» SubscribeMain section
-
Top story
Diverse and Public - Public Service Broadcasting and the Communications White Paper
Lewis Frost
Broadcasting is a powerful tool that can be made to work for us in so many ways...
An edited version of this article by Lewis Frost was first published in the November edition of BECTU’s journal 'Stage Screen and Radio'.Legislation is being drawn up which by removing the little regulation that remains will spell the end of public service broadcasting. The legislation proposed will wind up effective public control over the media, leaving television and radio to be shaped entirely by market forces. To warn of a new threat to public service broadcasting and call for its defence though, raises many questions. What is public service television? People are fighting for our publicly funded NHS, for free and decent education; both are necessary for our physical and mental health and well being. These services are also both real achievements made by the working class and defended in this knowledge. But is public service broadcasting really needed in the same way that schools and hospitals are? And why should people defend public service broadcasting, has it ever operated in their interests? In beginning to answer these questions I found it useful to remind myself briefly of the origins and nature of public service broadcasting.
Public Service Broadcasting In its first two decades television was broadcast entirely as a public service, produced by an Oxbridge elite for the growing middle class, the only people who could afford television sets. The Reithian ethos to educate, inform and entertain - the essence of public service broadcasting, was established in the late 1930’s through the work of the BBC, which was regulated by its own board of governors. Later in the 1950’s commercial public service channels were first introduced with the setting up of ITV. The commercial public service channels today, ITV, C4 and C5, are regulated by the Independent Television Commission (ITC) and the Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC). Television today is produced predominantly by the middleclass, who claim to have done away with the old elitism and now, being market driven, broadcast for all layers of the population.
The BBC, paid for by the TV license fee, is still the core of public service broadcasting today. The commercial public service channels finance their programmes from advertising revenue. They also pay the Government a licence fee to transmit over the airwaves i.e. the radio frequencies, which are considered a public good. The value of the transmission licence fees are established by the ITC according to the programming and revenue projections of the channel. The licences are contractual commitments to make certain types of broadcast programmes, commitments to quantity and scheduling. The licences are renewable subject to the channels satisfactory performance. Until now this system used to ensure some control of quality, diversity and public accountability in broadcasting (though it could be hugely improved). The licences differ and are negotiated individually, but generally speaking the channels have to commit to diversity through a broad range of programme types (‘genres’), and to scheduling often comparatively unpopular genres (e.g. current affairs) at peak hours. In this way programmes with smaller audiences like children’s TV, religion, minority programming, current affairs and quality documentary were guaranteed budgets and scheduled at popular times.
Public service broadcasting has weakened particularly during the 1980’s and 90’s. In November 1988, the BBC stood up to threats from the Thatcher government and screened a Panorama documentary Death on the Rock. Three alleged IRA terrorists had been murdered in Gibraltar by British army assassins, as part of a ‘shoot to kill’ policy (investigated by John Stalker).
As a result of the BBC’s defiance, the Tories curbed the corporation’s independence by imposing a new management structure and accompanying regulations which were part of the Broadcasting Act 1990. The 1990 Act (opposed by Labour) rolled back regulation at ITV and started to introduce the market and greater competition into broadcasting. With new commercial freedoms the nine ITV franchises were sold to the highest bidder. Through further relaxation of ownership rules Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Television was able to set up shop, and by taking over its competitor British Satellite Broadcasting became BskyB. The 1990 Act’s new light touch regulation resulted in many loses.
Here’s just one example - non-news coverage of the developing world has declined by 50% over all channels since the 1990 Act. This fact is of particular significance as it illustrates part of a contradictory movement - as developments in technology have made information and communication systems genuinely more global, broadcasting within nation states has become more insular and inward looking. However even though today’s public service broadcasting system exists in an already very weakened state, it still acts as a restraint on the ability of companies to expand and exploit the convergence of new technologies.
As a result pressure from the media and telecommunications companies have given rise to new legislation - the Communications White Paper, which aims to sweep away the remaining structure of today’s public service broadcasting and broadcast regulation.
New technology and convergence New technology has created new products and services, new opportunities for profit. TV programmes, radio, text messages, games and emails can now, at least theoretically and soon in practice, be received on television, PCs, Palm Pilots and mobile WAP phones. These developments have been made possible through the Internet and new digital technology (information recorded, stored and transmitted in digital code).
Digital technology has spawned hundreds of new ‘genre’ channels - channels devoted to a single subject like Rapture Television (night clubbing) or QVC (the shopping channel). The new technology has broken down the divisions between the media and telecoms industry, creating potential for company mergers and growth between these two sectors. The telecoms sector though got into huge debt problems as it borrowed to finance the new technology infrastructure, and it only took a small down turn in the expected sales of mobile handsets (future profits) for the sector to collapse and the NASDAQ to plunge (as it did at the beginning of 2000). One of the first sectors affected by the new technology crash were the media companies it had already embraced. A recent casualty of this crisis was Atlantic Telecom.
Atlantic started out as a cable TV company, which then began providing high speed Internet access using radio equipment (broadband fixed wireless). The company folded due to excessive debt it had taken on through its purchase of a German Internet access provider and the fact that the broadband service sold badly. Other corporate collapses look imminent. Cable companies Telewest and NTL have never made a profit but each has invested heavily in fibre-optic infrastructure, hoping to get new subscribers for pay-TV and high speed Internet. BskyB is also considered to be greatly over stretched. The struggle to get these new services and channels up and running and build markets and audiences has led to calls for de-regulation and for the relaxation of ownership rules - the two key themes of the Communications White Paper.
The Communications White Paper The White Paper proposes to dissolve all existing regulatory bodies, including the ITC and BSC, into a single regulator - Ofcom, which will set standards for all broadcasters except the BBC. Ofcom will for the first time bring together the tasks of regulating both economic (eg. media ownership) and content concerns. Previously these functions have been kept separate and for good reasons, as bringing them together will allow the two to be traded against each other and inevitably deals will be done. Also Ofcom will not be able to do (nor is it designed for) the work of the six regulatory bodies it replaces. The paper proposes that companies be allowed to self-regulate the "qualitative elements of public service broadcasting".
Some regulations will be removed entirely others scaled back. The BBC will keep a public service remit. Channel 4's obligations will be ‘updated’- its chief executive, having dropped the channel’s minority remit, has decided that all minorities are now comfortably integrated into the mainstream. Channel 5 will likely lose most of its public service role. Granada and Carlton, the two ITV companies, will be allowed to merge.
The White paper defends multiculturalism. However new research (from Skillset’s Audio Visual Training Industries Group) finds that in the last ten years there has been a drop in the number of people from ethnic minorities in influential positions in broadcasting; fewer minority audiences targeted; and fewer black and Asian owned production companies are being commissioned.
This drop has been concurrent with the weakening of public service broadcasting brought about by the 1990 Act. But why would television companies, competing to capture the largest audience share, somehow at the same time ensure televisions multicultural content? The market will never deliver diversity there is no incentive for it to do so. BskyB the only real commercial success, delivers the most narrow range of content, mainly football, boxing and films, all of which we had before for free. New deregulation will continue to exclude ethnic minorities. Curiously many of the black faces seen on British screens are from US television, whose shows are the most market driven. Though US television is one the most deregulated, its affirmative action policies have improved the presence of African-Americans on screen. The Bush administration though intends to end affirmative action policies.
The argument which underpins the White Paper’s proposals is that ‘consumer’ interests are best protected through increased competition and either less or no regulation. For the first time broadcasting, including the BBC, will be subjected to the Competition Act. To facilitate competition, media ownership rules must be rolled back. However when ownership rules are relaxed the ensuing mergers and take-overs leave the control of the media in fewer hands, resulting in the erosion of democracy and free speech. Take Italy for example. As the recent violent beating of demonstrators protesting against the G8 meeting in Genoa has shown, under the new Berlusconi Government opposition is quashed using the methods of a police state. (Though the British Government’s lack of response to the brutal beating of hundreds of British citizens and its own support for the Metropolitan Police’s illegal arrest of demonstrators on Oxford Street clearly indicates that this is not just an Italian phenomenon). Berlusconi was elected Prime Minister this year in an alliance with fascists - Mussolini’s heirs. During the Italian elections Berlusconi was vilified by the international press for his corrupt and illegal business practises. However he was still elected Prime Minister thanks mainly to the blanket propaganda from his own television and media empire. The uncontrolled take-over by Berlusconi’s companies of the Italian media, had given him enough power to silence the questioning and dissenting voices within Italy. Though in this country we don’t have a Prime Minister who is a media mogul, the owners of mass media are still a major influence on the Government and the two grow closer by the day. In 1995 Tony Blair made peace with the most powerful media owner in Britain, Rupert Murdoch, owner of News International.
Speaking at a News International meeting in Australia, Blair made it clear that New Labour would support an ‘open and competitive media market’. Then in 1997 the Sun newspaper, owned by Murdoch, for the first time in decades supported Labour in the election. In the 2001 election both his papers the Sun and the Times supported New Labour. Murdoch hopes to gain much from the new legislation as he did from 1990 Broadcasting Act. The Blair Government does not dare disappoint him.
In its introduction the White Paper says that in "1999 TV companies raised £4.9 billion in advertising, sales and programme exports and that the communications industry is growing faster than any other part of the economy". The White Paper was produced during the technology boom. This boom was sustained by the expectation that new technology, creating new products and services would keep creating new markets, endless demand and growth
As is now abundantly clear everything has changed since spring 2000. That was the moment that the technology market’s bubble burst and the down turn began. When the stock markets were still booming, companies had borrowed heavily to finance the creation of new digital channels. Now burdened with large debts and television services that they can’t sell, these companies are being forced to close channels, lay off workers, merge and consolidate. At the same time advertising revenues are falling because of the wider recession.
Granada and Carlton want to create a single ITV company to minimise the impact of lost advertising revenues. Granada and Carlton’s ITVdigital (a ‘platform’ like BskyB, which provides multi-channel choice) is estimated to cost £1.1bn by the time it breaks even. BskyB by giving away free digital set top boxes has incurred £500m deficit this year and has forced ITV digital to give the same kind of value to consumers. The cost of setting up ITVdigital has meant bleeding all the companies other operations.
Recently Granada announced its plans to cut the salaries of leading actors in ‘Coronation Street’ by reducing their minimum guarantees. ITV companies are said to be drawing up secret plans to cut their regional output, part of their public service obligation, by as much as 50%. Other cutbacks have led to a 100 managerial redundancies at ITVdigital, the loss of production and technical staff which undoubtedly is going on, will be less noticed as those on short term contracts and freelancers are the first to go.
Burdened with debt and the painfully slow take-up of the new channels, business interests are putting even greater pressure on Government to change all those regulations and legal restrictions which prevent take-overs and stopped mergers. The Financial Times reported earlier that "the Government has accepted the view that media markets have changed significantly since the Communications legislation was drawn up, there was an argument for no regulation of ownership because of the proliferation of new services". In the unregulated market only the most commercial global corporations will survive by cutting costs and consolidating market share through eliminating rivals.
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire wants to expand buying a UK terrestrial television station or even ITVdigital or ITN, Granada and Carlton want to merge; both are prevented by existing cross media ownership rules.
The BBC is pushing the Government to get four new digital TV channels and five new digital radio channels approved. After fierce protest from Murdoch and the commercial sector over these new digital networks, the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has rejected BBC3, the new youth network, on the basis that other broadcasters provided "similar services". Under these conflicting pressures the Government has delayed the drafting of the Communications Bill until the end of this year. However seeking to pre-empt public and parliamentary scrutiny of the bill, it is pushing through a mini-bill to get the new regulator Ofcom set up before the debate on the rest of the legislation is had. The mini-bill exempts the BBC from Ofcom regulation, and thereby preserving the BBC board of governors. The commercial sector are fighting the BBC’s exemption which they hope will by overturned by the House of Lords in the bill’s second reading in mid October.
Multi-channel pay-to-view TV Exponents of multi-channel pay-to-view TV argue that the huge expansion of content and greater channel choice for the viewer, means regulation is no longer necessary. The consumer can sign up to watch the channels they want to, be it sport, movies, shopping, history, or news etc. However as the quantity of TV has expanded genuine choice has narrowed and quality suffered.
This uncontrolled expansion is damaging television in two ways. Firstly the thinning of audience viewing figures as the number of channels multiply has been mirrored by shrinking advertising revenue, (ITV in particular has been hit by a drop in ad revenue). Secondly as companies struggle to get the new channels on their feet, they have to subsidise them from their existing operations. Together these two factors have squeezed company finances leading to drastically cut production budgets; more popular programmes at peak time to try and grab audience share; switching to less expensive genres and a reliance on product off the library shelf rather than creating new quality programs.
However the most damaging long term effect of the rise of multi-channel pay to view TV though is that as more and more people pay for TV, it will one day make it politically impossible to justify the national TV license fee and when that ends so does the BBC and any hope for public service broadcasting. That’s assuming though that a large majority takes it up.
There is much evidence that actually people don’t want the multi-channel pay-to-view model of TV. BskyB has about 5 million users (many were sport fans taken hostage by BskyB's exclusive sports deals), ITVdigital has less than a million, and cable is still comparatively small. But as the quality of television slides it may take a choice of 150 channels to find something worth watching.
Whether the expansion of digital channels and pay-to-view television will succeed or fail is intimately bound up with the switch over of analogue transmission to digital transmission. The five main TV channels are currently transmitted through the airwaves using analogue signals.
Analogue signals use a much larger chunk of the electro-magnetic spectrum than digital signals. With the increase in traffic on the airwaves because of the new technology, both industry and the Government want to change over from analogue transmission of radio and television to digital transmission. But before that a sufficient number of the public must have dumped their analogue TV and radio sets and bought new digital set’s - the take up though again is very slow. (Government’s own target was 95%, anything less was thought too risky in provoking public hostility). The Government wants to switchover to digital so it can sell off more of the spectrum to private companies, (as it successfully did selling off spectrum in the mobile phone auction). The telecommunications industry want digital on air as quick as possible, as it will make it easier and cheaper to sell new digital TVs, radios, channels and services.
The slide towards the commercialisation of public service channels has led to some of the most populist programming recently coming from the two main public service broadcasting providers, the BBC and Channel 4.
Both channels have ‘tabloidised’ their current affairs slots. Dispatches (C4) has shrunk to a half-hour length and is preoccupied with stories of mass appeal like housing surveyor scams. Panorama is also concerned now with a purely populist content or treatment of its subject, but goes out on the Sunday night ‘graveyard’ slot. (Over a hundred BBC posts in its documentaries group are reported to be cut soon, as part of the BBC’s drive to make £1.1bn in savings). When the leading psbs resort to such scheduling it only drives the commercial channels to worse. This practise, besides ‘dumbing down’ TV, has also provoked outrage from the commercial channels, who deeply resent the way the BBC and Channel 4 have used license payers money to launch new channels, purchase broadcast rights to top sports events etc., all in competition with their own commercial services. This has fuelled the attack on public service broadcasting.
The dangers of market driven multi-channel TV are most graphic in the US. With the outbreak of war American commentators, anchorman, chat show hosts, news analysts, journalists and talk radio hosts have acted as the cheerleaders for the politicians demanding war and revenge. These ‘talking-heads’ combined with the rolling non-stop news format of CNN have created 24hr news with no factual analysis. Like the American press, US television is playing an entirely supportive role of Bush during this war, there are virtually no criticisms being made. Even Bush’s reneging on his promise of a $20 billion reconstruction package for New York has not even featured in the press or television. The media’s loss of its critical faculty has created an atmosphere where even the asking of genuine and probing questions is becoming a rarity.
British television is already afflicted with similar problems as demonstrated on a recent BBC ‘Question Time’, when members of the audience suggested that America had brought the tragedy on itself by pursuing ‘an anti-Arab pro-Israeli policy’, the BBC Director-General was force to make a public apology to the US ambassador. Only the further loss of independence of public service broadcasting can be expected from the communications legislation as it now stands.
In an increasingly de-regulated environment public service broadcasting channels have no choice. If they produce genuinely diverse programming it will mean less audience share. When the first principle of television is to increase audience share (and the advertising revenue that goes with it), this is not an option. So competitive popular programming which grabs a higher audience share rules the day, the ratings war goes on. It is only through the comprehensive and universal re-regulation across the whole of broadcasting - terrestrial, satellite and cable, that the decline of the five main public service broadcasting channels can be stopped. After hundreds of job cuts in production areas at BSkyB BECTU has started to make this argument, stating to the Government that BSkyB should be subject to the same targets for local production as BBC and ITV.
However to successfully reverse the decline of public service broadcasting, the regulatory bodies need not only to have their reach extended to all television providers, but also to be strengthened so they can impose more rigorous and demanding contracts on the licensed broadcast companies.
Broadcasting is one of the principal mediums by which our society perceives both itself and the outside world. To see ourselves and the world accurately it is vital that we preserve and strengthen television’s diversity and impartiality - and this can only be achieved by keeping it as a public service that is independent of Government and corporate interests. Public service broadcasting is as important as the other public services, like hospitals, schools, public transport and the arts it must be defended. Campaigning work needs to link together broadcasting with the other public services, establishing that link in the public’s mind. If the new legislation is to be anything other than a carve up amongst commercial interests, then the media unions, pressure groups, viewers associations, media students and professional associations need to make these connections for the public.
Broadcasting is a powerful tool that can be made to work for us in so many ways, educating, entertaining, and ensuring democratic accountability. Equally, such a tool used against us can have an untold damaging and corrupting effect. The advance of the private sector in broadcasting, like the creeping privatisation of schools and hospitals must be stopped.
Last modified: Sunday, July 18, 2004
Previous government policy stories
Consultation on Media Ownership Rules
5 December: CPBF Policy Seminar on Media Ownership
CYMRU RESERVATION:
HEALTH DEVOLVED BUT NOT CASUALTY!
CPBF COMMENTS ON THE COMMUNICATIONS WHITE PAPER
WHITE PAPER OR WHITE FLAG?
DTI DCMS Communications White Paper - A new future for communications
Corporate Media Trends in Europe
CPBF/Public Voice seminar on media ownership
JOWELL ANNOUNCES CONSULTATION PAPER ON MEDIA OWNERSHIP
12 November - Communications revolution: who benefits? Nottingham.
30 October - Communications revolution: who benefits? Bath.
30 October - Communications revolution: who benefits? Preston
Public service broadcasting on the brink
The Communications Revolution : Who Benefits? (CPBF Pamphlet)
Response to the Communications White Paper - February 2001
Additional Submission to the Communications White Paper Reform Team - November 2000
Comments for the Communications Reform White Paper - 22 June 2000
-
Notices
Events & Announcements
World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
UK launch of EU media campaign
DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
CPBF Annual General Meeting
DATELINE: 1/3/13
Make a note in your diary
Saturday 13 July 2013 from 10.00am
NUJ HQ, 308/312 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1.
Leveson, media ownership, CPBF future work.
DOWNLOAD FREEPRESS NOW
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Download Freepress in PDF, ePub or mobi format. Issue 194 now available.
MEDIA FOR ALL CONFERENCE
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Papers from the Media for All Conference
MEDIA MANIFESTO
DATELINE: 26/3/10
The media’s job is to inform and entertain us but we rely on them too to tell us what our rulers and representatives are up to. In the run-up to the Iraq war the government used spin and disinformation in the media to create panic and mislead people. The truth is coming out now, but we need stronger, more independent media to be able to scrutinise governments and make informed choices.
-
Previous stories
Government Policy
Consultation on Media Ownership Rules
5 December: CPBF Policy Seminar on Media Ownership
CYMRU RESERVATION:
HEALTH DEVOLVED BUT NOT CASUALTY!
CPBF COMMENTS ON THE COMMUNICATIONS WHITE PAPER
WHITE PAPER OR WHITE FLAG?
DTI DCMS Communications White Paper - A new future for communications
Corporate Media Trends in Europe
CPBF/Public Voice seminar on media ownership
JOWELL ANNOUNCES CONSULTATION PAPER ON MEDIA OWNERSHIP
12 November - Communications revolution: who benefits? Nottingham.
30 October - Communications revolution: who benefits? Bath.
30 October - Communications revolution: who benefits? Preston
Public service broadcasting on the brink
The Communications Revolution : Who Benefits? (CPBF Pamphlet)
Response to the Communications White Paper - February 2001
Additional Submission to the Communications White Paper Reform Team - November 2000
Comments for the Communications Reform White Paper - 22 June 2000
