The Beeb Goes on Strike

Thousands of BBC employees began a 24-hour strike because of job cuts at the government-funded UK broadcaster.

"The savage cuts proposed will damage programming as well as the organization and will unravel British broadcasting traditions," said Mike Smallwood, national officer of the Amicus union.

"The BBC is a unifying British institution which acts as the nation's conscience but these redundancies will damage the U.K. at its core."

That's laughable. One of the reasons that BBC is a massive failure is that it considers itself "the nation's conscience." It should leave the conscience to its citizens and focus on real news rather than its current editorial style. The funny thing is that the strike will probably hasten UK consumers' switch to direct satellite broadcasters and the decline of the BBC.

The Londonist has a few thoughts on how the BBC can save money, but I've got a better one: shut the whole thing down and let a private company start from scratch.