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

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A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION The Great British Bake-Off have all caught the popular imagination in their different ways. Football fans discuss the matches they have seen live on Sky or BT Sport, or on Match of the Day. Much of the discussion in newspapers and magazines, or on Facebook and Twitter, springs from television programmes. At the same time, new voices and platforms have emerged to add to this conversation – from Vice News to YouTube’s danisnotonfire and Venus vs Mars. Television both records and animates the multiple dimensions of life across the nations; it provides a barometer of national and local cultures, and provides a crucial frame through which we attempt to understand our lives and the lives of those around us. Television moves us and, as the entertainment journalist Sarah Hughes argues: Britain’s best television has always been its angriest, from Cathy Come Home, which put homelessness in the spotlight, to Scum, Alan Clarke’s incendiary look at life in a borstal. These are the shows that force us to think about things we might otherwise have ignored, that hold up a mirror to society and say: ‘This is what you got wrong, this is where you failed.’ 25 Television is a cultural form in its own right, capable of reaching artistic heights, and it is intimately connected with many other cultural forms as part of the wider creative industries and the creative ecology. It also provides major economic benefits. The UK television industry earned revenues of over £13 billion in 2014 26 and is the biggest player in an audiovisual creative sector that employs over 250,000 people, generates more than £10 billion of Gross Value Added and exports over £4 billion of services and products to the rest of the world. 27 Yet none of these possibilities are inevitable nor are they guaranteed to last unless we secure an independent, competitive and creative television landscape here in the UK. As the cultural historian Michael Bailey told us, only if “carefully managed and inspired by a sense of vocation, broadcasting institutions can help strengthen the democratic process by making power elites accountable to the public; whilst at the same time building a stronger sense of community by connecting audiences through shared experiences and social dialogue.” 28 So we should be mindful of the continuing potential of television whilst, at the same time, emphasising that we can only realise this potential if we provide the appropriate regulatory, technological and creative infrastructure dedicated to this purpose. The evolution of public service television The idea of public service has been integral to the history of broadcasting in the UK, from the foundation of the BBC in the 1920s onwards. The BBC started out as a monopoly provider of first radio, and then television. Its nature as a public body acting in the national interest was embedded at an early stage, forged out of the mood of the times, from the specific recommendations of the 1926 Crawford committee, and through the domineering character and singular vision of its first director-general, Lord Reith. In 25 Sarah Hughes, ‘Why the best British TV is fuelled by rage’, the Guardian, June 6, 2016. 26 Ofcom, Communication Market Review, 2015 p. 147. 27 http://www.thecreativeindustries.co.uk/industries/tv-film/tv-film-facts-and-figures/uk-tv-film-government-economic-data. 28 Michael Bailey, submission to the Inqujry, 16
CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD those early days, no broadcasting market was allowed to develop, as it had in the US, and overt political interference was generally kept at bay. First incorporated under royal charter in 1927, the BBC was from its earliest days characterised by aspirations towards impartiality and independence, even if in practice these aspirations were not always perfectly fulfilled. 29 Reith wanted the BBC to be available to everyone across the UK, and he achieved his aim. Monopoly status gave the corporation an almost oracular power as the voice of a nation, a power that to this day it partially retains. As the UK’s only broadcaster for more than 30 years, it was synonymous with broadcasting itself and its example influenced everything that followed. Reith may have felt little enthusiasm for television – and he left the BBC not long after the launch of the full television service in 1936 – but his notion that broadcasting should ‘inform, educate and entertain’ remains the cornerstone of the public service ideal even if this ‘holy trinity” has been interpreted in wildly different ways. When commercial television was launched in the 1950s, the BBC lost its monopoly, but the principle that broadcasting should be public service in character continued into the new era. The ITV network of regional licences set up in 1955 was highly regulated, and required to provide public service programming that was balanced, impartial and high quality in return for the advertising monopoly that made owning a franchise a ‘licence to print money’. The regulator held sanctions over scheduling and programmes and could even revoke a licence if necessary. Minority interest programmes were expected to be spread across the schedule, including in peak time, and there were limits on US imports. The regional character of the ITV network was drawn up very deliberately as a way of decentralising the television industry, even if the map was drawn more for the benefit of marketers than with any specific feel for regional identity or local politics. In the face of this new competition, the BBC had to sharpen up its act: the launch of ITN as a rival news provider to the BBC is credited with many innovations and improvements in broadcast news, for example. It was the BBC too that would be the beneficiary when the development of television was reviewed by the Pilkington report of 1962. As we have already discussed, Pilkington’s scathing criticisms of the output of commercial television led to the BBC being granted the third channel – BBC Two – two years later, and to stronger regulation of the ITV network. Against the backdrop of social liberalisation and under Hugh Carleton Greene’s leadership, the BBC came into its own as a public service television broadcaster in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the BBC-ITV duopoly was showing its age – its one-size-fits-all approach frustrating for programme makers and failing to reflect the fraying of cultural homogeneity. The time was ripe for a fourth channel, which was the recommendation of the Annan report in 1977. Annan felt that television should serve the various groups and interests in British society and not just aspire to cater for everyone at once. Channel 4 was launched in 1982 along these lines; its addition to the broadcasting landscape 29 For very different assessments, see, for example, Stuart Hood, On Television, London: Pluto 1997 and Paddy Scannell, ‘Public service broadcasting and modern public life’, Media, Culture & Society 11 (1989), pp. 135-166. 17
Page 1 and 2: A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVIS
Page 3 and 4: Contents Foreword by David Puttnam
Page 5 and 6: To instruct democracy, if possible
Page 7 and 8: Welcome Television is leading a cha
Page 9 and 10: CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL
Page 11 and 12: PSB channels 71.9% All other channe
Page 15: Why television matters Television i
Page 19 and 20: 1982 1990s 2012 The BBC-ITV duopoly
Page 23 and 24: Time for action Today’s policymak
Page 29 and 30: Basic principles At the core of pre
Page 39 and 40: The multichannel revolution Perhaps
Page 51 and 52: The BBC For most people, the BBC is
Page 67 and 68:
Channel 4 If the BBC is the most im
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CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL
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Only 8% of Channel 4’s total spen
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ITV and Channel 5 The focus of atte
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The changing face of ITV 1993-2002
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New sources of public service conte
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Television and diversity We have ea
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THE PEOPLE SHOULD BE TELEVISED If t
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Nations and Regions Public service
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Content diversity One of the key wa
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Sports content now accounts for som
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Talent development and training In
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Conclusion Television is changing.
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Recommendations General The UK’s
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Appointing the BBC board Sir David
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APPLICATION OF THE NOLAN PRINCIPLES
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BAFTA members’ survey delivered i
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Public service broadcasting, public
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Inquiry events Do we still need pub
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Acknowledgements Inquiry Report Con
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A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

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