A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION
This means that diversity, as it applies to
television, needs to take on board issues
of voice, representation and opportunity. It
needs, in other words, to provide a means
by which all social groups are able to speak,
to be portrayed respectfully and accurately,
to have equal employment prospects and,
finally, to have access to a wide range of
content.
The US academic Phil Napoli has identified
three dimensions of broadcast diversity
that connect to these capacities: source,
content and exposure diversity. 298 We dealt
with one element of source diversity in
Chapter 7 where we examined the prospects
for new suppliers of public service content
in a digital age; we will consider another
crucial area of source diversity later in
this chapter where we confront the fact
that television continues to be an industry
dominated by white middle-class men. We
discuss content diversity both in relation
to the need to support the broadest range
of television genres (in Chapter 10) and, in
the next section, in relation to how minority
groups are represented on television as
well as how they themselves perceive this
representation. Exposure diversity – in other
words, “the degree to which audiences are
actually exposing themselves to a diversity
of information products and sources” 299 –
is particularly difficult to measure and to
mandate but our belief is that if audiences
are presented with a television environment
that is more open and receptive to the labour,
lifestyles and languages of minority groups,
then they are far more likely to seek out this
material and to cultivate more promiscuous
consumption habits. Public service television,
we believe, has a crucial role in delivering
both surprises and certainties to a curious
(and diverse) population.
Are you being served?
Many viewers appear to be content with
the quality of television in general. Ofcom
reports that audience satisfaction with the
delivery of public service broadcasting has
risen from 69% of respondents in 2008 to
79% in 2014 300 and, while half of all adults
believe that programme quality has stayed
the same in the last year, the gap between
those who think it has improved (17%) in
relation to those who believe that things
have got worse (30%) has more than halved
in the last ten years 301 . Research carried out
for the BBC Trust found that the public’s
“overall impression” of the BBC has increased
since 2008 earning an average score of 7.4
on a scale of 1-10 with 60% of respondents
claiming that the BBC offers them “quite a
bit’, “a lot” or “everything I need” 302 .
The problem is that satisfaction levels are
not shared equally by all the population and
that some groups – notably ethnic, regional,
national and faith-based minorities – have
expressed significant dissatisfaction with
how they are represented or with the range
of programmes relevant to their interests.
So, for example, the wealthiest audiences
are more than 50% more likely to praise
the BBC’s performance than those in the
poorest households while English viewers
are significantly more positive than Scottish
ones. 303 Just 44% of Christian and 47% of
non-Christian audiences agree that the BBC
adequately represents their faith while only
298
Phil Napoli, ‘Deconstructing the Diversity Principle’, Journal of Communication 49(4), 1999, pp. 7-34.
299
Napoli, Deconstructing, p. 25.
300
Ofcom, Public Service Broadcasting in the Internet Age, 2015, p. 7.
301
Ofcom, UK audience attitudes towards broadcast media, 2016, p. 6.
302
NatCen, Purpose Remit Survey UK report, BBC Trust, 2015.
303
Ibid.
104