A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION: CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD A report on the future of public service television in the UK in the 21st century www.futureoftv.org.uk 1 2 Contents Foreword by David Puttnam 4 Introduction 7 Chapter 1: Television and public service 14 Chapter 2: Principles of public service for the 21st century 28 Chapter 3: Television in a rapidly changing world: channels, content and platforms 38 Chapter 4: The BBC 50 Chapter 5: Channel 4 66 Chapter 6: ITV and Channel 5 78 Chapter 7: New sources of public service content 90 Chapter 8: TV: a diverse environment? 102 Chapter 9: Nations and regions 114 Chapter 10: Content diversity 128 Chapter 11: Talent development and training 144 Chapter 12: Conclusion and recommendations 152 Appendix 1: Sir David Normington’s proposals for appointing the BBC board 160 Appendix 2: BAFTA members’ survey 164 Appendix 3: Onora O’Neill, ‘Public service broadcasting, public value and public goods’ 172 Appendix 4: Inquiry events 176 Acknowledgements 179 3 Foreword by Lord Puttnam Public service broadcasting is a noble 20th If only the same could be said of much of century concept. Sitting down to write this our national popular press. Our democracy preface just a few days before the most suffers a distorting effect in the form of significant British political event of my mendacious axe-grinding on the part of most lifetime, with no idea of what the result might of the tabloid newspapers. In his brilliant be, there is every temptation to escape into new book, Enough Said, the former director neutral generalities. general of the BBC Mark Thompson writes that: That would be a mistake. “Intolerance and illiberalism are on the rise If the past few months have taught me almost everywhere. Lies go unchecked. At anything, it is that our need for trusted home, boundaries – of political responsibility, sources of information, comprised of tolerant mutual respect, basic civility – which seemed balanced opinion, based on the very best secure a mere decade ago, are broken by available evidence, has never been greater. the week.”1 For 40 years, a mixture of distortion and Our Inquiry set out to discover if the concept parody with regards to the operation of of public service broadcasting could survive the European Union has been allowed to in the hyper-commercial, market dominated continue unchallenged, to the point at which media environment of the 21st century. any serious discussion of its strengths and weaknesses became impossible. In the pages that follow I believe that we have made that case that, not only do the public The virulence of much of the referendum believe it should survive, but that our evolved debate has at times been so shocking that PSB ecology functions as the most reliable there seems little prospect that, whichever bulwark available to truly plural and informed way the vote goes, anything like ‘normal democracy in its battle against market political service’ is likely to be resumed for a totalitarianism. very long time. The successful democracies of the 21st However, whilst at times frustrating, for century are likely to be those in which the viewers and listeners as much as the provision of news and information is rapid, practitioners, the UK’s public service accurate and trusted. ‘Rapidity’ is now a broadcasters have, over the final weeks of given, ‘accuracy’ remains a challenge, but the campaign, behaved with very creditable ‘trust’ is proving increasingly elusive. restraint and responsibility. It is a commonplace to believe that trust lies at the heart of a sustainable democracy, yet as Mark Thompson suggests, it is evaporating on a daily basis and, once shredded, could prove all but impossible to regain. 1 Mark Thompson, Enough Said: What’s gone wrong with the language of politics? London: Bodley Head, 2016. 4 To instruct democracy, if possible to reanimate its beliefs…such is the first duty imposed on those who would guide society. Alexis de Tocqueville (1863) Clearly this is a battle we are losing as the “It is a revered national institution, and a public has made it clear that they no longer familiar treasured companion. It is a cultural, have any faith in the press and are developing economic and diplomatic force that touches increasing reservations about television. the lives of almost all of those who live in the UK and hundreds of millions beyond these I think most people accept that knowledge shores.” and understanding play a vital role in our ability to navigate the complexities and Of what else in British life could a similar opportunities of our times. So where do we claim be made? look for guidance; what defines an informed and active citizen? Our report attempts to analyse both the strengths of, and the threats to, the whole of This report argues that a well-resourced and our PSB ecology, and to offer an evidence- fully independent public service television based argument for the conditions under system that is free of political coercion offers which it can, not just survive, but thrive. our most reliable means of rebuilding public trust and accountability. From time to time we glimpse the possibility of renewal, all too frequently evolving out of tragedy; we have to get better at grasping and building upon the lessons of Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday, the deaths David Puttnam of Milly Dowler and Dr David Kelly and, as I 18th June 2016 write, the murder of Jo Cox MP. I started out by suggesting that public service broadcasting was a ‘noble idea’. The issue surely facing us is whether we can find the nobility to nurture and protect it. In his introduction to the white paper on charter renewal the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, John Whittingdale, MP says of the BBC: 2 Quoted in Department for Media, Culture & Sport, A BBC for the future: a broadcaster of distinction, white paper, May 2016, p. 5. 5 INTRO- DUCTION TELEVISION AND PUBLIC SERVICE 6 Welcome Television is leading a charmed Television has both grown and shrunk: it existence. After all, it is no longer adorns the walls of our shared spaces but is simultaneously mobile and portable. Where supposed to exist. With the rise of do you not now find television? the internet and the widespread availability of digital platforms, Even more puzzling than the resilience of the television experience is the fact that in what is the point in the 21st century the UK, the heartland of creative innovation of a 20th century technology that and deregulated markets, the vast majority broadcasts from a central point of the content consumed is provided by a out to millions of viewers who group of people who are described as ‘public service broadcasters’ and whose motivation are increasingly preoccupied with is not reducible to profits alone but instead making, circulating and consuming to a shared commitment to pursue a range non-broadcast content on their of political, social and cultural objectives. smartphones and iPads? This too has been dismissed as a project without a future. “Public service broadcasting will soon be dead,” argued the former ITV How can television with its baggage of chief executive Richard Eyre in 1999. “It ‘mass audiences’ and one-way transmissions will soon be dead because it relies on an compete with a digital universe that active broadcaster and a passive viewer.”4 embodies the more fragmented and Yet millions of “passive viewers” continue to decentred nature of the way we live today? consume, on average, just under four hours The American writer George Gilder noticed a day of material that combines, in Eyre’s this development back in 1994, just after the language, “the wholesome, healthy and emergence of the web. He predicted that carefully crafted” with the “easily digestible, “TV will die because it affronts human nature: pre-packaged, and the undemanding.” the drive to self-improvement and autonomy that lifted the race from the muck and offers One of the reasons for these apocalyptic the only promise for triumph in our current visions of TV’s imminent demise is the adversities.”3 confusion between television as a specific technology and its status as a cultural form. But TV hasn’t died. In fact it has stubbornly The media commentator Michael Wolff refused to disappear in the face of the white highlights the frequent conflation between heat of the digital revolution. Contrary to TV “as a business model”, which he argues is what people like Gilder predicted, the internet incredibly healthy, and TV as a “distribution hasn’t killed television but actually extended channel” whose future is far less certain. He its appeal – liberating it from the confines concludes that there is little reason to believe of the living room where it sat unchallenged that “people will stop watching TV, even if for half a century and propelling it, via they stop watching the TV.”5 new screens, into our bedrooms, kitchens, toilets, offices, buses, trains and streets. 3 George Gilder, Life After Television: The Coming Transformation of Media and American Life, London: W.W. Norton, 1994, p.16 4 Richard Eyre, MacTaggart Memorial Lecture, August 28, 1999. 5 Michael Wolff, Television is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age, New York: Penguin, 2015, p. 28. 7 A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION So while we may not all watch Games of Television is, therefore, characterised by its Thrones at the same time and on the set in durability as well as an underlying fragility the living room, millions of us will nevertheless and uncertainty.