MURDOCH SLAMS DYKE'S MACTAGGART SPEECH

CHAIRMAN and chief executive of News Corp's Asian subsidiary Star TV, James Murdoch, has dismissed the BBC director general Greg Dyke's claim that the corporation is the UK's leading global media player.
Murdoch, delivering the Alternative MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh said: “No one working in media outside of Britain regards the BBC as a competitor.
“While BBC-backed British programming, exported worldwide, is a credit to the artistry of the British production community, this does not make the BBC the 'global media player', as he supposes.” The ‘global media player’ referred to a comment Dyke made during his MacTaggart speech on Friday (25 August).
He questioned how and why the BBC, a forced subscription service, would try to compete in markets not populated by it's fee paying constituency. Murdoch also criticised Dyke’s predecessor John Birt. He said that Birt's serious error was to suggest that the English language was bound to dominate the global communications industry. Murdoch said the theory was, “superficially attractive, but blissfully ignorant of what is going on around the world.” He believed that four languages - English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Hindi - would become more globally dominant.
Murdoch criticised the BBC’s commercial website beeb.com for selling Hollywood TV and film videos: "It's not British, it's not broadcasting and it has nothing to do with public service, but it is today's BBC.”