David Elstein POLITICAL The Political Structure of UK Broadcasting 1949-1999 STRUCTURE BROADCASTING UK ELSTEIN The Political Structure of UK Broadcasting 1949-1999 Media, Democracy & Political Process Series Edited by Christian Herzog, Volker Grassmuck, Christian Heise and Orkan Torun The Political Structure of UK Broadcasting 1949-1999 David Elstein Bibliographical Information of the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche National bibliografie (German National Biblio­ graphy); detailed bibliographic information is available online at http://dnb.d­nb.de Published in 2015 by meson press, Hybrid Publishing Lab, Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University of Lüneburg www.meson­press.com Design concept: Torsten Köchlin, Silke Krieg Cover Image: Sebastian Mühleis and Christian Herzog The print edition of this book is printed by Lightning Source, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom ISBN (Print): 978­3­95796­060­3 ISBN (PDF): 978­3­95796­061­0 ISBN (EPUB): 978­3­95796­062­7 DOI: 10.14619/011 The digital editions of this publication can be downloaded freely at: www.meson­press.com Funded by the EU major project Innovation Incubator Lüneburg This Publication is licensed under the CC­BY­SA 4.0 Inter­ national. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­sa/4.0/ Contents Foreword by the Series Editors 9 Foreword by the Author 17 [ 1 ] Beveridge 23 [ 2 ] Pilkington 45 [ 3 ] Annan 65 [ 4 ] Hunt 85 [ 5 ] Peacock 107 [ 6 ] After Peacock: The Politics Of Digital 131 [ 7 ] Davies and the Digital Licence Fee 159 [ 8 ] The BBC in the Digital Century 183 Foreword by the Series Editors The inspiration for publishing this book has its origins in the early stages of my PhD research, a comparative study of British and German media and communication policies, at Loughborough University. The research relied on a mixture of elite interviews and archival records. With regard to the former, my approach was to outline key processes and events in British and German media and communications policy and to then identify the key figures instrumental in shaping the respective developments at crucial historical junctures and points in time.1 In 2007, when designing a first list of possible informants, my PhD supervisor Peter Golding suggested I contact David Elstein, who responded swiftly and sent me his Oxford Lectures. I found the lecture series extremely useful and still regard it as an authoritative source on the history of British broadcasting policy. The lectures were never published and I am grateful for having a chance to make them available to a wider readership. In his seminal work Media and Power James Curran (2000) presents British media history as a series of competing narra­ tives.2 David Elstein’s narrative champions individual choice and economic freedom. With regard to the funding of the BBC Elstein is a strong advocate of subscription, a policy measure advocated by some authors affiliated with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) since the 1960s (e.g. Caine 1966,1968; Veljanovski and Bishop 1983).3 David Elstein has made a case for a coherent alternative rationale for funding public service content through a contestable fund (see e.g. Elstein 1991, 2000, 2005).4 Normative assumptions that public service broadcasters create market distortions and inefficiencies in the amount of public money spent in creating public value underpin his rigorous, at times revisionist, analysis. 10 This publication has been made possible by the EU Innovation Incubator at Leuphana University Lüneburg, a major research­ driven project for regional development with a total volume of EUR 98 million running from 2010 to 2015, funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the State of Lower Saxony. The Innovation Incubator is a unique project designed to create enduring economic effects in the areas of sustainable energy, health, and digital media. Roughly, the Incubator area of digital media can be subdivided into three projects con­ cerned with public service broadcasting (Public Service Media 2.0 Lab), publishing (Hybrid Publishing Lab) and gamification (Gamification Lab). These projects develop under the umbrella of the Centre for Digital Cultures (CDC), which will persist beyond the funding period.5 The flagship project of the Hybrid Publishing Lab is meson press, and I would like to thank my meson press colleagues Sebastian Mühleis, Marcus Burkhardt and Andreas Kirchner for the many hours they invested in this project. The series Media, Democracy & Political Process was launched by members of the Public Service Media 2.0 Lab, namely Volker Grassmuck, Christian Heise (Hybrid Publishing Lab), Orkan Torun and myself. It sets out to address the impacts of digitisation on politics, culture and society and explores how the emergence of digital communication affects established modes of policy­mak­ ing and representation as well as socio­cultural values, identities and networks. Amongst the questions that publications appear­ ing in the series seek to answer are: What consequences arise from the digital shift for traditional political institutions and proc­ esses of decision­making and for the media and communication systems in twenty­first century democracies? What new opportu­ nities and risks are posed by digital technologies in terms of civic engagement and more transparent and inclusive policy­making processes? Which new forms of public sphere, social change and cultural techniques are evolving? These and related questions are addressed from a variety of perspectives, incorporating historical approaches and cross­country comparative research. The series seeks to publish original research and contributions by 11 experts and practitioners from the fields of politics, civil society, non­governmental organisations and regulatory agencies. It aims to contribute to the lively discourse on political and social implications of digital media technologies while working towards models and options for addressing current socio­political and ­cultural challenges. Christian Herzog Endnotes 1 Potschka, Christian. Towards a Market in Broadcasting: Communications Policy in the UK and Germany. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 8. 2 Curran, James. Media and Power. London: Routledge, 2002. 3 Caine, Sir Sydney. Prices for Primary Producers. London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1966; Caine, Sir Sydney. Paying for TV?. London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1968; Veljanovski, Cento G. and Bishop, William D. Choice by Cable: The Economics of a New Era in Television. London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1983. 4 Elstein, David. “Competing with the Public Sector in Broadcasting.” Economic Affairs 20, no. 4 (2000): 13–20; Elstein, David. “The James MacTaggart Lecture 1991. The Future of Television: Market Forces and Social Values.” In Television Policy: The MacTaggart Lectures, edited by Bob Franklin, 147–155. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005; Elstein, David. “Public Service Broadcasting in the Digital Age.” Economic Affairs 25, no. 4 (2005): 68–70. 5 Beyes, Timon, Christian Herzog and Christian Heise. Forthcoming. “Centre for Digital Cultures.” In The Sage International Encyclopedia of Mass Media & Society, edited by Debra Merskin. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Foreword by the Author Being invited to publish lectures delivered many years previously is a double­edged sword. At one level, it is pleasing for material which found only a small audience at the time to be made generally available. At another level, the risk of finding one’s old judgements to have been overtaken by events or subsequent scholarship is a little unnerving. Fortunately, few people in academia have chosen to compare and contrast the unusual British phenomenon of regularly examining the broadcasting options faced by society, with major reports (if we exclude the more limited inquiry by Lord Hunt) every ten to fifteen years after 1945 (Beveridge in 1950, Pilkington in 1962, Annan in 1977 and Peacock in 1986). At the time the lectures were delivered, in 1999, it was not clear whether a review of the BBC’s finances that year, led by economist Gavyn Davies, would be a full survey – expanding, as Peacock had, well beyond its limited brief – or more like Hunt in its narrow focus. If Davies kept to his brief, I fully expected a new major review to be commissioned. It never happened. Thirty years on, despite massive changes in the technology and ecology of broadcasting, no UK govern­ ment has felt the need – as one politician dismissively described the process – to pull up the plant in order to examine its roots. Instead, the regulator created in the 2003 Communications Act, Ofcom, has from time to time reported on public service broadcasting (PSB), even as the sector it directly regulates – the commercial public service channels, ITV, Channel 4 and Five – steadily ran down its PSB supply. Frustratingly, Ofcom has no leverage over the BBC, which is responsible for 90% of all PSB output. Meanwhile, successive reviews of the BBC’s Charter have largely ignored the wider PSB context that the four major reports from the post­war years had addressed. In 2003, at the invitation of the then Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, John Whittingdale, I set up the 14 Broadcasting Policy Group, which published a report on the future of the BBC, “Beyond The Charter,” explicitly placing its recommendations in the context of the growing crisis in PSB.1 In a surprise appointment after the May 2015 election, Whittingdale was given the actual job of Secretary of State. He had, just in February, led a House of Commons Select Committee inquiry into the future of the BBC. It will be interesting to see what parts of that Committee’s report, or indeed the BPG’s report, find their way into government policy as the BBC seeks to negotiate a new Charter for 2017. My Oxford Lectures lack the kind of formal apparatus (references, footnotes, sources) that academics these days would expect. They were written to be delivered and heard, with only the under­ lying reports being assumed to be required reading.