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The danger of top-slicing
140/Tim Gopsill
The media industry certainly generates its share of jargon and the current debate over the uncertain future of public service broadcasting (PSB) has already thrown up a couple of new concepts. One of them, “top-slicing”, would be the favoured outcome of Ofcom’s current review of PSB for many commercial broadcasters. It’s what they’re lobbying for behind the scenes.Don’t believe scaremongers who tell you that the licence fee, the source of funding for the BBC, is going to be scrapped in the review that is leading to the renewal of the BBC’s Charter by Parliament in 2006. That would be politically impossible, at least this time round, and in any case, those who want to deregulate the industry for the benefit of the commercial companies have got a much better idea: to divert some of the cash in their own direction.
Top-slicing is the idea that a share of the licence fee should be paid to ITV to provide what it calls “public service” programming - news and current affairs, culture, religion, arts and so on. The reasoning is in another jargon phrase, “market failure” -- which might be thought a strange one for such runaway free-marketeers as ITV companies to be pushing around, but they are currently very taken with it.
“Market failure” means that the market cannot produce such programmes. In other words, there’s no money to be made from them because advertisers believe that viewers don’t particularly want to watch them. If, therefore, ITV is to be required to broadcast them, it will have to be paid to do so. And since the purpose of the licence fee is to pay for high-quality “public service” TV and radio, that’s where the money should come from. QED.
It seems very plausible, but, however much the argument might appeal to the regulators as well as the regulated, it is ultimately self—defeating.
For one thing, these advocates of the free market are admitting, in affect, that it can only produce rubbish. OK, they are not philosophers, but it is not even true. For 50 years it the present dual set-up has produced a very high standard of programming.
It’s true that ITV has been in a terrible mess but that’s nothing to do with the burden of producing good TV. It’s down to the greed, complacency and incompetence of its managers, who have taken the “licence to print money” - 1960s jargon - too literally and pocketed short-term profits at the expense of properly developing their output to meet the new environment. The BBC, unfettered by the market, has done it much better.
The real effect of top-slicing will be even more than to deprive the BBC of funding and feed the bloated fat cats of ITV. It will be to define “public service broadcasting” as something exceptional from the mainstream run of broadcasting, which viewers don’t want but regulators are foisting on them.
It’s not really anything to do with viewers. The only people who matter to commercial TV are advertisers, and they want “feel-good” programmes that make people rush out and buy.
But the point about PSB is that it covers all kinds of programming. No-one wants 24 hours a day of Panorama. It’s about standards and quality, in comedy, entertainment, drama, soaps and everything else on our screens. Commercial broadcasters want to cut costs and lower standards, and shunting PSB into a publicly funded siding would be a dream come true.
Top-slicing: The Irish experience
Top-slicing has not come out of the blue. It is being tried in the Republic of Ireland, where its roots in the early 1990s were not in a policy decision but the actions of a bent politician. The one-time Minister for Communications, Ray Burke, was found by an investigating tribunal to have taken a bung from Century Radio, a national commercial station, to rig the market in its favour.
The Irish public broadcaster, RTE, is dual-funded. There is a licence fee, but RTE also takes advertising. Ray Burke tried but failed to arrange for licence fee money to go to Century and instead put through legislation to cap RTE’s advertising revenue. The legislation also compelled RTE to allocate a rising proportion of the licence fee to private production companies.
But the licence fee itself was held down for 10 years, putting RTE under severe pressure. Last year it was finally allowed a rise - with the stipulation that 5 per cent will be allocated to commercial broadcasters for specific programming. (This has not yet been implemented.) The categories do not include news and current affairs - nor religion. Rather they are cultural, covering the Irish language, heritage and art.
These messy arrangements are regarded by journalists in Ireland as a disaster because of the effects on RTE, which has effectively been starved of funding for political reasons. The exact circumstances may not pertain in the UK, but the warning should be heard.
Last modified: Sunday, June 20, 2004
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Previous stories
Government Policy
Campbell’s alter ego
Without Comment
Privatising spin
Submission to the DCMS on the Review of the BBC’s Royal Charter.
Backing the BBC
Where is liberalisation taking the British media?
DON’T BE COWED: The BBC after Hutton
GCHQ whistleblower gagged.
A Spin Free Regime for Blair?
The end of public service information
Hutton, Kelly and the BBC
What public policies are needed in the face of the marketisation of the audio visual sector?
Ignored at Our Peril
Free Press Editorial - Asset Stripping ITV
Labour & Television Policy
Spin In Retreat
Storms Ahead for the BBC
Look Back In Anger: The Carlton Granada merger
It’s still bad news
COMING SOON
Dear Editor.... CPBF writes to the Guardian
Television impartiality
Communications Bill - Peers line up for a show-down
Submission to the Government Communications Review Group by Nicholas Jones
Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom: submission to Government Communications Review Group.
The VLV 20th spring conference: 'The Communications Bill: Content or Commerce - which matters most?'
TUC Briefing on Comms Bill
Public Voice briefings on the Comms Bill
The Re-Regulation of Broadcasting, or The Mill Owners' Triumph
Communications Bill receives third reading.
