Public Flogging of BBC Nears End. Damage Phase Ensues.

Michael Hedges - March 20, 2006

The UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s White Paper on the BBC set out the terms it expects from the renewal of the BBC’s Royal Charter. Little in the document differs from the previous Green Papers or the public statements of Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell. Years after the Hutton Report made the BBC fair-game for flogging the punishment terms are evident. Damages – to the license fee – will be assessed this summer.

Quite clearly the Office for Communications (OFCOM) will have a role in the BBC’s program offerings, mandated to determine if new ones meet a “public value test” and rule on “significant changes” to existing services. Public service guidelines will certainly be less ambiguous. The BBC Board of Governors will be replaced by a Trust, mandated to watch the license fee money and enforce those less ambiguous public service guidelines.

Those enumerated guidelines, called “public service values,” include: sustaining citizenship and civil society, promoting education, stimulating creativity, reflecting the identity of the UK's nations, regions and communities, bringing the world to the UK and the UK to the world and building digital Britain.

Ms Jowell’s White Paper – written while she herself takes a few lashes over her husbands’ business relationship with the consummate European example of media largess, Silvio Berlusconi – calls on the BBC to “take fun seriously,” and continue to invest in entertainment. “Strictly Come Everything” might now follow from the successful and well-loved “Strictly Come Dancing.” Not so subtle is the message to lighten up and, parenthetically, not beat up the politicians so much. In her speech to the House of Commons, Ms Jowell noted that viewers want less of an “overdose of worthiness.”

None of this is music to the ears of the UK’s commercial broadcasters. They generally approve of the BBC’s overwhelming strength as the broadcast news reference for the UK, for Europe and the world. News is very expensive. Knock-off reality shows are not. Juke-box radio channels are not.

UK newspaper publishers were not impressed. After all, news is their business and with the BBCs multi-media coverage the zero-sum conclusion puts the BBC in competition with newspapers. One described the White Paper as a “missed opportunity.”

Compelling, though, is commercial broadcasters argument that the BBC’s entire governance and funding package diminishes the capacity of voices alternative to the BBC to compete. Commercial radio operators draw on the example of Radio 1 and Radio 2, largely music channels with huge audiences and whopping budgets. Spin them off, says the Commercial Radio Companies Association (CRCA). Let their proven capacity to draw and hold audiences compete for financial support within commercial media’s framework. Let them sell ads.

Advertising agencies are also supportive of taking the BBC out of commercially interesting sectors – sensing with their fine-tuned antennae that ad clients might like to access that Radio 1 and Radio 2 audience that seems to be “different” (read: buyers).

Less compelling is the argument that commercial broadcasting is by its nature more innovative. Imagine, if you will, that meeting at Big TV Company with a young producer pitching a ball-room dancing show as a competition. When Big TV Mogul stops laughing, after the ritual defenestration, he places a call to Endemol to find something “compelling” already on the shelf.

And then, there is the appeal to save jobs. Commercial broadcasters warn that a significant portion of the more than 9000 workers in their sector could be lost. BBC General Director Mark Thompson has already announced the impending loss of 4000 jobs.

Trade Unions Council (TUC) General Secretary Brendan Barber warned that “threats from those who would profit from the decline of the BBC will grow and now is the time for all who value high quality public service broadcasting to speak out in support of the BBC, to ensure it is both well funded and publicly accountably,” in a press statement after the White Paper’s public release. The TUC, the Federation of Entertainment Unions and the National Union of Journalists have organized a BBC support rally – “Keep Broadcasting Public” – for April 1st.

The proposed BBC Trust, replacing the Board of Governors, is meant to give the license fee payers more voice. Indeed, all broadcasters – public and commercial – are giving more voice to the “payers.” The recent merger of the UK’s Radio Advertising Bureau and the trade association CRCA shows the degree to which commercial radio wants to satisfy the “payers” (read:advertisers).

For public broadcasters, showing more attention to the license fee payers by actually giving them voice in a governing body is a double-edged sword. Proper attention requires considerable skill as these newly empowered voices can provide the always necessary reality-check. But there is palpable fear among public service broadcasters (PSBs). As one senior public broadcasting director answered a question about the reality of engaging the public: “The last thing we need is another meeting with the left-handed bicycle riders association.”

Every European PSB has been carefully watching the new rules unfold for the BBC in these competitive and digital times. Other governments, their media regulators and their respective PSBs will study this White Paper on the BBC for clues to their own problems. Next to funding – the license fee – other worries are rather empty.  It’s more or less safe for the next decade in the UK. After that, well, we have to get there first. The BBC’s Royal Charter expires at the end of this year.

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