FROM PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING TO PUBLIC SERVICE COMMUNICATIONS edited by Jamie Cowling and Damian Tambini 30-32 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7RA Tel: 020 7470 6100 Fax: 020 7470 6111 [email protected] www.ippr.org Registered charity 800065 The Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr), established in 1988, is Britain’s leading independent think tank on the centre left. The values that drive our work include delivering social justice, deepening democracy, increasing environmental sustainability and enhancing human rights. Through our well-researched and clearly argued policy analysis, our publications, our media events, our strong networks in government, academia and the corporate and voluntary sector, we play a vital role in maintaining the momentum of progressive thought. ippr’s aim is to bridge the political divide between the social democratic and liberal traditions, the intellectual divide between the academics and the policy makers and the cultural divide between the policy-making establishment and the citizen. As an independent institute, we have the freedom to determine our research agenda. ippr has charitable status and is funded by a mixture of corporate, charitable, trade union and individual donations. Research is ongoing, and new projects being developed, in a wide range of policy areas including sustainability, health and social care, social policy, citizenship and governance, education, economics, democracy and community, media and digital society and public private partnerships. We shall shortly open an office in Newcastle: ippr north. For further information you can contact ippr’s external affairs department on [email protected], you can view our website at www.ippr.org and you can buy our books from Central Books on 0845 458 9910 or email [email protected]. Trustees Chris Powell Chai Patel Jeremy Hardie (Chairman) (Secretary) (Treasurer) Professor Kumar Lord Hollick David Pitt-Watson Bhattacharyya Jane Humphries Dave Prentis Lord Brooke Roger Jowell Lord Puttnam Lord Eatwell Neil Kinnock Sir Martin Rees Lord Gavron Richard Lambert Jan Royall Chris Gibson Smith Professor David Ed Sweeney Professor Anthony Marquand Baroness Williams Giddens Frances O’Grady Baroness Young of Old Scone Production & design by EMPHASIS ISBN 1 86030 XXX X © IPPR 2002 Contents Acknowledgements About the authors Introduction 1 1. Taking a horse to water? Delivering public service broadcasting in a digital universe 5 David Bergg 2. What are the real threats to public service broadcasting? 16 Patrick Barwise 3. Which end of the telescope? From market failure to cultural value 34 Steven Barnett 4. The passing of paternalism: public service television and increasing channel choice 46 Damian Tambini 5. From princes to paupers: the future for advertising funded public service television broadcasting 61 Jamie Cowling 6. Public service content: the conditions for creativity 74 Phil Redmond 7. From service to Commons: re-inventing a space for public communication 88 Stephen Coleman 8. Public service interactivity and the BBC 99 Mike Bracken and Alex Balfour 9. Learning from abroad: public service broadcasting in Japan and Germany 115 Nanne Priebs 10. Public service broadcasting: too much of a good thing? 131 Richard Collins 11. Measuring public service broadcasting 152 Robin Foster, Jim Egan and Jonathan Simon Conclusions and Recommendations 171 Bibliography 182 Acknowledgements We are very grateful to the ippr Public Service Communications project supporters; BBC, BECTU, Endemol UK, Five, the Independent Television Commission, ntl, and Oftel without whose support our work would not be possible. The chapters in this publication have been informed by a series of seminars run by the ippr from 2002 to 2003. Our warm thanks go to the speakers at the seminars: Peter Bazalgette, Alex Blowers, Dr. Georgina Born, Mike Bracken, Simon Brown, Prof. Stephen Coleman, Prof. Richard Collins, Jim Egan, Robin Foster, Tim Gardam, David Levy, John Newbigin, Nanne Priebs, Prof. Tony Prosser, Prof. Roger Silverstone, Feargal Sharkey and Simon Terrington and also to all of those who made such valuable contributions to the seminar discussions. Our thanks also go to Alan Bell, Andy Egan and Sue Robertson for their assistance. We are also grateful to all of those who contributed to the Oxford Media Convention 2003: Public Service Communications, in particular, Nina Bolognesi, Adam Freeman and Yvonne Siegel. However, none, other than the authors, are responsible for their own conclusions, errors, omissions or any other faults. A special acknowledgement must go to Emily Keaney for her invaluable assistance and guidance to the project. We are extremely grateful to Helena Scott for her patience and assistance. We would also like to thank Ian Kearns, Nick Pearce, Matthew Taylor and Rachel O’Brien for their invaluable advice and support. About the authors Alex Balfour is an independent consultant specialising in online content production and consumer facing online businesses. Until recently he was chairman of CricInfo.com, Europe’s second most popular content site after the BBC. Professor Steven Barnett is Professor of Communications at the University of Westminster and a writer and commentator on media policy. He writes frequently on the media for the national and specialist press, and has a regular column on broadcasting in the Observer. He is the co-author of Westminster Tales: the 21st Century Crisis in Political Journalism and The Battle for the BBC and has contributed to a number of books and journals. Over the last 15 years, he has directed a number of research projects on the funding, structure, regulation and content of broadcasting. Before joining Westminster in 1994, he was director of the Henley Centre’s media futures programme (1990-94), Assistant Director at the Broadcasting Research Unit (1985-90), and a researcher and writer at the Consumers Association (1980-85). He graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge in social and political science followed by an MSc in sociology at the LSE. Professor Patrick Barwise is Professor of Management and Marketing at London Business School. He joined London Business School in 1976 having spent his early career with IBM. His many publications include the books Television and its Audience, Accounting for Brands, Strategic Decisions, Predictions: Media, and Advertising in a Recession; a Harvard Business Review article ‘Must Finance and Strategy Clash?’; and numerous academic papers and practitioner articles, mostly on brands, consumer/audience behaviour, and new media. Current projects include Simply Better, a controversial book on customer-driven strategy, to be published by Harvard Business School Press in July 2004. Patrick Barwise is an audience research advisor to Ofcom. David Bergg is Director of Programme Strategy, ITV1. He qualified as a PE teacher before beginning his broadcasting career in the mid-1980s in the audience research departments of Ulster, Grampian, Tyne Tees, LWT and TV-am (where he was also Head of Programme Acquisition). When TV-am lost its franchise, he was appointed Controller of Marketing and Research at GMTV. He joined BBC Television in 1994 as Scheduler, BBC1, working closely with Alan Yentob, before being poached by Dawn Airey to help launch Channel 5 as Controller of Planning and Programme Acquisition in 1996. In 1997 he was invited by David Liddiment to join ITV Network Centre as Director of Planning and Strategy. In January 2000 David was recruited by Liz Murdoch as General Manager, Sky One. After an illuminating but ultimately unhappy period at Isleworth, David returned to ITV in June 2001 as Director of Programmes for ITV2 before re-assuming responsibility for the ITV1 schedule from January 2002. His title is now Director of Programme Strategy, ITV1. Mike Bracken is an independent consultant specialising in interactive services, information management and e-government policy. Prior to his recent policy work he was VP of Interactive Products at UPC/chello, Europe’s largest broadband cable network. Professor Stephen Coleman is Cisco Professor of e-Democracy at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford and a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He was formerly Director of Studies at the Hansard Society and led its e-Democracy programme which pioneered a series of public consultations linking citizens to parliamentarians via the internet. He has been a key adviser on e-democracy to the Cabinet Office; former chair of the Independent Commission on Alternative Voting Methods; specialist adviser to the House of Commons Information Committee inquiry on using digital technologies to connect with the public; and adviser to the European Telecities Network. Professor Richard Collins is Professor of Media Studies and Head of Sociology at the Open University. He was the first Research Director and co-founder of the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) Media and Communication Research Programme and co-authored with Cristina Murroni New Media New Policies (1996) which set out the findings and recommendations of the first phase of ippr’s media research. He has written several other studies of media and communications policy including: The Economics of Television: The UK Case (1988) with Nicholas Garnham and Gareth Locksley; Culture Communication and National Identity: The Case of Canadian Television (1990); Broadcasting and Audio-visual Policy in the European Single Market (1994) and From Satellite to Single Market: New Communication Technology and European Public Service Television (1998).