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

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.
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