A Very Long Year for the BBC

Michael Hedges January 24, 2005

An anniversary like no other passes this week, January 28th. Don’t expect celebrations. In the year since Lord Hutton tarred the BBC, the public broadcasting icon, every critic has piled on.

It has not stopped or slowed down. When the fires are out and the ember cools, the BBC could be nothing more than a blackened ash.

The BBC had its critics in the pre-Hutton days. Rather mild arguments about competition or political leanings gathered little public traction. The BBC was, after all, the BBC and it had served the public well.

By all accounts, public support for the BBC has never wavered. And, while the public hasn’t exactly collected baskets of feathers to add to the tarring, much of the UK’s media and political establishment have brought out the long knives. The Hutton inquiry put the BBC in a corner and now, it seems, it cannot escape.

The BBC’s Royal Charter sets its mission, organization and funding as well as setting it apart from commercial media.  State Secretary for Culture Tessa Jowell has been given the job of sorting out what the UK government expects the BBC to be. Assertions of independence notwithstanding, the BBC owes its breath from the UK government. Mrs. Jowell has referred to the BBCs current governance and regulation as “unsustainable.”

That mandate is again under review, formally known as the Royal Charter review, the seventh since 1927. Later this spring, a delay recently announced, a Green Paper will be published setting out all the issues relevant to the review. Then begins another round of public consultations leading to a White Paper later this year. The current BBC Royal Charter expires December 31, 2006.

The Marketplace of Issues

Governance and regulation have trumped all other issues in discussions of the BBCs future.

Few commercial broadcasters and fewer politicians will go on record favoring the BBCs complete dismantling.  Political operators who, post-Hutton, might like a “happy news” approach to their treatment on BBC news programs – turning Lyse Ducet into a travel reporter, for example – know little public will exists to keep the BBC from the mainstream. Politicians also know that political fortunes can change. Insiders become outsiders and a watchful media eye on the new insiders can be convenient.

Other reviews continue to rake the BBC over the coals. While it is still far too early to pick over the corpse, those birds flying overhead are hungry.

Super-regulator OFCOM, itself celebrating its first anniversary, announced that it would also, against the BBC’s wishes, conduct a review. OFCOMs review of public service broadcasting will now include a chapter on BBC governance and regulation, announced last week at the Oxford Media Conference by senior OFCOM partner Ed Richards.  When an OFCOM review was suggested last year, the BBC bristled. Now, not so much as a whimper.

Analyzing the BBC through the periscope of international corporate style, a paper commissioned by the Commercial Radio Companies Association (CRCA), also released for the Oxford Media Conference, recommends replacing the BBC Governors with a shareholders meeting – perhaps of all license fee payers - to “take over key ownership functions.

The CRCA paper, authored by Stilpon Nester, also endorses the view – approaching dominance but highly resisted by the BBC – that OFCOM regulate the public broadcaster as it does all other UK broadcasters. Nestors’s recommendations are similar to those reported last year by the Labour Lord Burns who argued against the BBC’s “self-regulation.”

The litany of complaints is typical of those favoring liberal markets and privatization. Much of what the BBC does, they say, should properly belong to the private sector. Engaging in commercial services runs counter, they say, to the BBCs mandate. When it became public knowledge that the BBC operates over 2000 websites, even their biggest fans were horrified.

If the external reviews were not harsh enough, the BBC has become particularly – if not peculiarly – adept at beating up itself. New Director General Mark Thompson announced staff cuts, relocating some to the outpost of Manchester, and services cuts. His garroted predecessor Greg Dyke, the BBCs former cheerleader-in-chief, reviewed it all in a 500-page memoir.

BBC Chairman Michael Grade, new to the job since the Hutton hangings, has begged the government to give the current structure another chance, offering to “fire people” if standards are not met.

PSB Fight Crosses the Channel

The BBC’s fight for breath makes the news in the UK, as well it should. For more than 50 years it was the UKs only broadcaster and for the last years 30 it’s generally withstood commercial competition, better in radio but also in television. The level of influence and innovation cannot and should not be minimized. The BBC has led Europe in digital broadcasting and Internet services development, investing millions, and creating – at the same time – monopolies that are magnets for critics of its remit. With 28,000 employees and a total budget exceeding €400m, the BBC has done what every market leader does – it leads. And – until now – it’s controlled the media agenda in the UK and wielded enormous influence over media worldwide.

The reason for this influence is quite simple – the BBC is damned good at what it does.

Outside the UK, among Europe’s public broadcasters, a palpably tension has risen over the BBC’s mortality.

“I want the BBC to survive,” said a senior public broadcaster working outside the UK. The BBC’s icon status outside the UK can’t be overlooked. Other public broadcasters are facing similar, if unequal, judgment. Questions of governance and regulation now posed to the BBC will face many of Europe’s public broadcasters.

Public broadcasters have fought commercial broadcasters from the beginning. Cozy relationships between formerly state radio and television managers and regulators and parliaments gave the public broadcasters huge advantages in everything from spectrum access to license fee revenue. The quid quo pro was accommodating the political will. As the public broadcasters called for more independence, national governments were facing commercial interests – now becoming quite powerful – calling for more access to spectrum as digital broadcasting ascends and limitations on the public broadcasters.

“We are fighting against ‘Clearchannelization’,” said one public broadcasting executive. Clear Channel, the huge US commercial media company, has long been held up – along with Rupert Murdock – as example of what will happen to broadcasting – indeed all media in Europe – if public service broadcasting is relegated to the margins. Indeed, ownership regulations in several European countries now include “anti-Clear Channel” clauses to either severely limit foreign ownership or limit foreign owners to bringing their money but not ideas. The unintended consequence has been a distinct movement of large multi-national media companies – and their ideas - away from certain countries and toward, to a large extent, those in eastern Europe and Scandinavia where regulators seem less protectionist and more interested in a thriving media sector.

Refuge in Brussels

Once Europe’s public broadcasters took refuge with the European Commission. The EC’s ringing endorsements of the public broadcasting remit seemed, once, intractable. Gone are the days when audiovisual services were the sole domain of DG Culture. While the audiovisual portfolio at the EC moved in January to DG Info Society, home of telecoms and technophiles, new Commissioner Vivaine Reding seems to favor a light touch, endorsing the Amsterdam Protocol which enshrined public service broadcasting, but also defers difficult questions to the very market-oriented Competition Commission.

Public service broadcasting, as described in European Commission and various national pronouncements and protocols, replaced – generally – state broadcasting systems that made little or no pretense of political independence. For the public broadcasters this independence from political, commercial or even public whim is essential to the remit. Politicians – at least those in power – pine for the days when state broadcasters took their phone calls and did what they were told. Commercial broadcasters just want public broadcasting to shrink back into the cultural cage. The public just wants good programs.