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MINUTES OF AUDIENCE COUNCIL MEETING Held on Friday 13 November 2015, BBC Broadcasting House, .

Present: Elan Closs Stephens (Chair) Trust Member for Wales Carol Adams Joni Ayn Alexander Louise Casella Rhian Connick Owen Derbyshire Rhys Davies Andrew Jones Catrin Lewis Ceri Stradling

In attendance from the Trust Unit: Karl Davies Chief Adviser Wales Tristan Pedelty Head of Policy Governance Coordinator and Secretary to Siôn Brynach BBC Audience Council Wales Janet Davies Departmental Assistant Jennifer Spence Work Experience Placement

From the BBC Wales Executive (agenda items 82-85): Rhodri Talfan Davies Director, Wales (items 82-84) Adrian Davies Head of Content, English Siân Gwynedd Head of Content, Welsh Head of News and Current Affairs Mark O’Callaghan (items 82-84) Rhys Evans Head of Strategy and Digital (items 82-84) Neil Land Chief Adviser & Business Manager, BBC Sport (for item 85)

78 APOLOGIES, ANNOUNCEMENTS AND DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

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78.1 Apologies were received from Ryan Davies and Ian Stevens. There were no declarations of interest.

79 APPROVE MINUTES OF 16 OCTOBER 2015 ACW MEETING AND ANY MATTERS ARISING

79.1 The minutes were agreed as a true and accurate record of the meeting and members were updated on the action points in those minutes.

80 DISCUSSION ON THE BBC TRUST SERVICE REVIEW OF NATIONS RADIO, TV AND NEWS SERVICES.

80.1 Those members of the Council who had assisted with hosting the audience event in Aberystwyth the previous Monday evening updated other members on some of the key points that had arisen during the discussion. The two key points raised had been the paucity of attention to Wales in BBC Network News output and the lack of comparative pieces on policy positions in the UK’s different nations. The lack of portrayal of Wales on Network commissioned drama had also been raised, which was at odds with the excellent S4C/BBC Cymru Wales commissioned Y Gwyll/Hinterland, which participants felt had put Ceredigion on the map

80.2 In discussing the BBC’s national radio stations, it had become apparent that awareness of BBC Radio Wales as the national English language radio station for Wales was low, and the Council asked whether this inadequacy was one of the outcomes of the BBC’s continuous cost saving of recent years. Even those who were aware of the station felt on occasion that it fell between two stools in trying to be both a national station, but also encouraging a local feel. Some fans of the local commercial radio station, Radio Ceredigion, identified the station’s adverts for local businesses as being the key attraction of the station, alongside that station’s music output.

80.3 The Council also reflected on audience views about whether BBC Radio Wales had too many phone-ins in its output, with people saying that the same voices heard often in these programmes – and that they considered that those voices were ill-informed ones on the whole.

80.4 The Council resolved that it should discuss its draft submission to the current Service Review at its December meeting, and invite the Editors of Radio Cymru and Radio Wales to join members at that meeting for a discussion on the key challenges facing both radio stations.

81 DISCUSSION ON BBC CHARTER RENEWAL

81.1 Tristan Pedelty, BBC Trust Head of Policy, updated members on the BBC Charter renewal process thus far and informed them that the UK Government consultation on its BBC Charter Renewal Green Paper had attracted 180,000 responses. The Trust had undertaken its own consultation and the key insight from that research had been that audiences

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wanted the BBC to stay broadly the same – to continue informing, educating and entertaining audiences.

81.2 The remaining months of 2015 would be a period for continuing to gather the views of audiences while the spring of 2016 would see the focus move to specific proposals.

81.3 The Council expressed the view that governance and regulation were key issues in the Charter Review process and that it was vital that any future structure ensured the views and voices of audiences were heard, since it was the qualitative audience outreach activity of the Audience Councils that often informed the quantitative research work commissioned by the BBC Trust. It was also vital that each of the UK’s 4 nations was properly represented in any future governance structure.

81.4 The Council said that it appeared that there were four key issues that had begun to emerge – news, and the extent to which the BBC’s news services reflected local, national, UK-wide and international news; portrayal of the UK as a whole in commissioned content; indigenous minority language provision; and governance and regulation. While the remarkably strong response to the DCMS consultation demonstrated the importance of the BBC to the population, it was important to remind audiences that discussions remained on-going and that people should continue to contribute to the debate on the future of the BBC.

81.5 The Council was informed that the independent Clementi Review of the BBC’s Governance had been commissioned by the DCMS and was scheduled to report in February 2016. The Council said that it was important for the diversity of Audience Council membership to be retained, so as to reflect the diversity of audiences, while also acknowledging that the weakness of Audience Councils in the current model was the absence of direct ‘levers’ for the Council to influence change arising from audience outreach activity. It said that it would be good therefore if there could be a strengthening of governance arrangements within each of the four nations in the next Charter period.

82 NATIONAL TRUSTEE’S REPORT

82.1 The BBC National Trustee for Wales informed Council members that the previous month had been exceptionally busy and made reference to the Trust’s Charter Review Seminar in Wales on 20 October and the IWA Media Summit on 11 November. Her appearance alongside the BBC Chairman before the National Assembly’s Communities, Equalities and Local Government Committee on 12 November had been a useful occasion to answer questions and to discuss Charter Renewal with elected members. The portrayal of Wales on Network Drama and Comedy and English language programmes for audiences in Wales featured as major issues on all three occasions.

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82.2 She informed the Council that she would be meeting a group of the Lords from Wales at the House of Lords on November 25, which would be another opportunity to discuss Charter Renewal.

83 DIRECTOR WALES REPORT

83.1 Director Wales informed Council that he had been invited to appear before both National Assembly and UK Parliamentary committees during the coming months, and that through such discussions, the issues relating to Charter Review in relation to the nation was becoming clearer – including portrayal of Wales – but that work was still underway in terms both of identifying how the BBC should respond to them, and how those solutions could be funded.

83.2 The latest RAJAR figures had been published recently and work was continuing to identify how the listening figures for both Radio Cymru and Radio Wales could be improved, with the Council being promised further analysis of the data at its December meeting.

83.3 The coverage of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales tour in Patagonia had been superb and it was clear that the Orchestra’s tour was having a huge impact on the local population, with the concert in the Trelew wool warehouse, which the Council had heard about in its September meeting, having been particularly moving and memorable.

83.4 The Director paid tribute too to the BBC Wales Sport team, whose coverage both of the recent Rugby World Cup tournament and the Wales football team’s success in reaching the Euro 2016 tournament finals, had been fantastic, despite not having the broadcasting rights for either. The BBC Wales programme on Nigel Owens, the referee in the Rugby World Cup final between New Zealand and Australia, broadcast a few days before that match had attracted a consolidated audience of close to 800,000.

83.5 The Council was informed that it was BBC Children in Need day, and that the money distributed in Wales made a huge difference in terms of helping children in Wales.

84 TV PERFORMANCE REPORT

84.1 Director Wales began by making reference to the latest series of Doctor Who, whose early programmes had been scheduled at the same time as key Rugby World Cup matches and so had attracted lower than expected audiences. It remained the case that Doctor Who was amongst the most valuable of the BBC’s brands.

84.2 BBC Wales Today continued in excellent health and was clearly holding its own in audience terms. The weekly reach of BBC One and BBC Two in Wales had also remained consistent, as had the average reach of S4C.

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84.3 Turning to the future, the Council asked about the programmes currently in production or recently commissioned that would be broadcast during late 2015 and 2016. It was told that crime drama Hinterland was likely to be broadcast on BBC Wales around the Christmas and New Year period and that an education season was planned for early 2016, with a follow-up Young, Welsh and Skint planned later in the year. A number of programmes were planned to mark the centenary of the 1916 Battle of the Somme and a programme to mark the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster. Two key events which would attract coverage during 2016 were the May elections to the National Assembly for Wales and the Euro 2016 football tournament finals. It was also likely that a referendum on continued membership of the European Union would take place during 2016.

84.4 It was also suggested to the Council that it would benefit from a discussion with Alison Hindell of the Radio Network drama department, based at BBC Wales, so that members could become more aware of the range of Network drama produced in Wales.

84.5 The Council asked whether it might be possible in future to receive ACTION: SB information about on-line usage, as well as radio and TV related performance data.

85 PRESENTATION ON BBC NETWORK SPORT BY NEIL LAND, CHIEF ADVISER AND BUSINESS MANAGER BBC SPORT

85.1 In being welcomed to the meeting Chief Adviser and Business Manager BBC Sport informed the Council that sport production was a costly business but that moving the entire department to BBC North in Salford a few years ago had substantially cut costs as well as changing the focus of the team’s activities, and had resulted in a change of tone, technology and outlook amongst the whole department, with the team’s four divisions – TV, radio, online and sports journalism – now operating in a far more holistic way.

85.2 It was also the case that BBC Sport was the UK’s favourite sports provider on all platforms – radio, TV and online - and more than 100m people a week were reading, watching or listening to the BBC’s sports news output. While it provided only 3% of the TV output for example it attracted 45% of the viewing.

85.3 The Council also discussed the BBC’s broadcasting rights strategy with major events with profound cultural & social impact and/or that deliver significant audiences being given priority with examples including: Summer & Winter Olympics; Match of the Day; World Cup & Euros; Wimbledon Finals; Commonwealth Games; 6 Nations Rugby; Formula 1 motor racing; Test Match Special radio.

These rights were underpinned by events that supported or magnified the major sporting events such as Olympic sports; Autumn Rugby;

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Scrum Five; Queen’s Tennis and so on.

Finally there were sports that reflected the breadth and depth of audience interests including darts and snooker.

The Council was informed that the team felt that it had secured a strong portfolio of sports broadcasting rights for the medium term that encompassed a wide variety of sport, and that the partnership model, such as the one announced recently between the BBC and ITV for the Six Nations Rugby championship was very successful. It was also helping with boosting sports coverage, with a good example being the Oxford- Cambridge Boat Race with 3 years of partnership working with the parties involved having been necessary before televising the women’s boat race in 2015. That input had been entirely justified when it had been the third most viewed female sports event of that year.

85.4 Looking to the future, the Council was informed that 2016 would be an exciting year with the Euro 2016 football championship final and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. The expectations of the coverage from both events amongst the viewing public were huge, but there was also an expectation of efficiency with each and every staff member sent to both events rightly having to be justified.

85.5 He also informed the Council about the BBC’s Get Inspired scheme that aimed to inspire people to take part in physical activity more widely (not just sport). Around 1.5 million individuals had been redirected to third party sites to encourage individuals to take part in physical activity through the scheme, and the funding for this work had come from DVD sales of the coverage of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

85.6 It was clear too that social media was becoming increasingly important to the team’s work and would remain so in future. However, this brought its own production challenges since audience behaviour on social media was different to that on more traditional media. Sport in the 2020s was a project that the team was currently undertaking to consider the BBC’s future coverage of sports both in terms of production and in considering the connection of audiences with sport.

86 CONFIRMATION OF THE DATE OF THE NEXT MEETING

86.1 The next meeting of Council will take place on 11 December at BBC Broadcasting House, Cardiff.

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