Have just returned from a very restful three weeks in Italy – so restful, I did not manage to blog! Hope to rectify that over the next couple of days, but in the meantime I am preparing for Radio 4′s Any Questions – I am on the panel for this evening’s broadcast (along with Bonnie Greer, Tim Montgomery and Lord Ramsbotham). If you would like to hear the discussion, the link to the BBC website is http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/anyquestions.shtml
Continuing the debate on the Brand and Ross ructions
Perhaps this blog thing really works. Last week I did some filming for the Politics Show on the basis of a ‘blogversation’ with Tim Montgomerie from Conservative Home and this morning I am woken by a call from Radio Wales asking me to do a piece about Brand and Ross (the subject of yesterday’s posting). This gave me a chance to set the row over obscene ‘phone messages in the wider context of the debate over public service broadcasting.
Over the years, especially when Government has been looking at the BBC Charter and the license fee arrangements, I have been ‘consulted’ by members of the BBC’s expansive public affairs team. I have also attended several splendid lunches ostensibly held so the DG of the BBC can hear the insights of assembled opinion formers. It took me some time to realise these events aren’t about listening at all – they are an opportunity for BBC executives to do their well rehearsed big sell of the Corporation.
I got to understand this when, a few years ago, I approached a couple of these events with a strong opinion of my own. As I expounded my ideas about the future of public service broadcasting I sensed from the shuffling feet and glazed eyes that my insights were about as welcome and respected as those of the man in the huge overcoat who once sat next to me on a bus and claimed to be able to control the weather with his feet.
But on Radio Wales this morning I had a captive audience. Having mentioned in passing my thesis that the economic downturn will see greater intolerance towards bad behaviour by the rich and privileged, and recognising also the specific stupidity and bad taste of the Andrew Sachs episode (as too in fairness have Brand and Ross) I went on to say that the case of public service broadcasting needed to rest on two pillars: quality and public value.
They may not be to my taste, but arguably quality is not the problem with Brand and Ross. What they do, they do well, commanding impressive listening and viewing figures and a loyal following, particularly among the young, a group that has many other options for its entertainment than the BBC But it is much harder to make the public value case for their broadcasting.
The unwelcome question I asked across the salmon mousse at all those audiences with BBC executives was ‘can everyone who works for the Corporation explain the public service purpose of what they do?’ This is easy enough for the likes of David Attenborough and Andrew Marr. Which is why they are the ones at the lunches and who get wheeled out at Charter renewal time. As someone once said the BBC can be relied upon to get ‘old time religion’ when its future is up for grabs (the someone in person being Mark Thompson, then head of C4) but what does the public service obligation mean for Bruce Forsyth, Gary Lineker, or the producers of Spooks?
The answer might be subtle. It may rely a great deal on the credible argument that quality programming is itself in the public interest (especially now we live in a world when the economics of content production are becoming tougher and tougher) but in the end BBC producers and presenters have to show that they have ambitions and sensibilities beyond those who provide the content for commercial broadcasters.
That the BBC can cause a row like this is, in itself, an important sign of its importance as a public institution. Had Brand’s show been on Bravo or Virgin, and had it not been that we, as licence fee payers, felt that we had been compelled to pay for it, there would have been much less of a row. But this was exactly the problem with the climate in which Ross and Brand’s stuff was allowed to go out. The values of Brand’s programme seemed indistinguishable from those which might animate a cheap and nasty satellite channel.
A few years ago this idea that everyone be able to explain why working for the BBC (and being paid for by the citizen) made them different fell on deaf ears. Perhaps now it should be taken more seriously. Especially at a time when the BBC is fighting an aggressive campaign against the idea that its riches should be spread around the other ailing sectors of public service broadcasting.
Lurching to the left on my second moral maze
I found myself lurching to the left on my second moral maze last night. The discussion was on the morality of capitalism. It wasn’t a terribly balanced panel as Will Self and Claire Fox are both left leaning and Melanie Philips, while socially conservative, is a vocal critique of the excesses of consumerist individualism. Indeed, as an advocate of the social market economy, I might have been the most pro-capitalist of us all.
The problem was that the more I quizzed our two witnesses defending the free market the more frustrated I became. Neither Richard North from the Institute of Economic Affairs, nor Eamon Butler from the Adam Smith Institute, seemed willing to admit there are inherent problems of modern financial and consumer capitalism that have been exposed by the current crisis. For Richard North the problem wasn’t that capitalism had failed but that the people running it had been unwise and unprofessional. For Eamon Butler the problem wasn’t capitalism but bad regulation by the state. While both had to recognise that things have gone seriously wrong now, they both gave the clear impression that when the worst of the storm has passed they will again be standard bearers for free markets, minimal regulation and a residual state.
This prompted me to think back to a fantastic event we held last week marking the publication of the second volume of Bernard Donoghue’s diaries, covering the last years of the 1974-79 Labour administration. Listening to Bernard and also to former Labour MPs Shirley Williams and David Marquand it was obvious that the events of the time had left deep scars. The winter of discontent exposed profound failings in both the Labour Movement (particularly the inability of trade union leaders to control their shop stewards) and the corporatist model of decision making. As Labour confronted those failings it lurched first to the left and then eventually to a new centre.
My worry now about the champions of free markets is that they don’t seem ready to engage in this kind of soul searching. Instead the search is on for an easy scapegoat so that when the good economic times come back they too can return to the old slogans and certainties. Markets are a brilliant mechanism for processing information and matching demand and supply. The desire to succeed at business has driven innovation, raised productivity and made us all materially better off. But if the friends of capitalism aren’t willing to ask hard questions and come up with brave and cogent answers they will leave this territory to those who think the problem is the market itself.
Caution: Creativity
On Tuesday we had Sir Michael Lyons in the house discussing his review of public service broadcasting. He made a powerful case, and stood up well to some searching questions from the audience (you can hear it shortly, and from next week will be able to see it in edited form on this website)
A key debate is whether the so-called ‘excess’ licence fee (the money was added in the last settlement to the BBC’s budget to cover the costs of digital switchover) should in time be given to Channel Four and other broadcasters to support them in their public service role, and thus ensure a diversity of content provision.
Lyon’s response is firstly that the BBC itself faces constant demands for better services (for example, more regional content) so it could spend the ‘excess’ many times over.
Second, while he recognises the problems faced by Channel Four as markets fragment and advertising revenues fall, Lyons does not think top slicing the license fee is the right response, particularly because to do so would change the character of C4 and thus be self-defeating.
But the core of the Lyons thesis is that what matters to the public is diversity of content and of platforms not diversity of supply. If this is the goal it is one, he argues, the BBC is quite capable of discharging on its own.
Michael Lyons has built a robust argument that is an effective counter to laziness of the excess licence fee argument. However, Channel Four too is making a strong case and the common sense view that we need diversity of supply in PSB as in other public services will be hard to resist.
As it makes it case the BBC will have, as always, to try to avoid the charge of arrogance. It was with this in mind that a particular article in The Times caught my eye. A woman is being threatened with a lawsuit by the BBC for posting free knitting patterns of Dr Who baddies on the internet (under a creative commons licence). This woman was forced to remove the patterns because of copyright infringement. The case continues, but I think that the BBC is missing a trick.
As we are entering an era of what Lawrence Lessig at the University of Stamford called a ‘read/ write’ culture, it is important that publishers begin to take notice of the benefits presented to them by fans.
In Japan the manga publishers have long had, and benefited from, a tacit agreement with their fans that they will look the other way when fans create new books about existing characters, sometimes taking them in entirely new directions.
Surely the BBC could, and should, view this model of shared intellectual property in the light of its public service role of encouraging creativity and innovation.
On an unrelated topic, the always engaging Daniel Finkelstein wrote a fascinating column yesterday about the happiness debate. It’s definitely worth a read.
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