Watch out - the BBC is going all creative

The message is that the way to win viewers is not to make better programmes but to hire an advertising agent

A reliable indicator of an organisation's insincerity is its determination to tell us all how sincere it is. When, in the early 1990s, book publishing conglomerates began taking their managers on weekend courses at which they bonded, hugged and agreed to share the same core values, it heralded a bright new dawn of corporate savagery and back-stabbing. When, at about the same time, the Labour Party announced that it was new, inclusive, warm-hearted and the People's Party, it was soon erasing pockets of dissent within its ranks with a brisk, efficient brutality.

There have been worrying signs in recent months that the BBC is getting in touch with its caring side. According to carefully leaked reports, Greg Dyke has been sending his management on creativity courses, encouraging them to paint, write and generally access their dreamier, gentler inner selves. In the prospectuses for BBC training courses, the same great management word, "creativity", throbs through the text like a heartbeat. One course, for example, offers those who attend the chance to "use practical creativity strategies to improve creativity in their jobs, identify mindsets and attitudes that enhance and inhibit creativity, consider basic theories of creativity" and so on. Management seminars are trailed under grimly upbeat slogans that might have been dreamt up by Tony Blackburn on a bad day – "Making It Happen" was one, "Just Imagine" another.

There is something ominous about the announcement that a six-part pledge will be sent to all BBC employees, pinned up on blackboards and, for all I know, chanted in unison before every meeting: "The BBC will be honest and staff maintain each other's trust. The BBC will put audiences first and at the heart of what it does. The BBC will always strive for the highest quality and encourage fresh thinking. Creativity is the lifeblood of the organisation. BBC staff should respect their colleagues and reach out and celebrate our diversity while recruiting from the widest range of people. The BBC will be a more collaborative organisation working to create One BBC."

The pledge, we are told, aims to engender "a culture of positivity". A BBC spokesman has explained that "we want people to realise that they can't shout at each other. It will give people something to hold up if they don't think one of their colleagues is behaving as they should."

There is something faintly creepy about this set of rules, the fear of discord, the concern for correctness, the faintly fascistic tag of "One BBC". If the buzzwords of the moment – "fresh thinking", "diversity", "creativity" – mean anything (which is doubtful), they precisely involve shouting at one another and not working to a corporate code of correct behaviour.

Predictably, it is just as creativity and positivity have become the mantras of the moment that the BBC, on its television side at least, is being least creative and positive. The output of BBC2 was recently criticised for its lack of inspiration. Arts programmes, already a threatened species, are increasingly being shunted into the ghetto of BBC4. Serious drama is represented – surprisingly to some – by the proud, solitary figure of Stephen Poliakoff. A true sign of the times was when Jack Emery's genuinely subversive and adventurous play Inquisition was to be found on the unfairly mocked Channel 5.

It is not difficult to see where the BBC's precious creativity is going. It is to be found, interminably, relentlessly, in the form of its advertisements for itself. Here millions of pounds of license-payers' money are being spent to enable foreign correspondents to tell us how brave they are, comedians to assure us that they take their work seriously, for local radio football commentaries to be puffed, for a man to be shown jumping over the rooftops of London in order to get home to watch the BBC.

The message behind these excessively tedious self-promotions is not that the corporation is in great shape; it is that it is run by people who think that the rest of us are fools. The conclusion has been reached – perhaps in one of those "Making It Happen" seminars – that the best way of winning viewers is not to make better programmes but to hire an expensive advertising agent.

Somehow the news that the continuity announcers who provide the link between programmes are to be phased out this year and replaced by computerised announcements is entirely consistent with the "fresh thinking" and "creativity" now in vogue at Television Centre. These are the voices that remind us between each programme that the vast broadcasting organisation is run by people, not committees – indeed, Channels 4 and 5 have successfully used announcers to reflect the image of themselves that they want to promote.

But at One BBC, individuality is dangerous, a short step from colleagues shouting at one another and not behaving as they should. Putting the audience first, it has been decided, involves first and above all slipping into the market-led, image-conscious mindset of a business corporation.

terblacker@aol.com