Equity believes that the traditions and high quality of British public service broadcasting should be respected and preserved even in a time when broadcasting is going through revolutionary change. But that doesn’t mean the union feels that things can remain as they are.
The future shape of public sector broadcasting will be determined by the result of the next general election. There are voices on all sides of the political debate who think that the public service model which has served this country since the end of World War 2 is no longer appropriate for the digital era. They argue that fundamental reform is necessary.
Public service broadcasting in the UK is on the defensive. Its high standards and tradition of quality are being undermined.
In June 2009 the government published Digital Britain. Equity welcomed much of the report – especially those elements that sought to introduce new powers to tackle internet piracy – but in other areas the report was a disappointment.
While Digital Britain focused on ensuring that every home should have access to the hardware necessary to receive high-speed broadband, there was virtually no mention of the need to continue to produce the high-quality content necessary to make ownership of fast broadband worthwhile for the British public.
More crucially, however, the report failed to the address continuing problem of ensuring that public service broadcasting is securely funded for the long-term. The process of renewing the licence fee has become a political cudgel used by politicians of all sides to batter the BBC. While Equity supports the licence fee, we believe that it should never be used to secure advantage for narrow party political or commercial interests.
Outside parliament, perhaps sensing an opportunity to weaken a major rival, voices from the commercial sector – most notably James Murdoch, European Chairman of News Corporation and son of Rupert – have been raised in demands that Britain’s public sector broadcasters be dramatically cut back. News Corporation’s newspaper and news divisions have found it difficult to respond to the digital era. Newspapers, in particular, have seen a steep sharpening in the long-term trend of falling readership. They find it difficult to compete with online news sources and have chosen to target the BBC’s global success in transferring the ethos of public service media provision to the digital era.
“The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision,” James Murdoch told the Edinburgh Television Festival in August 2009. “It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it.”
News Corporation’s difficulties in selling newspapers have nothing to do with the BBC – The Sun and The Times readership would be falling whether the BBC existed or not. Newspaper sales have been falling around the world for decades and the downward trend is growing faster everywhere.
But News Corporation is taking the opportunity to attack the BBC because it has sensed a moment of opportunity.
Over recent months the BBC has been under constant attack in newspapers such as The Daily Express and The Daily Mail for waste, excessive bureaucracy and more. Scandals such as the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s unsavoury comments about Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter have added to the pressure on the BBC.
In particular there have been calls for the BBC to reveal how much it pays its star performers.
The BBC responded by giving in to this pressure. In February 2010 they decided, for the first time, to release details of the amount it pays performers and, at the same time, announced that it was imposing across-the-board cuts in their pay. The performers and presenters who attract people to watch BBC productions are paying a high price – and it is not just the highly paid stars who are being forced to carry this burden. The great majority of those affected will be performers who receive very modest payment from the BBC.
Predictably, the press used the release of this information on pay to attack the BBC over the small elite of presenters and artists whose popularity has allowed them to negotiate very large contracts. Instead of standing up to this pressure and arguing its case – noting, for example, that spending on performers and presenters equalled less than 7 per cent of BBC licence fee expenditure; or that those highly paid performers earned far more for the BBC through sales via BBC Worldwide than they were paid; or that most performers’ contracts were for considerably less than £1,000 – the BBC surrendered and announced it was unilaterally cutting performers’ wages without negotiation their union or their agents.
Highly paid executives and managers, however, safe behind their relative anonymity, continue to enjoy their substantial rewards from the corporation.
Further confirmation that the BBC and the entire framework of public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom was on the retreat arrived in early March, when Mark Thompson announced the BBC’s strategy review. In a doomed attempt to appease those who want fundamental cuts to the BBC’s services, the review laid out a line of sacrificial offering. Radio stations BBC 6 Music and Asian Network were to be axed. BBC Online is to be cut by one quarter with hundreds of websites shut. And, in an apparent reversal of a commitment to children’s broadcasting, BBC Blast and Switch are both to be closed.
Whilst we have been promised that the money saved through these deep and damaging cuts will be reinvested into the production of more quality drama this news will be little consolation to our members working as presenters on the services that are closing.
And it will be no consolation at all to those audiences who valued these services.
Nor it will not succeed in placating those who are demanding reductions in the size and strength of the BBC. They are not interested in saving money, their objection to public service broadcasting is not practical, it is ideological.
The evidence that, having already received many yards of concessions, the opponents of public service will continue to demand mile after mile of cuts is evident in the response of News Corporation to the BBC’s cuts.
“If the BBC were serious about reform it would consider selling Radio 1 and getting out of the pop music business, which is hardly ill-served by others. It would give up BBC Three, which has no rationale at all. It would get tough on executive pay, and admit that it cannot continue to be regulated by a trust that is also its cheerleader. The new proposals were written to serve the best interests of the BBC, not the public. The next government will need to take on what Channel 4’s chairman last year described as ‘the most powerful and effective lobbying organisation in Britain’. Until then, Auntie Beeb’s warm embrace will simultaneously be a stranglehold that is unpleasant and untenable.”
Editorial in The Times, February 26, 2010.
Those who are seeking to undermine public service broadcasting will not be content until all that is left of one great institutions of post-war Britain is an irrelevant, unpopular rump. In the face of such criticism the BBC should not be retreating from the public service tradition. It should not be offering concessions. Appeasement is not the answer. It should, instead, be celebrating the many successes of public service broadcasting. It should be rallying the support of the vast majority of the British public who value the information and entertainment that this tradition has secured for the citizens of our nation. It should be making the case for the commercial and cultural benefits that the modest investment we make into public service broadcasting delivers for Britain around the world.
The public sector tradition is built around the simple notion of respect.
Public sector broadcasting respects the audience – looking for ways to meet those needs that cannot be met by the market and commercial providers.
Public service broadcasting respects quality – it provides the opportunity to take risks and to explore new ways of working.
And a strong pubic service broadcaster respects artists, giving them a secure place to work that does not demand instant commercial returns.
This foundation of respect has delivered to the United Kingdom an enviable reputation for high quality television and radio throughout the world. It supports other arts industries – film, theatre and music – that bring Britain prestige and considerable financial gain. It secures the expertise in technical crafts and permits innovation in new technologies that makes the British arts sector a world leader. Public service broadcasting extends Britain’s influence abroad and positively shapes how we are seen by the citizens of other nations. It is not BSkyB that overseas audiences think of when they consider the quality of British broadcasting, it is BBC, ITV and Channel 4.
If the likes of News Corporation cannot compete with the services the BBC provides then they need to improve their services, not demand that the BBC be removed from the market so that they can then levy large charges on the public for inferior goods.
By taking risks, for example on the internet or in digital radio, the BBC has created audiences that did not exist or that commercial broadcasters could not reach. The ability of the BBC to create popular channels for niche audiences should be celebrated, not used as an excuse to dismantle successful and popular institutions. It does not follow that because its competitors now want to exploit markets created by the BBC that public service broadcaster should automatically be forced to accede to their demands.
Commercial interests have no moral or legal right to demand that public providers step aside from areas of the market just because, having been seeded by public money, there is now the potential for these new audiences to be exploited for profit.
If commercial interests like News Corporation truly believed in competition they would focus their energies on creating content that was irresistible to audiences rather than seeking to create monopolies for themselves by denying the role of public service broadcasters. Sadly, the track record of companies like News Corporation in the area of content generation is disappointing.
The vision of public service broadcasting presented by the BBC’s service review is a negative one – one that will see the public sector remit forever on the back foot, cutting back and being sliced away until there remains only a tiny, ineffective core that represents no threat to commercial interests but which is also incapable of serving the whole nation.
Equity believes our members, and our nation, deserve respect. We believe that we are best served by a public service broadcaster that is willing to take risks, to push boundaries and to explore new ways of providing services to the public.
RESPECT FOR PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
1. FAIR PAY FOR PERFORMERS
The BBC’s recent attack on performers’ pay is inexcusable. Most performers earn relatively little from television and Equity believes that their pay should not be made a political football. In the private sector too many low and no budget productions are expecting performers to work for without pay – and breaching minimum wage legislation – we believe that such exploitation should stop.
2. INCREASED PRODUCTION
Equity welcomes the BBC Trust’s commitment in the recent Strategic Review to produce more, high-quality television drama in this country and we would encourage other broadcasters to follow that path. But we are concerned that this should not simply come from shuffling funds away from other areas of production such as radio.
3. ARTISTIC LEADERSHIP
The best programmes and films are produced when the artists – performers, writers, directors – are given the freedom to create without undue bureaucratic entanglement. We would like to see the UK film and television sector give more freedom to these artists to inspire us.
4. LESS BUREAUCRACY
While the BBC trumpets cuts to the pay of performers, its executives lose their bonuses at worst. But those working in the industry know that the process of getting a programme made or funding a film is longer and more inefficient than ever. Public sector broadcasters should focus on cutting the red-tape that blocks the route to production.
5. SECURE FUNDING
Equity supports the public funding of public service broadcasters and the licence fee. We also believe that the government and broadcasters should work together to find innovative ways to fund the continuation of public service broadcasting in the long term. The debate over licence fee renewal should cease to be used by politicians as a weapon against public service broadcasters.
6. LOCAL FOCUS
Talent in the UK is not limited to the south east of England. We support moves to ensure that production by public and private companies is more evenly distributed around the country not just so money and jobs are more fairly spread but also so that media output becomes more representative of all the audiences it serves in the UK.