There is a far better way of delivering PSB, says Martin Le Jeune
April 24th 2008
Martin Le Jeune appeared in Broadcast Magazine - Published 23 April 2008
Recently I received a kind invitation from the BBC to attend a lecture on public service broadcasting to be given by Sir David Attenborough. As I accepted - the man’s a genius after all - I reflected that the corporation must be seriously concerned to deploy its heaviest artillery at this stage of the debate about the future of PSB.
What worries the Beeb is the proposal, now being actively canvassed by some (including, to its shame, the Conservative party) that the licence fee should be top-sliced and offered to organisations which want to make public service programmes.
I agree whole-heartedly with the BBC. This is a terrible idea. However, my reasons for doing so have little in common with the apparatchiks of White City.
The corporation dislikes top-slicing for the perfectly sound reason that it might reduce its income. But it can’t say so. It prefers, as always, to clamber on the nearest piece of moral high ground and argue that top-slicing would destroy the precious accountability between licence-fee payer and BBC.
There’s not much in this. Accountability is a fairly evanescent concept when applied to the relationship between an organisation which levies a compulsory tax and those who pay it, whether willingly or not.
No, the real argument against top-slicing is that it might offer a fresh lease of life to an interventionist PSB system and a licence fee when we need them less and less. About one-third of households already pay up while consuming less than five hours of corporation programming each week. As audiences fragment, consumption of state-supported television channels will continue to decline. A middle-class minority who watch them will have their pleasure paid for by their poorer compatriots who get little value. That is inequitable.
Ofcom’s partiality to top-slicing appears to be based on the idea that plurality in public service content is essential “to keep the BBC honest”. Fine. But in fact there is bags more plurality in the form of public service content on non-PSB broadcasters (14,000 hours per month according to the multichannel TV trade body) and via the internet than ever before.
Then Ofcom argues that UK original production is central to PSB and the multichannel lot don’t deliver it. The case for intervention is made.
But this won’t do either. Take a look at the original PSB characteristics. They focus - rightly - on quality. But in the new consultation the emphasis on UK origination has been deliberately increased. So manic has Ofcom become in its attempts to make UK origination central to the debate that it even claims educating viewers about the world requires a lot of programmes made over here. By Brits. Isn’t this a bit lacking in logic?
I’d rather pass over in silence the deliberate attempt by Ofcom to understate the value of multichannel UK origination by the crude device of excluding sport. That’s simply shameful.
The final bit of analytical trickery is implicitly to assume that all UK PSB content provided by the terrestrials outside the BBC was the result of regulation. Without Ofcom no Corrie or national news? Hardly.
There is a better way. Keep the BBC focused on delivering PSB: it does it very well. It should get smaller over time - a steady reduction in the licence fee would be a good financial discipline - as commercial players provide more public service-style content. And they will. According to Ofcom’s own research, there is a huge appetite out there for that kind of material. So step back and let them provide it.