Saving the BBC
Published Monday, 21 July 2008 - 16:24
In the â??Yes Ministerâ?? lexicon which he made so famous, Sir Antony Jayâ??s proposal (How to Save the BBC*) for a radical restructuring of the BBC down to a core public service remit of one TV and one radio channel would be considered courageous.
Politicians tend to shy away from broadcasting policy, not least when it involves the BBC – an institution held in equal measure of fear and affection by politicians and viewers respectively. But the evidence of recent months is that we are now entering a period of wide-ranging debate about the future of public service broadcasting as a whole. With Ofcom undertaking its statutory review of the broadcasting landscape, and both the regulator itself and the Conservative Party mooting the possibility of the licence fee being shared for the first time, these are interesting times for the sector. Only last week the Ofcom chairman Lord Currie described the BBC’s historic claim of a ‘unique link’ with licence fee payers as appearing “...to be more an article of faith than an evidenced reality.”
It is clear that the pace of technological change is breaking down traditional structures in the media and opening doors to new media players in an exciting and, for many established operators, unsettling way. Newspapers are offering video news on their websites; TV channels are putting radio services online; and outside the mainstream media, specialist blogs and niche sites are offering new content by the hour. It’s impossible to predict with certainty what the next round of technological innovation will bring. And we should not get ahead of ourselves. As Bill Gates has said, we tend “to overestimate how much things will change in the next two years, and… underestimate how much things will change in the next 10 years.” But it is clear from the success of the iPlayer, Sky Plus, and other on-demand services, that the convergence of new technology is fundamentally changing the broadcasting environment. We may not be able to second guess the technology, but we should be prepared to review first principles in broadcasting and, as Antony Jay argues, establish what kind of BBC – and public service broadcasting sector as a whole – we want in this new era.
The challenge to the mainstream public service broadcasters from multichannel TV and other new online services is clear. For the commercial operators, advertising revenue is being spread more thinly and the value of the gifted spectrum is declining as we head towards switchover; while for them and the BBC viewing habits are changing irrevocably. The combined audience share of the four PSBs fell from 78% in 2002 to 67% in 2006, while BBC One and Two fell from 38% to 32% in the same period.
At the heart of the debate about the future of broadcasting must be the importance of plurality of provision. Britain’s strong broadcasting heritage owes much – but not everything – to the BBC. And it is not just the other established broadcasters that add to the rich mix of content – but the many innovative new online providers that have also sprung up. So if we value plurality then we need an up to date regulatory system that can respond to this fast changing technological world by, for example, considering ways of allowing greater flexibility in overseas sales, which will in turn help boost new investment in quality programming.
And we need a BBC that becomes more distinctive in this era of channel proliferation. Rather than continuing to pursue what Antony Jay calls the ‘corporate gigantism’ which has been the prevailing mindset of the Corporation, the BBC should be focusing on the high-quality, original programming for which it is most respected. Jay makes the point that the BBC’s “resources are spread too thinly over too many channels” – not least the £125 million per annum being spent on BBC3. Attempting to do a bit of everything has blurred the BBC’s public service mission and risks crowding out innovation across the sector.
The BBC Director General Mark Thompson said last year that, “The only economic justification for the the BBC – indeed for any public intervention in broadcasting – is market failure.” He was right, which is why we must make proper consideration of what the market is already providing and where the gaps are, rather than presume that if the BBC can do something then it should always do it. In an age of broadband TV, content will be king – which is why the debate about the future of the BBC needs to centre on what it does, not what it is as an institution.
The elephant in the corner is of course the licence fee. It remains unclear how it would be levied and collected in (to use Bill Gates’ rule of thumb) ten to twenty years when TV and PC have converged even further. In fact, according to reports over the weekend, the success of the iPlayer is already forcing the BBC to review the licence fee system. Which is why it is so important that we start to think now about what we value in public service broadcasting; who is capable of providing it in a fragmented, multichannel age; and how we want to pay for it. Only then will we be able to consider what the distinctive role of the BBC should be in this brave new technological world.
* Read the How to save the BBC pamphlet here
