The BBC is owned and funded by the British public
Peter Goddard, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media, discusses the recommendations made in the recent report by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee into the future of the BBC:
“British broadcasting is a delicate ecosystem. The range, quality and public value of its programming, is something that we often take for granted, even though few countries in the world have broadcasting systems where quality and benefit to audiences, rather than just profit, play such significant roles in determining what we are able to watch or listen to.
What’s more, much of the quality programming available to British audiences is UK-produced and reflects British attitudes and cultures; in many countries, quality programmes are often those which have been imported.
Becase of their quality, British programmes and formats are very popular with other broadcasters around the world, so the British broadcasting industry is a major global player and a lucrative national exporter (as I write this, the ‘largest television sales event of its kind’ is being held in Liverpool).
At the heart of this ecosystem is the BBC, owned and funded by the British public, which serves as a ‘beacon of quality’ across all genres of British programming – raising audience expectations of programme quality and, consequently, driving up standards among its competitors too.
So proposals to change how the BBC operates, or, indeed, what its role should be, deserve close scrutiny as they are likely to affect the whole ecology of British broadcasting. Some of the recommendations for the future of the BBC made by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on Thursday could have alarming consequences. In my view, two are particularly serious, involving suggestions for replacing the licence fee and changing the BBC’s role.
It is true that the annual £145.50 licence fee, payable by anybody who watches live television, is a cumbersome system for funding the corporation, not well liked by parts of the public nor by the BBC itself.
But, as well as offering excellent value for money (a Sky subscription will cost at least £258 and probably much more, in addition to the licence fee), it has a number of real advantages. It means that we all have the same stake in the BBC and that the BBC must serve everybody, regardless of wealth, taste or status.
And it makes the BBC is answerable to the public rather than just to politicians who would surely like to tame its independence at times. The Select Committee makes various proposals for change, including making some BBC services subscription only.
But this would make these BBC services responsive only to those willing to pay, creating a two-tier corporation, and could herald a move to an entirely-subscription-funded BBC. Not only would this reduce the BBC’s reach, its revenue and, consequently, the quality of its programmes, but it would undermine its mission altogether.
Rather than providing ‘something for everyone, its revenue would be linked to the quantity of subscriptions – a quasi-commercial model creating an incentive to chase large audiences and ignore altogether those audience fractions less likely to subscribe.
What is the point of a public service broadcaster if it no longer operates for the benefit of the whole public? Another suggested option is for the licence fee to be replaced by a compulsory levy – essentially a hypothecated tax.
This too could be disastrous. The present licence fee preserves the independence of the BBC: It collects its own revenue. Direct tax-funding, however collected, could easily expose it much more severely to the whims of government, with the risk that the BBC could be perceived as serving the state rather than the public.
State broadcasters elsewhere (as in Italy) tend to serve their political masters and sacrifice public trust as a result. I would favour a much more imaginative solution, first proposed by Professor John Ellis at Royal Holloway, to move the licence fee from general broadcasting to catch-up services, thus following the present trend in audience consumption of broadcasting and virtually eliminating collection and recovery costs.
Even more worrying is the Committee’s suggestion that the BBC should retreat from areas that are well-served by commercial broadcasters. Superficially, this is an attractive argument – similar material would be provided anyway – and it is honey to the BBC’s commercial competitors who see it as a cause of market failure.
But if the BBC is to be a universal broadcaster, reflecting and serving the whole public, it cannot restrict itself to minority interest programming that the market is less likely to provide.
The ‘beacon of quality’ argument applies as much to popular programming as to any other sort. The lesson from other parts of the world is that commercial operators tend to maintain audience share by providing ‘safe’, risk-averse programming which simply copies already-successful models.
Certainly the BBC should be more innovative in its popular programming as this will drive up quality and innovation across the system to the benefit of all viewers. But avoiding popular programming not only changes and weakens the BBC’s purpose, but threatens its public support altogether.
The public rightly credits the BBC for Doctor Who, Strictly and The Great British Bake-Off, and programmes such as these make it much easier for the BBC to justify the funding and resources for the countless other services which are so valuable to much smaller segments of the audience.
Despite these substantial concerns, overall the Committee’s report is sensible and measured. Gratifyingly, it seems to grasp the value of much of what the BBC does and it has not, as might have been feared, been ‘captured’ by some of the powerful commercial vested interests which gave evidence.
The criticisms it makes of BBC governance (weakness over the Jimmy Savile revelations, excessive salaries and payoffs, George Entwistle’s failure as Director-General and so on) are broadly warranted, including calling for the abolition of the BBC Trust and stronger Ofcom oversight.
Although some media coverage of the report seems to link governance failures to calls to reduce the BBC’s role and output, this erroneous link is not made by the Committee.
Nonetheless, if adopted, there are recommendations here which could do untold damage to the British broadcasting eco-system, so extreme care is needed. This report will not set policy for the BBC’s charter renewal in 2016 and, depending on the make-up of the next government, may be ignored altogether. But it has set the tone for lengthy debate on the future of the BBC, and once dangerous ideas are set running, they can often be difficult to recapture.”