The Price of Plurality
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The Price of Plurality Choice, Diversity and Broadcasting Institutions in the Digital Age Edited by Tim Gardam and David A. L. Levy Published by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Department of Politics and International Relations University of Oxford 13 Norham Gardens Oxford, OX2 6PS [email protected] Individual chapters Copyright © the respective authors of each chapter 2008 Editorial material and notes Copyright © Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism of the University of Oxford 2008 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or disseminated or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the copyright owner. ISBN 978–0–95–588890–8 Edited by Tim Gardam and David A. L. Levy Cover design by Robin Roberts-Gant Layout and Print by Oxuniprint Contents Preface v Ed Richards Chief Executive, Ofcom The Structure and Purpose of This Book vii Tim Gardam and David Levy 1. The Purpose of Plurality 11 Tim Gardam 2. Does Plurality Need Protecting in the New Media Age? 23 2.1. Plurality and the Broadcasting Value Chain – Relevance and Risks? 25 Robin Foster 2.2. Lessons from the First Communications Act 36 David Puttnam 2.3. Plurality Preserved: Rethinking the Case for 41 Public Intervention in a New Media Market John Whittingdale 2.4. Public Purpose versus Pluralism? 46 Patricia Hodgson 2.5. Plurality: What Do We Mean by It? What Do We Want from It? 51 Simon Terrington and Matt Ashworth 3. Can the Current System Be Reformed? Views from inside the Broadcasters’ Tent 59 3.1. The Curious Outsider 61 Peter Dale 3.2. The BBC, Viewed from Inside and Out 65 Samir Shah 3.3. The Remaining Incentives for Commercial Public Service Broadcasting 69 Peter Ibbotson 3.4. Plurality: Making Room for Competition 73 Jane Lighting 4. Can the Current System Be Reformed? Views from outside the Broadcasters’ Tent 79 4.1. Is Plurality really the issue? 81 Peter Bazalgette 4.2. How to Fund Public Service Content in the Digital Age 86 David Elstein 4.3. Plurality and the Sustainability of the British Production Industry 91 Steve Morrison 4.4. The Fertile Fallacy: New Opportunities for Public Service Content 95 Anthony Lilley iv 5. Diversity and Democracy: Public Service News in the Online Age 101 5.1. Media Diversity and Democracy 103 James Curran 5.2. Impartiality – Why It Must Stay 110 Richard Tait 5.3. Impartiality – The Case for Change 116 Tim Suter 5.4. A Diversity of Understanding: The Increasing Importance of Major Public Service Broadcasting Institutions 120 Jean Seaton 6. Public Service Content in an Age of Participation: The Future of Citizenship, Local News and Local Engagement 125 6.1. Citizens and Consumers: Government Online versus Information for Informed Citizenship 127 Helen Margetts 6.2. Bringing the News to Where You Are 134 Roger Laughton 6.3. The Changing Nature of the Local Market 143 Simon Waldman 6.4. It’s Literacy, Jim, But Not as We Know It: Mass Literacy in the Digital Age 148 Adam Singer 7. Plurality and Democracy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland 153 7.1. Broadcasting Policy and the Scottish Question 155 Philip Schlesinger 7.2. Plural Communities 162 Geraint Talfan Davies 7.3. Plurality, Diversity and Localism in Northern Ireland 168 Newton Emerson 8. Children’s Programming 173 8.1. On the Future of Children’s Television – A Matter of Crisis? 175 Sonia Livingstone 9. Plurality in the Global Market: Perspectives from Europe and the United States 183 9.1. Plurality of Public Service Provision: A European Dimension 185 Petros Iosifi dis 9.2. Public Television and Pluralistic Ideals 190 Ellen P. Goodman and Monroe E. Price 9.3. The Economics of Plurality: Europe and the USA Compared 197 Robert Picard 10. The Way Ahead: Towards a New Communications Act 207 David Levy Notes on Contributors 217 v Preface Ed Richards, Chief Executive, Ofcom The principle of ensuring different perspectives and different viewpoints is at the heart of our current broadcasting system. Alongside a system of funding which delivers signifi cant levels of original UK-produced content, plurality is central to the delivery of the quality, innovation and diversity in content which our broadcasting has so often delivered. Plurality exists across most genres – not just the obvious ones of news, politics and current affairs, but also drama and comedy, arts and education, factual programmes and sport. Yet, for a concept so central to UK television, there has been relatively little written about plurality, either in academic circles or among industry practitioners and commentators. It is for that reason that Ofcom commissioned the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to produce a book of essays considering the key themes surrounding plurality in public service broadcasters as we look towards the digital future. The result is this publication. It is a crucial time for us to be considering these issues. We are on the threshold of digital switchover, which will bring digital television to the whole of the UK. We live in a time when linear broadcasting is increasingly complemented by content delivered through a range of new and emerging platforms. Against this backdrop, Ofcom has just published phase one of our second Review of Public Service Broadcasting. It’s a complex issue and one that opens up a host of different questions. How do we deliver high levels of original content which meets the public purposes of public service broadcasting? What is the role of new platforms and technologies in delivering the public purposes? And of course, what is the appropriate level of plurality in the system to complement and to compete with the BBC? This book makes a valuable contribution towards this debate. It represents an exercise in plurality in its own right. There are different voices, different viewpoints and different solutions proposed. It provides a platform for some important thinking about an issue that remains at the heart of Public Service Broadcasting at this crucial time. vii The Structure and Purpose of This Book Tim Gardam and David Levy These essays arise out of Ofcom’s second Review of Public Service Broadcasting, but they need to be read in the wider context of the approaching moment of digital switchover which effectively ushers in the age of converged media and brings to a close the television age. So swift has been the rate of technological change since the last Communication Act in 2003 – the rapid take-up of broadband, the success of digital terrestrial television, DTT, the introduction of video on demand, the exploitation of TV formats and the consolidation of the independent production sector into a number of major international businesses – that the television landscape has already changed fundamentally long before the moment when the last analogue television set is consigned to history. Many of the changes listed above have taken hold because of both regulatory intervention and the actions of the publicly owned broadcasters. In the process, television has become a market, but it is a market where intervention has signifi cantly shaped its nature. A new Communications Act, probably sometime after 2010, is now taking shape, to be in place by digital switchover in 2012. The urgency for the Act in part refl ects the recognition that there will need to be, by then, a new settlement for our Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) system. If the current system is left unreformed, it is commonly accepted, the economic basis for plurality of provision, that has to date defi ned British television, will break down. These essays focus on the principles and priorities of plurality. The word itself bears a number of different emphases. Plurality has often been seen as a means to an end, above all ensuring the competition for quality that has characterised British television. Ofcom offers a drily functional defi nition in its review of PSB: “the provision by a range of producers, broadcasters and distributors [of public service content]; and the ability of people to choose between different broadcasters and distributors for any particular kind of content”.1 Yet plurality also has a broader resonance; a democratic society must refl ect its diversity of voices and opinions back to itself. Plurality among public service broadcasters has, in the public policy debate, become something of a touchstone by which the future health of broadcasting will be judged. This in itself may appear strange as the internet ushers in a world of choice and diversity such that the world of analogue television could never have imagined. Even so, as communities become more disconnected, the debate over what makes a shared culture amidst diversity of individual choice has become closely linked to the issue of how public values will be refl ected in broadcasting in the future. As a result, plurality has become the meeting point for a number of arguments about the future of our broadcasting institutions – the BBC licence fee, the public status of Channel 4, and the PSB status of ITV and Five. Concerns for plurality also focus wider debates about viii our children’s upbringing, our local communities, universal access to information and education in a broadband world, the reliability of news, and even the constitutional settlement that binds together the United Kingdom. Plurality is a principle to which it is easy to sign up; however, in any PSB system, there is a price to be paid for it. This leads to hard-edged questions that cannot be pushed aside.