RTS Cambridge 2007: Contrasting Horizons: Perspectives From A Wider World

Ed Richards

This morning’s session is about The Future of Public Service Broadcasting.

We find ourselves today at a pivotal moment in this debate, because we have reached a watershed in the evolution of our public service broadcasting system.

Indeed, we might consider this to be the last Cambridge convention of the linear broadcasting era. In reality that was two, if not four, years ago.
It is certainly the last Cambridge convention where digital switchover will be something in the future, because DSO starts in just over a month in Copeland and in two year’s time, analogue transmission will be a memory for at least parts of the country.
In the three years since our first PSB Review, the changes that we predicted in our first review of Public Service Broadcasting have happened faster and deeper than we envisaged.
And now, we must see today’s public service debate in the context of a world in which more than half of UK households have broadband.
And a world in which a generation are growing up with and taking advantage of high speed internet, on–demand services, gaming, mobile applications, social networking and the host of other opportunities available.
We expect to create and contribute to content as much as to listen and to watch it.

We are entering a mobile, online and on-demand world where traditional linear broadcasting will be crucial, but only one of many games in town.

As James Purnell set out in his keynote speech on Thursday, this means we are entering a challenging phase for public service broadcasting.

The Secretary of State spoke of open markets, consumers able to find and create what they want, but he also placed universally available, high-quality public service content at the heart of his vision.

And if the definition of a hedgehog is someone who values the presence of universally available, high-quality content, meeting public service purposes, delivered by a diverse plurality of public and private organisations – then I guess I must confess my hedgehog tendencies in public.

It is against this background that, a few days ago, we published the Terms and Reference for our next PSB Review.

It aims to establish an analytical framework for this Review which allows us to identify and concentrate on the key questions that will shape and focus the debate.

So, we have set ourselves four clear questions:

What impact does intervention aim to achieve?
Are these goals currently being achieved?
What does the future look like with no changes to the policy framework?
What does PSB need to deliver in the future and how can we best deliver public service in the digital age?

And because these questions are now quite urgent and because we have no interest in making work for work’s sake, we will not start from scratch with the question of whether the British public value PSB programming, which we looked at so carefully last time.

Nor will we revisit in any depth the core purposes and characteristics which define the aims of PSB set out three years ago and around which I hope there is some consensus.

We will focus on the transition from the old system and the chance to fashion a new one for the digital age.

The last year or so has produced some wonderful films and programming. From Longford, Life on Mars, the Queen, to Paul Merton in China.

It won't escape your notice that all the examples I have given are UK originated and funded productions. Of course, I could have named a host of fantastic imported programming. But I didn't. Why?

Because, securing the continued provision of high quality UK originated content in as much diversity and range, with as much creativity and originality as possible, sits at the heart of our challenge in the next PSB Review.

That content is one of the strengths of today's UK broadcasting system. It sets us apart from many global broadcasting systems and makes us the envy of many more.

We will shortly publish the results of our work on children's programming; the research carried out as part of that project has hinted at the size of the problem we might face.

In children’s, spend on original programming by the commercial PSBs has fallen by a half since 1998;
But in 2006, PSBs still accounted for 90% of first-run original programming.

This situation has important consequences. It certainly means that less of our programming reflects UK culture. Despite an explosion of channels, an apparent proliferation of content, it also potentially means a less rich and less diverse mix of programming for the British viewer.

It also won’t have escaped your notice that the examples I gave earlier were taken from the output of each of the public service broadcasters sitting on this Panel today.

That’s partly gratuitous flattery, but it’s also because what we have today is a plurality of PSB provision which ensures competition for quality – a principle endorsed very clearly by the Secretary of State on Thursday.

Indeed, a central part of our first PSB Review was establishing plurality beyond the BBC as a key feature of maintaining and strengthening public service broadcasting.

We will of course revisit and reconsider that position and ask whether plurality still remains necessary across the PSB waterfront.

We need to ask ourselves whether we believe that plurality is needed for all genres, all of the time?

We need to ask whether PSB itself needs to be tethered to a particular set of institutions – or whether a wider set of content, or a wider set of new or existing organisations should be part of this story too.

Indeed we need to ask whether existing PSB institutions themselves will still want to be part of the PSB mix for the future – whether the benefits for them still outweigh the cost of the obligations that go with it.

We must answer those questions against the backdrop of the world that I described at the start and which we have discussed extensively over the last two days.

We all know the distinction today between “TV” and “non-TV” services is becoming more and more blurred, that consumption habits are changing and evolving and that in turn today’s public service providers are taking advantage of the new opportunities opening up: iPlayer, 4 on Demand, ITV.com, Five Download, Sky Broadband, Virgin on Demand, to name a few.
So, we must frame this debate in that context and evaluate how the wider set of services delivered by electronic communications networks (not just broadcast transmission) might make a contribution to meeting public purposes.
And finally, when we talk about the future of public service broadcasting we must do so recognising that the Government has made clear that the future distribution of funding is on the agenda.
Funding is, of course, a means, not an end. We must first seek to achieve some consensus about what we want from PSB and then consider how best to fund it.

As our views on funding develop, it may well also mean revisiting the overarching governance and accountability processes for public service delivery, to ask whether they can be adapted and improved for a digital age.

In relation to all of these questions it is easy to now see that the last few years have been shadow boxing. What we will have over the next 12-24 months is the real debate about the public service future.

It will test whether we truly have the confidence and the creativity as businesses, as broadcasters, as producers and as policy makers, to re-imagine our PSB system for the digital age, and to re-imagine it in a way which builds upon the best of the old and, of course, embraces the opportunity of the new.

Thank you.

RTS Cambridge 2007: Contrasting Horizons: Perspectives From A Wider World

Ed Richards

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