Tusa turns on the 'Del Boy and Rodney' of public broadcasting

The BBC director general Greg Dyke and his director of television, Mark Thompson, have been attacked as the Del Boy and Rodney of public service broadcasting.

The BBC director general Greg Dyke and his director of television, Mark Thompson, have been attacked as the Del Boy and Rodney of public service broadcasting.

The scathing Only Fools And Horses caricature of the two men comes from John Tusa, former head of the World Service.

His assault will prove damaging to the corporation, coming from a much respected journalist, broadcaster and writer, now chief executive of the Barbican Centre in London, who still broadcasts for the BBC.

Mr Dyke and Mr Thompson had proposed BBC1 become largely a general entertainment channel and BBC2 should house more serious programmes. Mr Tusa says this will "ghettoise arts programming".

He writes in a supplement in today's New Statesman, ironically published with the support of the BBC, that Mr Dyke and Mr Thompson advocate modelling genre TV on radio. "Well, say our new broadcasting masters, the Rodney and Del Boy of public service broadcasting, what's the problem? You so-called cultural policemen approve of such a suite of channels on radio. How can you argue against it on television?

"The consequences of this numbers-led analysis by the BBC will be to bury 'culture' - clearly a dirty word in BBC strategy circles - in the distant regions of the unwatched BBC digital channels," he writes.

Mr Thompson recently discussed moving BBC1 and BBC2 from mixed schedules to more genre programming.

He said those who objected to such a strategy were "Britain's cultural police" - and identified Mr Tusa as their "Kojak".