Time to scrap the licence fee
Public purposes: Re-evaluation and reform
Several attempts have been made to define the 'public
purposes' of the BBC, beginning with Lord Reith's historic formula, but what is
necessary now is not a new statement of purposes or values amplifying or
clarifying that formulation, but an objective re-evaluation of what should
continue to be produced and broadcast by the public sector broadcaster. A brief
look at the historic formula reveals how deep that re-evaluation needs to be.
To entertain:
The provision of entertainment for its own sake is a legacy
of monopoly, but what kind of a country needs a quango to entertain it? The BBC
Charter 6(4) states that “The BBC should bring people together for shared
experiences and help contribute to the social cohesion and wellbeing of the
United Kingdom.” A modern turn of phrase, perhaps, but the notion of
strengthening national identity through enjoyment of publicly-provided
amusements belongs entirely to the pre-War era in which the Corporation was
founded. In any case, the dignity of our
country is somewhat impugned by the suggestion that our social cohesion and
wellbeing are affected by the trivialities of soap opera cliffhangers and
celebrity contests. National unity is the result of celebrating the local
heritage of each of the various nations and regions of the United Kingdom as
elements of a common patrimony.
The BBC Charter demands excellence across the range of its
services and talks about breadth of provision:
6(3) To show the most creative, highest quality and
distinctive output and services: the BBC should provide high-quality output in
many different genres and across a range of services and platforms which sets
the standard in the United Kingdom and internationally. Its services should be
distinctive from those provided elsewhere and should take creative risks, even
if not all succeed, in order to develop fresh approaches and innovative
content.
Creativity is not the child of bureaucracy, and it does not
flourish in the public sector; furthermore, variety is the fruit of plurality
of provision rather than a monolithic corporation's attempts to provide a genre
mix or grow new markets. It must, however, be acknowledged that, as with an
annual income of some £3.7bn from the licence fee (minus somewhat less than
£80m for S4C) the BBC is by far the best funded British broadcaster, it should
have the highest production quality from a technical standpoint. In
entertainment, and in news journalism, the BBC sets the standard by narrowing
the field. Modern technology allows for the creation of a wide variety of
broadcast material, and for British audiences to have access to material
created overseas, but broadcasting to television sets and radios remains highly
circumscribed. Expectations as to what should be broadcast, and who should be
involved in the process, are often derived from BBC norms rather than the
public interest, just as BBC investment steers creative economies to its own
requirements rather than those of the people at large.
Due to the breadth of provision in visual
broadcasting/television there can be little justification for the public sector
broadcaster's continuing to provide television drama or light entertainment.
Radio, however, appears to require regulatory reform to encourage an expansion
in the market before the provision of made for broadcast audio entertainment
can be dropped. The option of encouraging production companies that currently
supply the BBC with entertainment and non-journalistic factual programming to
form a consortium or consortia to replace the existing broadcasting platform
should be explored. Plurality, and with it diversity, variety and creativity,
can only be enhanced by first a reduction and then a replacement of BBC
services.
To inform:
The BBC Charter requires its news broadcasting to demonstrate
“the highest editorial standards” of accuracy and impartiality: “To provide
impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the
world around them: the BBC should provide duly accurate and impartial news,
current affairs and factual programming to build people's understanding of all
parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world. It should offer a range and
depth of analysis and content not widely available from other United Kingdom
news providers, using the highest calibre presenters and journalists, and
championing freedom of expression, so that all audiences can engage fully with
major local, regional, national, United Kingdom and global issues and participate
in the democratic process, at all levels, as active and informed citizens”
6(1). This insults other news providers, and threatens to poach their staff,
using the BBC's budget and pay/pension structures to lure 'the highest calibre'
people away from their employers.
The quality of BBC news broadcasting is widely recognised and
it is generally believed to be impartial on many issues, although those who
examine it more carefully find biases towards social liberalism at home and
abroad, and domestic policies favouring maintenance of large-scale public
sector institutions. There is also a significant level of concern regarding
cross-departmental collaborations enabling the Corporation to set an agenda for
public debate and to shape social attitudes; close links between reporting,
commentary and discussion do nothing to alleviate those concerns. Its dominant position allows the BBC to
determine the boundaries of public discussion; so its 'championing' of freedom
of expression amounts, in effect, to its judging which forms of expression
should have freedom. Where a decision is made to show impartiality it is
demonstrated by inviting spokespeople to make contributions on behalf of
particular positions on the subject in question, but norm-setting means that
the entire context of the discussion will presuppose that one position is usual
and other viewpoints are deviant. This is most noticeable with respect to life
issues and traditional morality.
It is the BBC's status as a news broadcaster that is the
basis of its claim to independence from H.M. Government, and enables it to
avoid support for Government policy. There is, however, no reason why a public
sector broadcaster that did not produce news programming should become more
politicised than the current service, especially if neither drama nor
factual/documentary programming were made in-house, nor what politicisation
would entail in that context. In any case, it is entirely natural and normal
that the policies pursued by the public sector should be those promoted by the
elected Government.
We note that the FCO values the provision of an impartial
news service as part of our country's engagement with other nations, but
listeners and viewers abroad often regard the news provided by the BBC World
Service as representing the opinions of the British Government because of the
BBC's position in the public sector. Many people overseas are unfamiliar with
the concept of a State broadcaster with editorial independence, and many other
people both at home and abroad fail to see the point of such a broadcaster.
It is worth noting that the BBC Charter states “Its
international services should put the United Kingdom in a world context, aiding
understanding of the United Kingdom as a whole, including its nations and
regions where appropriate” in the same subsection 6 (5) as that in which
broadcasting news to international audiences is mandated. This strongly
suggests that international news broadcasting as well as general or broadly
educational programming should give due weight to all the home nations and
their regions in a way which it does not at present. There might even be said
to be an implicit call for the use of the indigenous minority languages in news
and other international broadcasting at least in broadcasts to appropriate
regions. It would be natural that news broadcasts in the minority languages
would focus on the relevant places and on cultural issues relating to use of
the language in question. The Council of Europe has commented adversely on the
BBC's failure to give adequate broadcasting time to the Cornish language, which
it limits to a single weekly news broadcast. There is also a recommendation
from the Welsh Assembly that the Welsh language should be promoted across
Britain as having been the historic tongue of large areas of England and
lowland Scotland; the BBC's omission of any of the IMLs from its national
digital platform does nothing to advance that. Failure to reflect the entirety
of the United Kingdom even in national, let alone international, broadcasts
indicates structural weaknesses within the BBC at both editorial and management
levels. That half its employees are based in London suggests something of the
nature and scale of those weaknesses.
Within the provisions of the current Charter it would be possible to
address the problem by making more specific demands of the BBC through addenda
to the Framework Agreement. In the future a similar approach can be used to
ensure that geographical balance is delivered when news broadcasts are
commissioned for international programming.
The BBC is not only crowding out commercial competition in an
unjustifiable manner, but shapes the media landscape and culture as a whole in
ways that reduce audience choice and narrow possibilities. The expansion of the
BBC leads to reductions elsewhere. The most recent expansion, described as
forming partnerships with regional media, amounts to acting as a press agency
for local news; this will inevitably lead to staff reductions in local
newspapers and the news websites related to them (a sector already facing
considerable pressure).The BBC's employing reporters under the auspices of
local publications and broadcasters will achieve little to improve the
situation for regional media outlets; it can only compromise their independence,
and provide a framework under which the BBC may take their place swiftly should
they fail. We do not have recent figures
giving the balance between direct and graduate entrants into journalism in the
BBC's regional offices, but local newspapers have traditionally provided
opportunities for direct entry into the profession consonant with H.M.
Government's policy of promoting apprenticeships. It is also inevitable that,
as it proceeds, this partnership will result in a close relationship with
Trinity Mirror and other regional news publishers. It is unclear how far the
regional media partnership will include direct cooperation with the new local
television stations; in any case they will certainly be affected by the reduced
availability of news from other sources.
We recommend the privatisation of BBC News. Whether or not
this recommendation is adopted, it should be entirely separated from the rest
of the Corporation at the earliest opportunity and should have separate
management structures. Retention of the news service within the public sector
has led to inefficiency and perceptions of a lack of impartiality, it cannot be
regarded as necessary in the context of today's media landscape, and it reduces
the ability of the public sector in broadcasting to serve public purposes as
defined by the democratic process.
To educate:
Education in a broad sense provides justification for public
sector broadcasting even under today's circumstances. There are three aspects
to the educative function of public sector broadcasting, of which the BBC
Charter addresses only the first: education of the audience, education of
performers, and education of those involved in technical and creative aspects
of programme-making.
Technical education can be provided via an academic route, or
else in any production company through an apprenticeship system. The system
could easily be formalised to allow for the award of accredited qualifications.
We would envisage a significant growth in the number of companies if the public
sector is radically reduced in scope, and that would lead to an increase in
opportunities for creative experience. Academic approaches to creative
education would become more meaningful with increased opportunities for
students to broadcast even while their studies are still in progress. The BBC
aspires to employ 'more than 400' apprentices 'by 2018' out of a total
workforce of nearly 20,000 but does not specify their distribution across the
Corporation.
Education and professional development of performers constitutes
the most important aspect of the work currently performed by the BBC, and
provides something of a justification for continuing to maintain a public
sector broadcaster. This work is principally carried out in the field of audio
(radio) rather than visual (TV) broadcasting, where ample opportunities exist
in the commercial sector for talent shows and competitions of various kinds.
The BBC provides work and some professional development for actors, but is not
a significant contributor to their education as such. It provides rather more
training and professional development for its journalists through its academy,
but hires very many of them from other news providers or as graduates rather
than as direct entrants to the profession. However, the Corporation should
certainly be congratulated for its work across a wide variety of music genres,
identifying and fostering new talent through several competitions and award
schemes as well as through BBC Introducing; providing work and professional
development for orchestral musicians; and giving élite mentoring opportunities
through the New Generation Artists scheme. All of this work could continue
under the auspices of the Arts Council.
Education of audiences may be divided between the general
education of broadcasting documentary and factual programmes, and the specific
education of programmes for schools and the Open University. There is no reason
to suppose that fewer factual or documentary programmes would be made if they
were not made by the BBC. Commercial broadcasters and websites make, commision
and transmit more factual programmes, drama and light entertainment than the
BBC. It is clearly necessary that programmes are made in support of specific
academic curricula, but the value of the programmes depends upon their being
tailor-made to the requirements of the course; they should, therefore, be
commissioned by the examining bodies and educational institutions involved. If
they are to appear on television or radio it is likely that a public sector
broadcaster would need to carry them.
There is, however, no reason why such programmes should
appear in those media rather than exclusively on the internet, nor is there any
reason why they should not be commissioned by course providers or examining
boards and made available on a commercial basis. It must be noted that the
Massive On-line Open Course (MOOC) model has proven popular in adult education
and can easily be adapted for tutoring children.
By Prayer Crusader St Philip Howard
Note: 3.5 Million Brits have ditched the licence fee in favour of streaming sides like Netflix and Amazon Prime https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/5167904/licence-fee-amazon-prime-netflix-bbc/
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