Despite our unhappy relationship I need the BBC in my life - Christa Ackroyd

It was what the BBC was made for. Fresh, new, innovative and entertaining. My mum and dad would have happily paid their licence fee for that alone, if you added the Morecambe and Wise show into the mix, with a dash of Porridge and a sprinkling of Some Mother’s Do ‘Ave Em.

I of course was brought up on Blue Peter. Later I graduated to Dr Who and the anarchic Monty Python’s Flying Circus which my parents never understood (that was the whole point) and of course the wonderful equally adored Fawlty Towers which is also always worth watching again as if for the first time. Then there were the dramas you can never forget, a whole list of firsts. Prime Suspect was the first time I had seen a female detective as a lead, probably because there were so few of them at the time. Boys From the Blackstuff was heartbreakingly bleak and bold. Upstairs Downstairs was granny’s favourite and the Forsyth Saga grandma’s. The list is endless.

But for me the BBC was made for what is known in the trade as ‘factual’. Whicker’s World took me to places I never imagined and introduced me to people I never knew existed. Some good, others dangerous. It did so without fear or favour. Tomorrow’s World taught me what was to come. While the BBC news was sacrosanct. It too was bold and challenging. It showed me that a woman could be a newsreader, thanks Angela and Jan, or a female reporter could shine in the toughest of situations instead of being lumbered with the fluffy stories when Kate Adie donned a flack jacket to stand as an equal beside the men in umpteen war zones. But BBC is now fighting for survival. And I know why.

The BBC was everything to everyone. It can no longer be so. It was one of only a handful of terrestrial channels, now there are hundreds. We watched together and we talked about what we had seen the next day. Top of the Pops shaped what we listened to and how we dressed. But the BBC News shaped how we saw the world. If it was on the BBC it was true. But without that trust it has no future and that is what it must build again to survive.

This past week it has been announced between 500 and 2,000 jobs will go, on top of those already gone. They are across the board on the surface, but the bulk will come from news. And there will be more to come as the BBC struggles to save billions in a crowded market where they rely on the licence fee that fewer and fewer are paying because they have lost faith. Less easy to remedy the reasons why as the licence renewal debate draws nearer and nearer. Time and trust are not on their side. But survive it must and re establish what it does best, news. And it can’t do that if it keeps cutting the very heartbeat of its organisation.

Local radio is already unrecognisable. Gone are the guaranteed programmes from your towns and cities. Instead a pretence that it is still local, when it is in fact regional. I know the jingle that is played for Radio Leeds is just a sop when the programme goes to the whole of Yorkshire. So BBC bosses stop treating us as fools and show by your commitment to the regions that we all matter equally.

There is an irony in the news this week, covered superbly I may add by the BBC, that Andy Burnham recognises that to win the nation he has to win the entire nation. And that means a mini number ten coming northwards. Yes the BBC built the huge commitment to the North by establishing the monolithic media city in Salford, but then go and slash local news elsewhere.

The BBC knows it has to build trust after Savile, Bashir, Edwards, Wallace et al. But when trust is lost in news, or they become the news, then they have a difficult task ahead. It will not be rebuilt by cutting those tasked with finding it and it will certainly not be enhanced by a drive to use more footage from viewers’ mobile phones. We get enough of that on X, Tick-tock and Instagram where sadly most people seem to get their news from these days, unchecked, unsubstantiated and almost always biased.

So to the new Director General tasked with moving forwards and hanging on to what was once the best of British – and that means all of Britain – here is what you must do. When you get into a mess you act swiftly and openly. You must put your money where your mouthpiece should be, back into the regions and into delivering the best and most trusted news in the world. Not trim it, skim it and fudge it hoping no one will notice. They do and they will.

I want the BBC to survive. They handled the error in their contract by sacking me and using their might hoping I would go quietly. Of course I did not. I remained exactly what they poached me for, strong, well researched and determined to seek the truth. Which is why in the end they had to pay me, and 200 others, out for their attempt to throw us under the bus with HMRC for their flawed thinking, not ours. That took a five year battle. One day they may apologise not just in general but to me individually, though I won’t hold my breath.

So instead do this in return, inform, educate and entertain as you were set up to do. Reflect the new and keep up what was once the old standards. I don’t want to lose you in spite of the breakdown of what became an unhappy and toxic relationship. But despite that I need you in my life. As my dad would say, you can do so, so much better than whingeing it is everyone else’s fault you are where you are. And that is everywhere, not just in the corridors of power in some hugely expensive London building deciding what is best for all of us and hoping we won’t notice when it isn’t, or when the good life we were promised by paying our licence fee is no more.