Dear policy network colleagues - i'm forwarding an email from Ivor, which is a forwarded message from Paddy Barwise at the London Business School, which sets out a number of useful points about the Ofcom PSB review (see below). It might help others to formulate some responses of their own.
I'm particularly struck by his point 7 about new technologies. Being in the middle of some AHRC/BBC funded research on children, young people and news, with colleagues from Cardiff and Bournemouth, it's really striking how much children and young people continue to rely on TV for information, and how knowledgeable they are about the different forms this information takes. Of course the internet is mentioned too - but so far (and not all the analysis is complete yet), TV remains a key source of 'information about what's going on in the world' - a persistent definition offered of news by the kids. The other rather striking finding is that, in answer to a question about 'who in your home is most interested in news', the most frequent answer is 'mum.' As I say, not all the data is analysed yet, but it's unlikely to change much after nearly 100 cases, I would guess.
Re the various funding models - I'm persuaded by Paddy's arguments, and also have concerns about top-slicing the license fee.
hope to hear from others on this. The deadline for responses to Ofcom is 19th June - so Ivor needs to have feedback pretty soon.
best Máire MD
From: Ivor Gaber
Cc:
Date: 09/06/08 04:02 pm
Subject: Paddy Barwise on Ofcom PSB Consultation
Attachments:
1 Ofcom has done a great job in Phase One of this review, especially by commissioning some excellent research on the audience's view and trying to base the policy options on the results. Politicians and civil servants – who watch much less TV than most of the public – should read the research summary before making any policy decisions or recommendations.
2 A strong, independent, well-funded BBC is essential in order to ensure continuing large-scale provision of UK-produced free-to-air public service content, which is what the public wants. This is now even more important than in the past, because of the financial pressures on the advertising-funded PSBs. The BBC is by far the best public service broadcaster in the world, better value for money than the commercial players, the main sustainable source of UK-produced content, and with numerous indirect benefits to the country. The current chipping away at the BBC's licence fee has already weakened it and should be halted. I hope the BBC Trust's project on the corporation's commercial impact, about to be completed by PwC, will show everyone except the most rabid free-marketeers just how much the BBC contributes.
3 However, the BBC should not try and do everything and the public rightly values plurality in PSB. This, for me, rules out Ofcom's Model 2 (BBC only). The right way forward, in my view, would be a combination of Model 1 (Evolution) and Model 3 (BBC and C4 + limited competitive funding). C4 is a largely successful, publicly-owned PSB which is almost self-funding. With limited further funding or indirect support, and a refocused brief, it can continue to provide UK-produced public service content in competition to the BBC, but with a partially complementary positioning based on more risk-taking and slightly younger audiences ("different but not that different" – Jeremy Isaacs).
4 In addition to the BBC and C4, there should be scope for competitive funding of very specific PSB content such as children's TV and regional news or other regional or minority programmes, provided there is evidence of a reasonable level of demand. It may also be possible to negotiate with the two privately-owned commercial PSBs (ITV and five) to ensure the continuation of more UK-produced public service content than they would otherwise generate. Either or both of these could be done through Ofcom. A separate "Arts Council of the Air" or other new funding body would add unnecessary complexity and potentially be biased against funding programmes people would watch. That's why I've rejected Ofcom's Model 4 (Broad competitive funding).
5 Preventing us from finding the right way forward is one genuine problem and various unnecessary problems. The genuine problem is funding (especially if we unnecessarily exacerbate this by continuing to cut the licence fee). The combination I would advocate would be, first, a licence fee rising slightly faster than general inflation, allowing the BBC to provide indirect support for C4 (various options) but not by top-slicing, and, second, limited public funding through selling spectrum to commercially-funded PSBs for a lower price than the giant telcos are willing to pay (eg through a 'shadow exchange rate'). Any industry levies (in addition to these two funding sources) should be limited to money which goes back to industry through a competitive process.
6 The unnecessary problems are ideological (especially market fundamentalism, as in Ofcom's proposals for spectrum), vested interests (especially politicians' fear of upsetting powerful media groups), and technology hype.
7 Focusing on the latter, the truth about the new TV technologies is that:
Total TV viewing is almost steady, even among younger viewers
Total TV advertising is mature but not significantly declining
Multichannel and digital TV penetration are now approaching saturation, so the commercial PSBs' rate of loss of audience and advertising revenue share has slowed down and will continue to do so
The only significant new technology in terms of actual consumer behaviour is the PVR, which changes none of the above
All the other new technologies (on-demand TV, mobile TV, interactive TV, user-generated TV, etc) have been enormously overhyped in terms of audience behaviour and, especially, revenue potential. What audiences want is good programmes, including a high proportion of UK-produced PSB programmes. What the new distribution platforms – multichannel, PVRs, and now catch-up TV – enable them to do is to watch the same programmes a bit more conveniently.
The overwhelming evidence is that in 2020 TV channels will still be the main way people find programmes and that most viewing will still be live, on a TV screen, and heavily skewed towards the main channels
All of these assertions are based on fact, but almost no-one who works for a technology company or a telco believes them, so most policy-makers have also bought a lot of the hype, so there's a real danger that we'll end up with policies based on demonstrable misunderstanding of the market.
8 The antidote to all three of these unnecessary problems - market fundamentalism, vested interests, and technology hype - is evidence, especially about the audience. This brings us back to point 1, the Ofcom research on the audience's view. Ofcom's DNA is still largely dominated by economics, but on the plus side, Ofcom also tries hard to be evidence-based. We must all hope that it's the evidence that wins.
end Barwise message
Professor Máire Messenger Davies
Director, Centre for Media Research
http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/media/cmr.html
Director, Media Studies Research Institute
School of Media, Film & Journalism
University of Ulster at Coleraine
Cromore Rd
Coleraine BT52 1SA
Northern Ireland
Telephone: + 44(0)28 70324069
Fax: +44(0)28 70324964
email: [log in to unmask]
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