CCPSB

- Pol­icy Exchange report on Pub­lic Ser­vice Broad­cast­ing
– BBC Deci­sion Time pro­gram on License fee with Nick Robin­son
– CCPSB on Daily Pol­i­tics Show
– Dig­i­tal Econ­omy Bill – House of Lords Com­mit­tee Stage read­ing # 7
– PSB’s sug­gested to be allowed to reduce amount of adver­tis­ing
– IFNCs – ini­tial bid­ding organ­i­sa­tions con­firmed
– House of Lords Report on state of UK tele­vi­sion and film indus­try
– BBC to start report into the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of LBG com­mu­ni­ties in UK media

There was a sig­nif­i­cant amount of activ­ity with regard to PSB in the first part of 2010. The new year kicked off with a report from the Pol­icy Exchange; ‘Chang­ing The Chan­nel: A Case for Rad­i­cal Reform of Pub­lic Ser­vice Broad­cast­ing in the UK’, authored by Mark Oliver. The main themes are not really as rad­i­cal as the sub-title sug­gests but tread sim­i­lar ground to pre­vi­ous inves­ti­ga­tions about PSB restruc­ture, most notably the Pea­cock Report. It advo­cates a wider dis­tri­b­u­tion of the licence fee, the scal­ing back of the BBC to con­cen­trate on more qual­ity broad­cast­ing rather than rat­ings chas­ing, import­ing shows, high-price pre­sen­ters and sports rights. It crit­i­cised the BBC’s ‘bias towards reach’ as a major down­fall of an organ­i­sa­tion intended to fill the gap left by the mar­ket and not to com­pete on the same level. The gen­eral thread of the report, which seeks to break up the BBC and the license fee, is not sup­ported here.

Some of these argu­ments were then indi­rectly dis­cussed in last weeks BBC Deci­sion Time pro­gram on Radio 4, hosted by Nick Robin­son, that looked at the argu­ments for and against the License Fee. It was aired at 8pm on the 20th Jan­u­ary and the panel included David Gra­ham, David Mel­lor, Dame Sue Street, Emily Bell and Lord Birt, and they were tasked with dis­cussing the polit­i­cal argu­ments and the poten­tial impli­ca­tions of get­ting rid of the BBC license fee. The pro­gram was a wel­come reflex­ive piece on the cur­rent debates on the reg­u­la­tion of the UK media and the place of pub­lic ser­vice broad­cast­ing. It con­cluded that there was far more sup­port for the License Fee as it is seen as good value for money, £12 per month being con­sid­er­ably less than many other sub­scrip­tion channels.

Addi­tion­ally it has been sug­gested that the adver­tis­ing sup­ported PSB’s (ITV, Chan­nel 4 and Chan­nel 5) should be allowed to reduce their amount of adver­tis­ing by CRR (Con­tract Rights Renewal), cur­rently at 12 min­utes per hour, in order to increase the amount they can charge to adver­tis­ers. This was an issue also cov­ered in the Pol­icy Exchange report.

On the 14th of Jan­u­ary a mem­ber of the CCPSB steer­ing group, Car­ole Tongue (for­mer MEP), appeared on the Daily Pol­i­tics Show on BBC 2 and spoke on behalf of CCPSB. Greg Dyke was inter­viewed along­side Don Fos­ter MP, about the future of the BBC Licence Fee. She argued that the BBC is the core ele­ment in the PSB ecol­ogy, and the gen­eral audio-visual ecol­ogy, of the UK and that we should tam­per with the license fee ‘at our peril’. The argu­ment that was being put for­ward against the license fee was a form of direct trea­sury fund­ing, advo­cated by for­mer BBC chief Greg Dyke, to which Car­ole Tongue sug­gested that that this would cloud the pre­cise nature of cit­i­zens hav­ing a spe­cific stake in the broad­cast­ing insti­tu­tion. The rel­e­vant sec­tion of the pro­gram can be found here.

The Dig­i­tal Econ­omy Bill pro­gressed to the Houses of Lords Com­mit­tee Stage sit­ting num­ber 7 on the 8th Feb­ru­ary 2010, in which dis­cus­sion of amend­ments to clauses 31 to 44 of the Bill. The first day of the report stage will be on 1st March 2010. A link to some com­men­tary and the tran­scripts of the meet­ings can be found here.

This month also saw the final­is­ing of the ten­ders for the Inde­pen­dently Funded News Con­sor­tia (INFC) pilot regions (Wales, Scot­land and NE Eng­land) which was a com­mit­ment of the Dig­i­tal Britain White Paper pub­lished on 16th June 2009.

The com­pa­nies selected to ten­der are:

Wales:
- ITN with Newsquest, North­cliffe Media, Tin­dle, Boomerang and ITV Wales news staff;
– Tinop­o­lis;
– UTV with NWN Media Ltd.

Scot­land
- John­ston Press with the Her­ald and Times Group, Tinop­o­lis, and D C Thom­son;
– STV with ITN and Bauer Radio

Tyne Tees/Borders
- ITN with John­ston Press, Newsquest, Metro Radio, Uni­ver­sity of Sun­der­land and ITV Tyne Tees and Bor­ders news staff;
– Trin­ity Mir­ror with the Press Asso­ci­a­tion and Ten Alps;
– UTV.

The process is now in the ‘Dia­logue Phase’ where each company’s rel­e­vant com­pe­tency is dis­cussed. On the 19th Feb­ru­ary there will be an ‘invi­ta­tion to sub­mit final ten­der’ with the dead­line being the 3rd March, with the ten­der going to the most ‘eco­nom­i­cally advan­ta­geous ten­der’ – the best value for money. March will be taken up by dis­cus­sion of the final bid­ding organ­i­sa­tions with the announce­ment of the ‘pre­ferred bid­ders’ being in late March. The win­ning organ­i­sa­tion and DCMS will the enter final ironing-out of the offi­cial con­tract in April with the con­tract to be awarded in May, with the ser­vice to start in late May/ early June. The offi­cial sum­mary and time-line of events can be found here. What effect the gen­eral elec­tion will have on this process is obvi­ously unknown but some com­men­ta­tors have sug­gested that all this effort will ‘be in vain’ if the Con­ser­v­a­tives ‘tor­pedo the plans’, one inter­pre­ta­tion of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Shadow Cul­ture Sec­re­tary Jeremy Hunt’s words in which he was explicit in his oppo­si­tion to the Dig­i­tal Econ­omy Bill and the pilot schemes: ‘Any­one look­ing to sign one should under­stand that we’ll do all we can to legally unpick them if David Cameron enters Num­ber 10. ’ This puts a major span­ner in the works for the entire process as it under­mines the sig­nif­i­cant amount of work that has already gone into the scheme and makes any effort on behalf of the organ­i­sa­tion a waste of time thus dis­cour­ag­ing the nec­es­sary engage­ment with the process. How­ever, the chair­man of the DCMS selec­tion com­mit­tee stated at a recent con­fer­ence on the Nations & Regions in Sal­ford that the process was still going smoothly.

Addi­tion­ally the House of Lords Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mit­tee recently fin­ished an exten­sive report on the British Film and Tele­vi­sion Indus­tries. It was ordered to be printed on the 14th Jan­u­ary 2010 and a link to the report can be fol­lowed here. The BBC Trust are also to issue a report on the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of LGB peo­ple in the media, and specif­i­cally on the BBC. A link to the out­line of the research project can be found here.

In sum­mary it has been a busy start to the year in the world of PSB with a wide vari­ety of dif­fer­ent issues being raised. It is there­fore nec­es­sary that there is a voice to rep­re­sent those that sup­port the core ideals of PSB with­out com­pro­mis­ing its integrity as a ser­vice to both cit­i­zens as well as con­sumers. There are tec­tonic move­ments ahead for the UK media ecol­ogy either through the imple­men­ta­tion of the Dig­i­tal Econ­omy Bill or the result of the gen­eral elec­tion both of which will have sig­ni­fi­ca­tion impli­ca­tions for PSB specif­i­cally. The CCPSB will con­tinue to remain sup­port­ive of the Licence Fee and will uphold the con­tin­u­a­tion of PSB as a cor­ner­stone of qual­ity and integrity for both the UK media and British society.

Jan/Feb 2010 press & web arti­cles on Pub­lic Ser­vice Broad­cast­ing and sur­round­ing issues:
Guardian 18/01/10 — Ofcom may let broad­cast­ers sell fewer ads to push up prices
Press Gazette 21/01/10 — Jeremy Hunt: Tories will kill broad­cast news pilots
Tele­graph 22/01/10 — David Abra­ham is Chan­nel 4’s new CEO, but why?
All Media Scot­land 24/01/10 — All Media INFCs? Already Dead in the Water?
Guardian 25/01/10 — Will Tories and ITV be able to agree on the future of local TV news?
Paid Con­tent: UK 03/02/10 — IFNCs: Bid­ders Wav­ing Cit-J Pledge, But Timescale Looks Tight
Tele­graph 04/02/10 — Com­pe­ti­tion Com­mis­sion – It’s any­thing but.