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THE BBC’S FUTURE
141/Tony Lennon
Tony Lennon argues that appeasing its critics can go too far
It seems that one of the BBC's key tactics to win renewal of its Royal Charter in 2006 is to silence its enemies before they do too much damage when the debate really gets going.
Its own contribution to that debate, a 135-page tome called "Building Public Value", lays out several concessions to critics, many of which will be implemented long before the current Charter expires.For those who believe the Corporation is too London-centric there's a promise of producing a full 50% of BBC programmes in the regions. Independent producers, angry at the BBC's repeated failure to buy 25% of output from them, are told that the figure is now to be treated as a minimum, not just a target.
Other commercial rivals are reassured that the BBC will in future be "as small as its mission allows" - a hint that fewer toes are going to be trodden on elsewhere in the media industry - and new DG Mark Thompson has already embarked on a sweeping review which could result in outsourcing and privatisation way beyond the current controversial plan to sell the Corporation's technology subsidiary.
If your enemies are as plentiful, and powerful, as the BBC's, it may be wise to buy them off where possible, but there's always a danger of the appeasement game going too far.
After all, two main opposition camps have more or less fallen silent already - the radicals who challenge the BBC's right to exist acknowledge they are unlikely to overcome the reigning political consensus, while advocates of alternative funding sources who were previously calling for the licence fee to be scrapped, now seem content to argue for "top-slicing", a dangerous plan by which part of it would be withheld and distributed among other broadcasters.
These critics were silenced by force of argument, not by appeasement. The argument for retaining a public-service programme maker is compelling to anyone who considers what the digital, multi-channel, future would be like without one. Opponents of the licence fee simply ran out of convincing alternatives - advertising on the BBC would be bad for ITV, subscriptions would be bad for universality by creating "haves" and "have-nots", and direct government funding would be bad for editorial independence, if events leading up to Hutton are any guide.
So without any major debate it looks like the answer to the funding question is...the licence fee, albeit tweaked to be "affordable to the less well-off", as the BBC put it in a further, well-advised, concession to backbench MPs who rightly protest about single mothers being locked up for non-payment.
However, the BBC itself recognises that if the poll tax of the airwaves is to continue, it needs to be economically justified, and it proposes that a transparent "public value test" should be applied to all of its services.
In this Micawber-style test, the cost of providing a particular service would be weighed against the perceived value it gave to individual viewers and citizens at large, after which one presumes that happiness or misery would follow, depending on how the numbers compared.
Whether this is accepted as sound econometrics, or a self-serving exercise in smoke and mirrors, remains to be seen, but it is significant that within days of laying out this public value stall, the BBC ignored the entire concept when dealing with a critical report about its on-line service.
Philip Graf, previously CEO of major publisher Trinity Mirror Group, had been asked to investigate the BBC's website, one of the world's most heavily-used with almost 400m page impressions a week, after intense lobbying from commercial operators who wanted bbc.co.uk to remove its public service tanks from their private sector lawns.
Despite a cacophony of complaints that the BBC was stealing profitable web traffic from rivals, Graf concluded that the case could not be proven one way or another, but questioned whether all the BBC's web pages fulfilled a public service purpose. En passant, for purposes of illustration, he mentioned five specific web sites, including a games portal and a fantasy football site, which he suggested were of dubious public benefit.
Within minutes of Graf's report being published, the BBC issued a press release announcing that all five sites would be closed without ceremony, and apparently, without any "public value test" being performed.
This hasty decision, which will undoubtedly encourage commercial rivals in other spheres to continue beating the BBC back from their territory - missed the whole point of "public goods", the economists' definition of products or services that are useful to society, cost the same whether consumed by one citizen or ten million, but would not be provided by a pure market system.
Most of the BBC's offerings on the web match this description perfectly - particularly since web content, having been authored once, is usually left hanging in cyberspace for people to use freely as long as they want.
In an outfit as big as the BBC, a lot of material for the world wide web is created on the back of other activities at marginal cost - for example parts of scripts that didn't make it to air, or lists of contacts that time prevented being included in programmes. One of the sites closed down, an area for sports surfboarders, was partly based on information like accurate weather forecasts which were freely available as a community service on other sites run by BBC local radio stations. Another banned site, the games portal with over 100,000 hits a day, consisted primarily of links, some of which drove web users to other, more "worthy", BBC content - a standard marketing tactic on the internet.
So the panic shut-down was an example of cheap, publicly-produced, content being taken off the internet, effectively on the grounds that a commercial publisher somewhere would, firstly, step in with an alternative, and secondly, earn money from it. A rather specious argument when you consider that the surfing site attracted an average of barely 200 page hits a day.
This has happened before - in the early days of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), the BBC broke new ground by offering a news feed direct to mobile telephones. It wasn't long before commercial pressure closed it down - there was money to be made and the BBC should clear off.
Yet the WAP news feed consisted of a single unattended PC which sucked existing stories off a server hosting the teletext service CEEFAX, and automatically posted them in spare space on one of the BBC's own web servers - a valuable public service running at almost zero cost.
BBC news is now back on mobiles after a three-year absence, but the argument that closed it seems to have returned with a vengeance in the Graf report. Content created for nothing by the BBC and distributed for free, is less desirable than the same information authored expensively by a commercial operator and sold for a price. Goodbye Radio Cornwall's surfing site.
Apply this logic to more traditional services run by the BBC and you end up making programmes only when the market has failed - public broadcasting looking over its shoulder instead of forwards.
In the run-up to Charter renewal the BBC is probably right to deal with the vested interests of its commercial opponents, but needs to understand that it won't silence any enemies by rolling over in front of them.
Last modified: Sunday, August 8, 2004
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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.
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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.
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Previous stories
Government Policy
Fox censured by Ofcom
ITV Franchise Fees Review
BBC Charter Renewal Debate - Winning a voice for licence fee payers
The Graf report on BBC Online
BBC CHARTER REVIEW (July 2004)
More from Ofcom
New Ofcom documents
CPBF Response to Ofcom Review of Public Service Broadcasting, Phase 1 – Is Television Special?
Defending Public Service Broadcasting
The danger of top-slicing
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
