ENGLISH IS A WELSH LANGUAGE Television’s crisis in Wales Edited by Geraint Talfan Davies Published in Wales by the Institute of Welsh Affairs. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means without the prior permission of the publishers. © Institute of Welsh Affairs, 2009 ISBN: 978 1 904773 42 9 English is a Welsh language Television’s crisis in Wales Edited by Geraint Talfan Davies The Institute of Welsh Affairs exists to promote quality research and informed debate affecting the cultural, social, political and economic well-being of Wales. IWA is an independent organisation owing no allegiance to any political or economic interest group. Our only interest is in seeing Wales flourish as a country in which to work and live. We are funded by a range of organisations and individuals. For more information about the Institute, its publications, and how to join, either as an individual or corporate supporter, contact: IWA - Institute of Welsh Affairs 4 Cathedral Road Cardiff CF11 9LJ tel 029 2066 0820 fax 029 2023 3741 email [email protected] web www.iwa.org.uk Contents 1 Preface 4 1/ English is a Welsh language, Geraint Talfan Davies 22 2/ Inventing Wales, Patrick Hannan 30 3/ The long goodbye, Kevin Williams 36 4/ Normal service, Dai Smith 44 5/ Small screen, big screen, Peter Edwards 50 6/ The drama of belonging, Catrin Clarke 54 7/ Convergent realities, John Geraint 62 8/ Standing up among the cogwheels, Colin Thomas 68 9/ Once upon a time, Trevor Fishlock 72 10/ The mirror of the arts, Jon Gower 80 11/ More than light relief, Ronw Protheroe 84 12/ Sporting nation, Peter Stead 92 13/ Digging deeper, David Williams 98 14/ Denying tomorrow’s talent, Chris Morris 104 15/ A viewer writes, Mario Basini 112 16/ Stop, look and listen, Myfanwy Alexander 118 17/ Who do we think we are?, Clare Hudson 124 Notes 127 Contributors Preface This book is part elegy for past glories, as ITV’s regional broadcasting reaches for its final breath; part cri de coeur as a nation’s visibility to itself is allowed to wither; and part affirmation that this problem can be solved and must be solved. It is based on the knowledge that imaginative solutions are available, and the conviction that television’s mirror to the Welsh nation – reflecting the language of the majority - must not be further clouded, let alone discarded. In the chapters that follow, more than a dozen people – most of them direct contributors to that tradition - describe not only the richness of the programming that has been so much part of the television broadcasting tradition in Wales, but also how much more of Welsh life and culture could have been explored had the space, money and autonomy been available. The Institute of Welsh Affairs decided to embark on this project in the wake of Ofcom’s final report on its second review of public service broadcasting, published in January 2009 only a week before Lord Carter’s interim report on Digital Britain. It became clear in those two documents that the authors shared a similar view of the future of programming for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: namely, that the case for preserving an alternative news service to the BBC had been made, but that the case for other programming for these nations, while important, was altogether less pressing - a matter to be decided ‘in the light of competing priorities’. 1 Our hope is that this collection of diverse personal statements will be a corrective to the notion that news programming is the only necessary, or even the truest reflection of our society, given the fundamental changes in the Welsh polity that have come about in the last decade. It will, we hope, also be a corrective to the view that what we have at present is an equitable broadcast dispensation for both the Welsh-speaking and non-Welsh-speaking parts of the population: that the one deserves total protection, but that the other must take its chances in a harsher economic climate. This imbalance is an issue on which UK regulators have been silent, although it has to be said that it has also been too little debated within Wales itself. Patrick Hannan sets the devolutionary political context for the debate, while Kevin Williams traces the route to the current crisis and identifies the risks to a fragile ecology. Dai Smith and Clare Hudson write from the perspective of past and present commissioners of programmes at BBC Wales – the latter having also had executive responsibility at HTV Wales. Peter Edwards and Catrin Clarke lament the lack of indigenous Welsh drama, while John Geraint underlines the role of factual programmes in shaping a society’s view of itself, as well as addressing the issue of funding mechanisms. Colin Thomas traces a rich tradition of history programming, and Chris Morris, a talented documentary producer, now teaching at Newport University, pinpoints the role of general programming for Wales in developing younger talents, a point also made by Ronw Protheroe in relation to entertainment. Myfanwy Alexander, a writer of comedy, emphasises changes in the Welsh audience and Jon Gower puts the case for embattled arts programming. Peter Stead places sport and performance at the heart of distinct Welsh popular culture and Trevor Fishlock stresses the importance of storytelling in a nation that has gloried in a rich oral tradition. David Williams carries a torch for well-resourced current affairs journalism, while writer and print journalist, Mario Basini, gives a viewer’s perspective. In my own contribution I have tried to crystallise the arguments at the heart of this debate. This volume has been put together in great haste in order to influence decisions that may well be taken by government ministers in Westminster this summer. I am immensely grateful to all the contributors for agreeing to deliver such thoughtful chapters to such an unusually tight deadline. Thanks are also due to the IWA’s research officer, Nick Morris - who was my co-author of the IWA’s audit of 2 Welsh media prepared last year at the behest of the Welsh Assembly Government’s Heritage Minister – and particularly to my colleagues, Huw Jones, Julie Barton and Professor Kevin Morgan, on the Assembly Government’s Broadcasting Advisory Group. The group’s report is in the public domain, but I must stress that my own contribution to this book represents an individual rather than a group view. Geraint Talfan Davies March 2009 3 1/ English is a Welsh language Geraint Talfan Davies In the golden years of ITV’s monopoly regional broadcasting was its crucial distinguishing feature but, despite the rhetoric, not its primary commercial driver. The juicy financial fruits of the monopoly masked the intrinsic tension between public service and the commercial imperative. For ten of the fifteen companies – the smaller ones - what they made was not what they sold. They made programmes, they sold advertising. Regional broadcasting was little commented upon by the commentariat, either within the trade press or further field, even though the ITV companies consumed large quantities of food and wine nursing their regional groups of MPs and bored journalists. This would usually come to a head during the passage of successive broadcasting bills, as well-briefed peers and MPs rose to extol the virtues of their home patch and its television company, in the process signing up to a coalition of support for the company in the next franchise beauty contest run by the Independent Broadcasting Authority. This began to unravel in the late 1980s, as advertising took its first downward turn for a decade and as Margaret Thatcher resolved to reform what she called ‘the last bastion of restrictive practice’. By this time the first siren voices calling for consolidation of the ITV network into fewer companies had begun to be heard, giving the Thatcher government, perhaps inadvertently, the green light to swing the pendulum decisively away from public service towards the commercial 4 imperative by auctioning the ITV franchises. The minister at the time, David Mellor, invented a fig leaf called the ‘quality threshold’ but the genie was out of the bottle, public service was henceforth to be on the back foot. The resulting auction payments – HTV had to pay £21million annually for its licence – comprised the largest tax on knowledge since the newspaper taxes of the nineteenth century. Thatcher had, at a stroke, weakened ITV at the very moment that it needed all its strength to face competition from Sky and the birth of multi-channel television. Regional broadcasting was to be the biggest casualty. In Wales although the programming made specifically for the Welsh audience by HTV rose to its all-time peak of twelve hours per week by the late 1990s, costs were driven down. While much of this was a necessary efficiency gain that took advantage of new technologies, there is little doubt that it also placed a severe curb on programme ambition. There was no room for millennial euphoria. Soon some budgets were reduced to a level at which several independent companies decided that commissions were not worth the candle. In one unintentionally poignant series two presenters introduced archive clips from programmes the company could no longer afford to make. More and more programming became extensions of newsroom operations. Craft skills atrophied. Soon, the hours of output also began to shrink inexorably, although, miraculously, those programmes that were above the breadline and retained a peak-time slot still won large audiences, proving that demand had never been the issue.