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

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A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION paid-for service to its users, subsidised by the delivery of their attention to advertisers for some channels. The BBC’s imperative comes from another place. The BBC is, if nothing else, a machine for social engineering: an attempt to deploy the latest communications technologies to serve the public interest, not an attempt to correct market failure. By accepting limits on its online provision that would be unacceptable for broadcast programmes, it will fail those audiences who do not watch the Six O’Clock News or Eastenders and who choose YouTube over iPlayer for their evening entertainment. And these audiences – and in particular younger cohorts – are likely to grow. The combination of budgetary pressure and a lack of vision in how digital technologies may extend and transform the public service mission has already damaged the BBC’s online presence, set back the development of interactive services and made the BBC a far less attractive prospect for the new generation of web developers. We are concerned that the BBC has responded to criticism about the corporation’s “imperial ambitions” 144 by cutting the budget for online content, this time taking out popular magazine-style material in favour of investment in ‘hard’ news which is presumably understood as ‘news that senior politicians consider important or interesting’. We would like to see a networkcentric BBC that brings broadcast and digital content to all citizens and that does so in a way that explores, exploits and enhances the power of the network. The BBC, if it is to survive and to thrive, needs to offer great entertainment, new forms of engagement, genuine interactivity and the permanent availability of commissioned output while offering access to as much of the archive as it can. Access to the immense riches within the BBC’s archive remains very selective and only a fraction of the material collected by the Corporation is easily available. There are complex issues around rights – especially underlying rights – which need to be resolved and there are also costs around digitisation of older material, but it is imperative that imaginative solutions are found to both these problems if the public value of the BBC’s archive is to be maximised in the digital era. At present, references to archive in the BBC’s governance documents are focused on “films, sound recordings, other recorded material and printed material” that is representative of the BBC’s broadcast output and to which the public must be offered “reasonable access” for viewing or listening. 145 We believe that there is a need to include interactive outputs, games, websites, apps and other non-linear formats that the BBC is now supporting and to broaden the range of activity that is permitted, which is currently focused on viewing and listening. There needs to be far more engagement with archive material either for study, learning or reuse in new contexts. In a digital era in which sharing and reuse are increasingly prevalent, there needs to be more effective means to enable people to carry out these activities within the constraints of copyright law. 144 See William Turvill, ‘BBC news website under attack ahead of charter review as newspapers call for “behemoth” to be “tamed”’, Press Gazette, July 7, 2015. 145 See clause 86 of the BBC’s Agreement with the government, July 2006. 58
CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD If the BBC does not assert its right to claim the online world as part of the public realm then our worry is that the BBC will gradually fade into insignificance and become just one more provider of online content in a world where unregulated competitors increasingly threaten the position of public service operators. 146 Delivering something that feels like broadcasting in a future IP-only world will be a significant challenge, but one that the BBC’s engineering history allows it to solve – just as it solved the problems of radio broadcasting, high definition television, stereo sound and colour. As we have already argued, the BBC has an impressive track record in this field and it would be a huge shame if it was not allowed to develop new technological initiatives like the Connected Studio. 147 A network-first BBC is not the same as a network-ready BBC. For one thing, there is little point in starting to prepare for a future transformation of the media landscape and of consumer behaviour when those transformations started many years ago. We are already living in a digital world, and in the next charter period the BBC must be as much as part of people’s online lives as it was in the 1960s when we had only two TV stations and a handful of radio networks. Instead it appears to us that policymakers are more than happy for the BBC to focus mainly on the existing broadcast ecosystem and that they see its networked presence as a threat rather than something that could be exploited in the interests of audiences and the BBC’s overarching mission. Underserved audiences and hard to reach sections of the population may then lose out so that the corporation ends up ‘superserving’ the literate, articulate and wealthy with programmes that can win BAFTAs and other awards. This is a position that is supported by the government, many in the media industry, and a range of policymakers and commentators. We believe that it would be a dreadful mistake. Funding the BBC The quality of the BBC’s output stems from the way it is set up: public ownership and public funding implies a direct relationship with viewers. The validity of the licence fee – or any other form of public funding – relies on public consent and public approval of the BBC’s programming. Public funding has also obviated the need for commercial funding; the absence of advertising is a great public benefit as far as many viewers are concerned. We start from the standpoint that the BBC should remain publicly funded, and given that the BBC’s scale and scope should be maintained, funding should likewise be maintained at sustainable levels. But the current mechanism of the TV licence fee cannot be guaranteed to last, given the changes in technology and consumption that have swept through the media industry. Nor is it an ideal funding mechanism in the first place. As we set out in Chapter 3, the licence fee has been raided by governments to pay for media infrastructure projects or politically motivated schemes, which has not only undermined the BBC’s ability to fund itself on a stable footing but also made a mockery of the idea that the BBC is truly politically independent. The licence fee has long been preferred over funding out of general taxation on the grounds that it keeps government at 146 This position was put very forcefully by the leading political economist of the media Graham Murdock in his submission to the Inquiry in which he argues that “the BBC offers the only effective institutional base for a comprehensive alternative to [the] corporate annexation of the interner.” 147 See BBC – Connected Studio for details of its work. 59
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A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVIS
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Contents Foreword by David Puttnam
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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 and 16: 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 57: CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL
Page 67 and 68: Channel 4 If the BBC is the most im
Page 71 and 72: Only 8% of Channel 4’s total spen
Page 79 and 80: ITV and Channel 5 The focus of atte
Page 85 and 86: The changing face of ITV 1993-2002
Page 91 and 92: New sources of public service conte
Page 103 and 104: Television and diversity We have ea
Page 107 and 108: THE PEOPLE SHOULD BE TELEVISED If t
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CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL
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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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