Statesman Interview – David Attenborough |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110607080949/http://www.newstatesman.com/199812180019 |archive-date=7 June 2011}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article820515.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1 |title=Interview: Marguerite Driscoll meets Sir David Attenborough: So much jollier than being DG |location=London |work=[[The Times]] |date=3 November 2002 |access-date=28 March 2010 |first=Fiona |last=Hamilton |archive-date=5 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210905203604/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/ |url-status=dead}}</ref> In 2008, he criticised the BBC's television schedules, positing that the two senior networks, [[BBC One]] and [[BBC Two]] – which Attenborough stated were "first set up as a partnership" – now "schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network."<ref name="bbc.co.uk"/>