Tens of thousands of 38 Degrees members emailed their MPs after the Conservative Minister, Jeremy Hunt, launched an attack on the BBC by announcing plans to cut the licence fee in 2012.

Update: To make it easier to find your MP we’ve moved the spreadsheet to this page: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/content/BBC-under-threat/

On Friday, Jeremy Hunt announced that he plans to cut the BBC’s licence fee. This new attack comes just a few days we won the campaign we fought together to save 6Music.

The new Culture Minister is keen to make a start on weakning the BBC, however. This weekend, he said he was thinking about plans to cut the license fee. The new government are dipping their toes in the water, to see what sort of reaction they get. They’re under pressure to start weakening the BBC from all sides: media billionaires like Rupert Murdoch can’t wait to see the end of proper public broadcasting in the UK.

Today, there’s been a massive, people-powered response to the Culture Minister’s comments. Thousands of us have already written to our MPs, asking them to contact Jeremy Hunt and stop him going ahead with the plans – click  here to join in. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow #proudoftheBBC trending right now.

With 6 Music, we’ve proved once that when we work together we can defend the BBC from its enemies. Now we need to come together again to make sure this new threat to the BBC doesn’t go ahead.

The BBC Trust just announced “initial conclusions” on cuts to BBC services including 6 Music and Asian Network.

The effect of our campaign is obvious. The Trust rejects the plan to close 6 Music, saying “the case has not been made”. It says it will only go ahead with closing Asian Network if it sees plans for “meeting the needs of the station’s audience in different ways”.  [1]

Together we shifted this debate. Back in February, the Murdoch media and their political allies were in all out attack mode. The BBC was under pressure from all angles to cut more, deeper, sooner. We shifted this debate with people power: 44,000 of us signed the 38 Degrees petition to the BBC Trust.

We’ve already achieved a massive amount. But this is no time to stop working together. We’ve shifted the BBC’s plans, but big threats remain.  We’ll need to keep speaking up for listeners, viewers and licence fee payers. We’ll need to be ready to fight back against enemies of public service broadcasting in the UK.

Please help make sure that 38 Degrees can keep standing up for the BBC. Click here to donate:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/bbc-announcement

6 Music may be saved for now but it’s soon likely to face yet another review soon.  We’ve made sure Asian Network can’t be scrapped without a plan for replacing it, but it remains to be seen if those plans are any good at all. And there are still plans for deep cuts in other areas.

The BBC’s enemies may have been a bit quieter recently, but they haven’t gone away. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire hates the BBC. Many in the new government owe Murdoch a favour or two after he backed them in the election. In the coming months he’ll look to cash in those favours by extending his empire, weakening the rules against political bias, and pushing for further cuts to the BBC.

38 Degrees doesn’t take money from big business, political parties or government. We rely on donations to keep standing up to Murdoch and protecting public service broadcasting.  Please click here to donate now:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/bbc-announcement

NOTES
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/strategy_review/index.shtml

Our BBC billboard ads

Over the last few weeks, thousands of us have taken action to tell the BBC Trust not to go ahead with their planned cuts to 6Music, Asian Network and the website.

We’ve now arrived at the critical final stage: next Tuesday, 25th May is the final day of the BBC Trust’s consultation period. On the day, we’re working with the National Union of Journalists and the campaigns to save 6Music and the Asian Network to hold flashmobs outside BBC offices all around the UK. At 1pm we will make as much noise as possible to send our message loud and clear to BBC bosses, so bring a whistle, saxophone, drum or just your voice!

There are events planned in Leeds, London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol already, but if one of those isn’t close enough to you, then you can click here to set up your own on the 38 Degrees website: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/bbc-flashmobs/

Together, we’ve already taken action to make sure the BBC Trust knows we don’t want these cuts.  Tens of thousands of people have signed the save the BBC petition. Our billboards, paid for by thousands of people chipping in, went up around the country on 10th May. And we e-mailed hundreds of election candidates and asked them to pledge to protect the BBC and public broadcasting.

Now we need another big push to make sure we get our message across – click here to join in one of our BBC flashmobs: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/bbc-flashmobs/

The billboard campaign against the BBC cuts went ahead this morning and so far, it’s been a big success.  Billboards went up in 7 locations around the UK and a van displaying the posters parked out the BBC Trust offices in central London.  38 Degrees members met up outside the BBC Trust to ‘honk’ to say no to the cuts.  We had a great response from passersby, who honked their car horn or rang their bicycle bell when they saw our message to BBC bosses.

Our billboards mean that the first message new MPs are going to get from us is that it is critical that we defend the BBC.  Over the last few days we’ve had lots of opportunities to see how important impartial news is.  Our billboards send a clear and loud message that it is us, not millionaire media owners, who should have the final say on the BBC.

Please help spread the message further and save the BBC.  If you haven’t signed the petition yet you can do so here and if you have, please ask your friends, family and colleagues to sign too.

Here’s the video of us outside the BBC Trust:

Today, we got through the final designs for the Stop the BBC  Cuts billboards, that we paid for together with thousands of 38 Degrees members chipping in. They’ll be going up near BBC offices in cities all around the UK from 10th May, and we’re hoping people will walk, cycle or drive by and give a ‘honk’ in support of our campaign when they do.

Here’s how the posters will look on the big billboards all around the UK:

Billboards will go up where BBC bosses can't miss them

Hundreds of members helped by making comments about the first design (which we shared on our blog and Facebook a few weeks ago), and the designers have taken their main comments on board, by making sure there was a way for everyone to join in as they want past the billboards and by ensuring that we mentioned the cuts that members were most concerned about: 6Music, Asian Network and the website.

Nobody working for the BBC will be able to miss our message: these huge billboards on the doorsteps of their offices will send a huge signal that thousands of us don’t want them to cut services like 6Music, Asian Network and the BBC website. By bringing together everyone taking action to stop the cuts, we’ll make it clear that we won’t stand by and let millionaire media owners dictate what happens to our BBC.

What do you think? How else can we make sure BBC bosses get our message?

Ever since the BBC bosses proposed making massive cuts to its services, including axing 6 Music and Asian Network and halving the size of its website, tens of thousands of us have expressed our anger and disappointment through signing the petition against the cuts, e-mailing our views to BBC consultation and getting in touch with our local candidates about the plans for cuts.

So far, the number of people who signed up for our petition has hit a groundbreaking 35,735, and more and more people are joining in from all over the country.

The map below shows where the people who have signed the Stop the BBC Cuts petition live. It proves that worries about cuts to the BBC really are a national concern – there are dots all over the map, from the north of Scotland all the way down to Cornwall in the south.

Please help pass on the message and save the BBC. If you haven’t signed 38 Degrees petition yet, you can join in here.

Since the election was announced thousands of us have been emailing our local Parliamentary candidates, asking them to pledge their opposition to cuts to the BBC and their support for public service broadcasting.

We’ve been looking through some of the responses from candidates that have been forwarded on to us. The great news is that many of our candidates have signed the pledge, and just want to let us know how strong their support for the BBC is. Like us, they’re worried about the BBC’s commercial rivals getting the upper hand in the debate over its future.

Some of the other most common responses have been:

It’s not a politician’s place to comment on individual editorial or programming decisions – it’s a matter for the BBC.

Axing 6 Music and Asian Network is the wrong decision, but we shouldn’t be opposing all cuts to the BBC. Some scaling back of its operations is appropriate.

The BBC needs to be offering fewer channels of better quality, so these cuts are appropriate.

What’s the best way to reply? If your candidate(s) wrote back to you with one of these (or any other) responses, please post it below so other 38 Degrees members can have a look, help you reply or just leave a comment.

If you haven’t already emailed your candidates, you can do so here.

The election was officially called a few hours ago, and 38 Degrees members are already taking action to make sure we get politicians with the right priorities. Watch David’s video blog about how it’s going so far here.