Kevin Lygo speech to Edinburgh International TV Festival Friday 24th August 2007 – check against delivery

For something so ill-defined, there are an extraordinary number of speeches made about public service broadcasting. Martin Amis once said of Philip Larkin that he had lived a miserable life so that we didn’t have to. I feel a bit like this about the speeches by TV executives on public service broadcasting. I’ve read them so that you lucky buggers don’t have to.

I’ve done so because ideas that are not updated will ossify. And I’ve done so because we need to rethink the specific contribution of Channel 4 to public service. That is the purpose of the strategic review of our public service vision that we announced last month. It will also be the main subject of my remarks today.

Many previous attempts to specify the unique place occupied by Channel 4 have located it in relation to the BBC and ITV, as though all the co-ordinates on the map were defined in relation to Broadcasting House and Gray’s Inn Road.

I want to go beyond that account today. It is a characteristic of conservative institutions that they define themselves against others. If there is one thing that Channel 4 is not, it is conservative. So I want to offer a fuller account of our purpose as a channel and the idea of a public service ethos that informs it as we approach our 25th anniversary in November.

I’m not going to offer you an abstract treatise on public service. In 1986 the Peacock Report concluded “we had some difficulty in obtaining an operational definition from broadcasters of public service broadcasting”. I’m not surprised. Twenty years later you still can’t sum up PSB in a sentence. So I want instead to describe what a good public service broadcaster looks like.

Let’s, for sake of argument, call it Channel 4. I should add, before I start, that, like the most flattering portraits, what I am about to offer is not a facsimile or a photographic likeness. It is a painting, in part a work of the imagination, but a portrait nonetheless that tries to capture the animating purpose of the subject.

Channel 4 still has such a purpose, such a personality. It is heterodox rather than conventional. It is iconoclastic and individualistic rather than a scion of established values and elites. It tells the tale of ordinary voices, the deserving who are often not heard. It seeks to lend a modern slant to traditions that have grown stale. It is open-minded and plural but usually quizzical.

It stands for liberal toleration. That means that it is undeterred by controversy and resolutely determined to air the big issues. It takes pains to make complex things simple but never simplistic. It tries to clarify but not to caricature. It is not frightened to break taboos, to expose hypocrisy and to lead campaigns. It doesn’t copy others but, instead, rather prides itself on being imitated.

1 It is, in a word, independent. It does nobody’s bidding and is unafraid, on occasion, to court unpopularity. It always stands slightly apart, independent from government, independent from shareholders, independent from trends, conventional wisdoms and idées fixes. It is the non-conformist who questions the tenets of the established church. It can develop minor obsessions and minority tastes. I find it charmingly odd, even oddly charming.

It has a sense of being self-made, successful, brash, clever, offensive and entrepreneurial – a bit like Gordon Ramsay’s The F-Word. It makes programmes that both grab the attention and carry an important message. Jamie’s School Dinners, Embarrassing Illnesses: both communicated a message vividly, without patronising the audience. Secret Life, a single drama about paedophilia was intelligent, sensitive and not sensational. The script was tight, the acting first-rate. It treated issues of great import that no other broadcaster would have gone near. It got 1m viewers and I am proud of it.

[A note here about ratings…

For us, 1m viewers is a poor night at the box office. Actually, by the standard of other public service institutions, it’s not at all. The National Theatre at full capacity for a year can only accommodate 700,000 people. Richard Eyre said to me it would be a dream come true to have a million people watch one of his productions. The biggest art exhibition ever in the UK was the Velasquez at the National Gallery. It got 600,000 visitors. Yet all of us surely think these are marvellous public service bodies. Neil McGregor, currently running the British Museum, told me that we in TV have an enviable ability to reach vast numbers by his measurements. And this is where attitudes must change. When we make a bold, new, difficult programme, and it is watched by 900,000 people we should say, “Great – 900,000 people watched that show last night” – not “uh, only 900,000 – shit a failure”. We must unshackle ourselves from the manacles of ratings as a measurement of quality. Of course ratings are important but they cannot be the whole story.]

The public service ethos means we maintain a commitment to serious news and current affairs – Channel 4 News, Dispatches, Unreported World - scheduled in the midst of the evening, not heading for the early hours. These are programmes scheduled in peak time which offer greater analysis than competitor bulletins on other channels and tackle subject matter, particularly international affairs, that other channels devote less time to.

The point is that we are determined to open up space for argument. We mustn’t close it down by supplying the answer before the credits have rolled. Longford was a curious script by Peter Morgan about the nature of good and evil. It questioned moral certainties. It was both chilling and illuminating. It sought, as excellent broadcasting should, to equip the viewer to decide. It did not parade the answer it had prepared earlier. So too in Bryan Elsley’s new drama series Skins, which followed the basic advice given to all story-tellers: show don’t tell. Don’t tell

2 young girls on the edge of anorexia to eat more food. Show them the consequences. Give them the whole story and trust their capacity to decide.

Sometimes, to host a space for dissenting views, is to become associated with those views, as though some entity called Channel 4 agreed editorially with every point of view heard. For the public service broadcaster this is just an occupational hazard. We will, I hope often, question the assumptions of the broadcasting consensus. We will find ourselves sharply up against taboos, prodding and testing.

But the ideal service is not sensationalist because controversy gets into the newspapers. Its purposes are more elevated than that. It seeks to stimulate knowledge and learning. It encompasses the diverse cultural identity of the UK. It is plural and argumentative.

It helps to incubate great new talent. Much of the best comedy and entertainment talent on British TV – Jonathan Ross, Paul Merton, Peter Kay, Graham Norton, Chris Evans, Ricky Gervais – came to mainstream consciousness via Channel 4. It is a space in which new formats can be devised, tested, fail and come back again, improved. It pools the risk of creativity that would otherwise be borne by the small companies or, more likely, not taken on at all. It stands for all these things and fosters them in others.

We believe, in other words, that this collection of things, taken together, adds up to an ethos of public service. We believe the British public still values them. This is a nation of many types of people, many strands of thought, many tastes, from the serious to the trivial, from the tragic to the comic, from the sacred to the profane. Broadcasting is more than an industry. It is a component of a cultural identity and this is the service it performs.

Without Channel 4, or at least without somebody performing the functions I have described, that ethos is not properly served. If there were no Channel 4 we should certainly now have to invent it. British broadcasting is one of this country’s great global success stories. Since the turn of the Industrial Revolution we have not had too many. But, actually, for all the recent controversies and problems, we ought not to forget that this country is fantastically good at broadcasting. And we would jeopardise the quality and variety that makes it so if a critical part of that ecology went missing.

Arthur Miller once said that good writing is like an organism. All the parts of it are critical. If any one component stops working then the whole piece suffers. Public service broadcasting is like this. There is always a risk that the difficult, the awkward, the obscure will not be heard. Historically, Channel 4 has played this part, amongst others. It’s not just the case that we can still do so. We must do so and, for that reason, I believe the future for Channel 4 is very strong. As others take fewer risks then by taking more we stand out from the crowd.

3 I think Channel 4 still does take most of the risks. Indeed, the effect of Channel 4 on the BBC is a distinguished part of the ancestry to which I am heir. In news and current affairs, in comedy and drama and documentary, in attitudes to race, sexuality, ethnicity, gender and disability, Channel 4 has led the way. We have taken leisure pursuits, coupled it with celebrity and created effective programming with a campaigning dimension. We re-established the formatted documentary. And yes, I’m proud to say, we have brought reality television to British audiences through Big Brother, the most extraordinary, influential show that many of us working in television have ever experienced. In broadcasting, like in politics, the surest mark of success is the change you bring to your rivals.

It must be clear by now that I am congratulating myself royally. Actually, I’m not. I offer this flattering picture as an example of the public service ethos at its very best. I don’t think we always live up to this billing. But I’ve set out the ideal-type very deliberately because there is a nagging and worrying question for people like me who believe so passionately in the public service ethos that we have devoted our whole careers to it.

Here’s the rub: can it survive? Can an idealised picture of this kind be conceived in a world in which the power conferred by our privileged access to scarce analogue spectrum is disappearing fast? In a nation no longer as deferential and homogenous as it once was – and amen to that – is there anything living in the idea of public service broadcasting that so many of my predecessors have sought to define and defend?

Just think of how the backdrop has changed. It is doubtful that, with the exception of TV's first ten years, that any decade has seen such rapid shifts in broadcasting as this last one. Ten years ago, remember, there were only five terrestrial channels. When I first joined C4 ten years ago special permission was needed to gain access to the internet. In 1997 BBC1 and ITV took almost 62% of the available audience. The combined cable and satellite channels took about 10%.

Nine years on, the share of BBC1 and ITV1 combined had fallen to 43%. And yet, remarkably, Channel 4's audience share has held up. Channel 4 has been at or about 10% for the last fifteen years. However much changes some things remain the same. In 1997 people watched 25 hours of television a week. In 2006 this figure was almost identical.

We have, in other words, been running to stand still. With the emergence of new platforms, the established broadcasters have responded by creating new channels and by seeking other sources of revenue. This has obvious consequences for viewing habits. Ratings for serious factual programmes have halved. Ofcom's last public service broadcasting review showed that the reach of serious factual programmes was half in multi-channel homes what it was in homes that had only terrestrial access. The situation for arts programmes was even starker.

4 The changes to what we do are usually measured in numbers. Perhaps the parallel qualitative shift is more durable. It is hard to put into arithmetic but everyone in television knows that the audience is more demanding than ever.

A new kind of audience has emerged. Home ownership of PCs, broadband internet, DVDs, digital cameras and ipods have created a sense of immediacy and entitlement that is new. The audience knows what it wants, is technologically literate enough to be able to find it, and expects it on demand.

And yet, for all the change and the proliferation of options, there is a feeling abroad that somehow there is nothing worth watching on television. This perception is always at least as wrong as it is right. But the reason it exists is that, in fact, there are more channels than there are choices.

The extension of choice has two effects: niche channels emerge and audiences split into self-defined interest groups. At the same time, those who are seeking a general offer eschew the range on offer and retreat to more familiar options. The growth of supply has the strange effect of inducing more caution in the watching public. Hence the paradox that will ring true to many of you – an audience that demands new programming, which it then undermines by not watching.

At the same time, though the audience wants to be informed and, sometimes, educated, its stress on being entertained is greater than I have ever known it. The pressure on creative ingenuity is more intense than it has ever been.

This is only partly a matter of there being more broadcasting on offer, though that is certainly true. No, it is more than that. This is a mature medium now. We have a mature audience. This is the first generation in which pretty much every viewer has grown up with television. The folk memory of its novelty as a form has all but disappeared. Our viewers have historical reference points for their viewing but no sense of wonder at the medium. Our audience is just cleverer about what we do than it used to be. The founders of television were unapologetically paternalist about what they were doing. I don’t think that works any more and, in any case, it runs exactly counter to the spirit of Channel 4.

Television production, too, has matured. It has become more professional. There are fewer incompetent productions. But, like politics, this has a tendency to the middle. Good technique is what genius and mediocrity have in common. Strange voices, quirky style, visual flair, an unexpected range – they all tend to dwindle. To uphold the eccentric, the odd, the acute angle on an old subject. That has to be part of what public service broadcasting means and yet the constant commercial imperative is to do the opposite.

And so, every outing for the idea of public service broadcasting rides the horns of the following dilemma: if the standards are high does it matter if the audience is small? Of course nobody wants a tiny audience but does it call the very idea of

5 public service into question? If a tree falls in the wood and there is nobody there to hear it, does it still make a sound?

This is a familiar account: the end of spectrum scarcity leads to a proliferation of channels, the once-captive audience now roams across the vast wild plains of the schedules. The convergence of television, PC and computer network technologies is not far away on the horizon. A fully digital world looms before us. The traditional television channel is becoming just one of the many ways in which programmes will appear on our sets.

But, in addition, we face some more immediate questions. This is not a corporate speech about funding but it would be odd not to acknowledge that I am speaking at a pivotal moment in Channel 4’s history. It has been noted many times that Channel 4 is in a unique position, globally, in that we have a distinct public purpose, but we have hitherto been funded entirely from commercial sources.

That may be about to change. I’ve made the case today that public service broadcasting is getting more difficult. A durable financial settlement is critical. Indeed, the first phase of Channel 4’s history was conducted in a time of comparative financial certainty.

It is not exactly opportune that these arguments are playing out at a time in which trust in television’s integrity has been called into question. It has to be a component of a public service ethos that the audience can trust the output. Of course as we all know production involves artifice. But artifice is not the same as deception. It doesn’t pretend really to be what it isn’t. If any television programme creates a fake and tries to pass it off as real then it forfeits the trust of the audience. And that trust is too precious a commodity to take lightly. That is why we have decided not to do phone-in competitions for the purposes of profit making. To the extent that Channel 4’s programmes have been implicated in any deception I apologise.

But there is one canard that needs to be dismissed. A facile connection has been drawn between declining standards in television and the rise of the independent production sector. In fact, the opposite is the case. The astonishing success of the independent production sector in the last 25 years, nurtured by Channel 4, has given rise to an explosion in creativity and diversity.

I said earlier that Channel 4 runs risks. That means, more or less inevitably, that sometimes things will go wrong. I wouldn’t seek necessarily to defend every single moment of Channel 4’s output. Why should I? Innovation comes from experimentation. An inevitable by-product is the occasional failure.

If public service broadcasting cannot be permitted to fail every so often then it is in serious trouble. Of course failure on public money is a difficult proposition to explain. It is getting harder and harder. But every instance that goes wrong is a test

6 for the public service broadcaster. Do they respond by playing safe next time? If they do then a large part of what makes them valuable in the first place is lost.

Now, this is the bit of the speech, where someone should come on stage carrying a banner that reads “here comes the bit, from the commercial broadcaster, moaning about the BBC”.

There is no question that the BBC has the bulk of the responsibility for public service and therefore feels the pressure more than any one. It is a leviathan next to Channel 4. I think it is a bit blander than it should be. We all know what I mean. The One Show – every night – the increasing number of soapy dramas. Casualty, Holby City, Holby Blue, Waterloo Road and the real possibility of a fifth episode of EastEnders and the factual output dominated by soft focuses, mountains, coasts, rivers, birds and heritage. There’s nothing wrong with any of these shows individually but together they all hum the same note and I don’t see how that’s good for public service television. Away from the main channels there is some risk taking going on. But you are unlikely to chance upon it. The BBC should be leading the way with the new and the different and the challenging – and I don’t think anybody believes they are to the extent that they should.

Freed from commercial imperatives of any kind, the BBC can choose its own course. If it decides to copy formats in order to secure a ratings boost, then that choice is not forced upon it by commercial considerations. It is free not to do so. I’m saying this because I believe the BBC is the most important cultural institution in the country. I started my career there, and usually they do a fantastic job, but I do think they’ve gone a bit ratings obsessed at the expense of individually interesting programmes.

I am not saying the choice is without constraint. That old dilemma can feel sharp - too many programmes that nobody watches and the licence fee starts to look like a peculiar form of extortion. But, all the same, risks can be run. The BBC seems to me hampered by its basic paradox. It is funded in a way that licenses the most risks yet it takes the least risks of us all. But enough about them…

So: our audience is changing, both in and of itself and in response to the extraordinary changes in broadcasting technologies. Television has brought upon itself a momentary crisis of trust. The question of how to uphold an ethos of public service in the absence of a mass audience looks like it is becoming intractable.

To live up to the portrait I have painted is difficult. We cannot say that whatever we happen to be doing today will suffice tomorrow. It won’t. Public service cannot be set in aspic. It has to change its meaning, to adapt to a new environment. But let’s be as clear as possible: a vibrant civil society needs many voices.

Of course, some of those voices will be found somewhere hidden on page twenty two of the EPG. But there is a value in having the array of voices that make up a nation on terrestrial television, on one of the main channels. The proliferation of

7 channels makes the task more difficult, to be sure. But it does not alter its essential nature. In fact, in the cacophony, it makes the preservation of an ethos of public service even more important.

We have already launched a process to redefine Channel 4’s creative purpose in a fully digital world. Ofcom has made plain its requirement that we do more to demonstrate public accountability. We need to clarify the value and the impact of our contribution to public service broadcasting.

This will have some surprising, at times, painful consequences. I have suggested above all a channel that is constantly restless, seeking the new pastures, radical in the sense that we are never settled with the status quo, even that of our own devising.

So with this in mind I’d like to outline some specific initiatives that will happen from today, in conjunction with Julian Bellamy and heads of commissioning at Channel 4.

We feel we need to spend less on acquired TV series. The costs have spiralled and the return is not as great as it used to be. That is why we spent far less in Los Angeles this year than last. We deliberately saved some £10 million which can immediately be transferred into new home grown commissions for C4. With this sort of money we can even open up new slots to make ambitious, well funded programmes. Next year we will do the same again and try to spend even less on Hollywood’s output. This is not a criticism of American shows, some of which are simply amongst the best TV ever made, but the value to Channel 4 has changed. We used to be the only place where you could see interesting shows from the US - Hill Street Blues, thirtysomething, Cheers, and more recently of course, Friends, Six Feet Under, Desperate Housewives and The Sopranos - but yet another factor of multi-channel expansion is that all the smaller channels also buy US programmes. The price goes up - lucky US studios - and the exclusive feel of having great American telly diminishes. So – we will be less reliant on this particular genre from now on – our expenditure will fall, freeing up money and slots for new independent commissions.

Secondly, we need to help reinvigorate the independent sector. It has been through the usual commercial cycle. Consolidation has meant that the extant companies are strong and wise. The creative naiveté of the early days has passed. We are heading, if we are not careful, for a replica of the USA: just the studios and a few massive indies. We at Channel 4 can help avoid this and we should. We can earmark slots and funds for new companies. We can take greater risks. Spending more money is half the job, but who we spend that money with is also important and so we intend that no less than 20% of the production companies that we work with will have a turnover of less than 2 million pounds a year. This should help foster new companies, allow new entrants into the market and hopefully encourage a different type of programme to flourish alongside the output of our tried and tested production companies.

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Thirdly - there is nowhere more important in the C4 schedule than 9 O'clock. We have been fantastically successful here for the last few years and a consequence of this success has been the easy choice of the returning series. If a show does 3 million viewers, is well made and inventive, then who wouldn't re-order it?

Well I believe it is time to be brutal with some much loved shows that have been around for a while, in order - once again - to make way for the new. So, at the moment, in the schedule for the first six months of next year there is not a single returning series at 9 O'clock. Whoops! That's a lie; there is one - Grand Designs. I'm not a psychopath.

What other channel could get anywhere near that kind of commitment to the new?

Let me be clear: this means moving out hit shows like Celebrity Big Brother in the belief that we will find new and exciting programmes. That's 29 hours of peak time up for grabs, in January alone. Our highest rating programme will move to E4 in a new form to allow Channel 4 to experiment with the new. New documentaries, new forms of educational programmes – not just the next factual entertainment hit (although that would be nice). This process will also extend to other parts of the Channel 4 schedule. Gone will be Scrapheap Challenge, Brat Camp, It's Me Or The Dog, Selling Houses Abroad, You Are What You Eat. These are non-commercial decisions - if we wanted to take the easy path we'd re-commission all of these shows - we'd probably do two series of Celebrity Big Brother if ratings were all we're after. No - these are the decisions of a Public Service Broadcaster in search of the new and the exciting.

And finally - more campaigns. I want us to attempt to directly effect change in society. Saint Jamie Oliver showed what we can do when we get everything right. What the power of a terrestrial television channel can still achieve that nothing else can. First up will be a new campaign about Child Literacy. It is a crime that so many children leave primary school in this country unable to read properly. Through a series of programmes in prime time this autumn we aim to highlight this and hopefully change it. Next up will be processed foods. With the help of our TV chefs - Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the great Sea-Bass catcher himself, Gordon Ramsay, we will take a long hard look at what we eat and the industry that supplies it.

A consequence of these decisions means that our ratings will almost certainly fall. But then, look around – everybody’s ratings are falling. The alternative is more of the same and that is not what the channel is about. New programmes from new producers; new programmes from some older producers. Do not be surprised when Channel 4’s share of viewing begins with an ‘eight’. We are prepared for this and strongly believe it is the right thing to do. Much better to be an interesting channel at 8% than a less interesting one at 10%. The portfolio share will remain high but the risks must be taken by the main channel. We should be the same size as BBC2 but have about 3 times as many young viewers.

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Public service broadcasting is not the Arts Council of the air. It is not the thing that fills in the gaps in the market. It is not posh programmes for soix-disant posh people. It is not the upshot of any specific funding system. The ratings are not the defining feature. Neither is the programme’s genre, nor the segment of the audience which is sought.

Public service broadcasting is defined, in the end, by excellence and range. A programme that is demonstrably of high quality, all the way through from the conception to the screen, serves a public purpose. It excites passion and loyalty. And a public service broadcaster has a duty not to be bland.

This is the alpha and omega of broadcasting. The political argument will run about the financial settlement and I should stress again the critical importance of financial security to Channel 4’s long-term creative health. But the quality of the programmes is the thing that allows us to survive in the long-term. Whether or not Channel 4 partakes of public money, it’s all for the birds in the absence of the creative spark.

We’ve shown for 25 years that commercial funding and independence of mind can live together, if not always easily, then with creative tension.

Channel 4 is part of the voice of the country. It gives a hearing to many individuals. It makes a noise, to be sure, and not always harmoniously. But in that chorus we hear a little more of ourselves than we might were those voices to be silenced. An open society talking to itself – that is public service broadcasting.

Ends

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