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

A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION
It attempted to create an infrastructure that
would allow both the ITV network and the
BBC to act as a public service engaged in
a “constant and living relationship with the
moral condition of society.” 18 Today, the status
and definition of public service is far more
fluid and we have lost the ‘moral’ certainties
that underpinned the Pilkington committee’s
investigation. For some, the whole notion
of public service television suggests the
paternalistic imposition of ‘desirable’ (for
which read ‘establishment’) values at a time
when citizens are increasingly unwilling to be
the passive recipients of other people’s belief
systems. In a famous speech at the 1989
Edinburgh International Television Festival, a
year in which walls were coming down across
the world, Rupert Murdoch tore into what
he described as the “British broadcasting
elite” and demolished the “special privileges
and favours” that were associated with the
“public interest”. “My own view”, insisted the
founder of the UK’s new satellite service, “is
that anybody who, within the law of the land,
provides a service which the public wants
at a price it can afford is providing a public
service. So if in the years ahead we can make
a success of Sky Television, that will be as
much a public service as ITV.” 19
We take a rather different view of public
service. We do not believe that public service
can simply be measured by ratings nor do
we believe that public service exists simply to
correct any tendency for markets to underserve
minority audiences. As we discuss in
some detail in Chapter 2, we believe that
public service television – and public service
media as it will emerge – are not merely the
medicine that it is sometimes necessary to
take to counter the lack of nutrition of a
purely commercial system. In many ways,
public service television is – at least, it is
supposed to be – about a specific conception
of culture that is irreducible to economic
measures of ‘profit and loss’; it refers to
the “establishment of a communicative
relationship” rather than to “the delivery of a
set of distinct commodities to consumers.” 20
Its main goal is not to sell audiences to
advertisers or subscription broadcasters
or to conduct private transactions but to
facilitate public knowledge and connections.
According to Liz Forgan, a former director
of programmes at Channel 4: “Television
channels are not pork barrel futures or
redundant government buildings. They
are creators, patrons and purveyors of a
highly popular (in both senses) variety of
entertainment, information and culture to
millions.” 21
Public service television is a ‘public good’
that has multiple objectives 22 : it must, for
example, provide content that is popular and
challenging; it must be universally available; it
must enhance trust in and diversity of news
and opinion; it must increase the plurality of
voices in the UK media landscape; it must
provide a means through which UK citizens
can enter into dialogue; and it must stimulate
the wider creative industries of which it is a
key part. This report will therefore focus on
how best to institutionalise these ambitions
in a changing media landscape that requires
public service operators to rethink their
strategies if they are to remain relevant and
viable and to secure the trust of audiences.
18
Pilkington Report, p. 31.
19
Rupert Murdoch, ‘Freedom in Broadcasting’, Speech to the Edinburgh International Television Fesitval, August 25, 1989.
20
Nicholas Garnham, ‘The Broadcasting Market and the Future of the BBC’, Political Quarterly, 65 (1), 1994, p. 18.
21
Liz Forgan, ‘Could Channel 4’s distinctive voice and adventurous shows continue if it is sold?’, Guardian, May 8, 2016.
22
See Appendix 3 of this report for Onora O’Neill’s thoughts on public service broadcasting as a public good with the capacity to provide: “a shared sense of the
public space and of what it is to communicate with others who are not already like minded; access to a wide and varied pool of information and to the critical
standards that enable intelligent engagement with other views; an understanding of the diversity of views held by fellow citizens and by others; a shared enjoyment
of cultural and sporting occasions that would otherwise be preserve of the few or the privileged; an understanding of the diversity of views others hold.”
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