Page 8 - 04_Bafta ACADEMY_Mark Thompson_ok

MARK THOMPSON
Right now at the BBC, we’re engaged in a funda- mental review of our TV networks, the most far-reach- ing and challenging we’ve ever undertaken. The idea we are exploring is to create a suite of channels which live up to the ideals that the BBC was created to promote, but which also make sense in modern digital homes.
Contrary to those Jeremiah headlines, that does not mean however that BBC 1 is set to abandon all seri- ous programming and become an all-singing, all-danc- ing Entertainment only channel.
Current affairs and documentary should both con- tinue to play a significant and lively part in BBC 1’s schedule. I want to see more serious programming on the BBC, not less.
But we still have to question the value and place of every programme we have - there can be no sacred cows – because if we don’t, the viewer will. And yes, it is true that we may want to move some programmes from one
Continued from page 4
low cost channels in the cable and satellite universes, but what they want from us is properly-funded, very high quality programmes and channels.
Which means investment. And despite the recent licence fee settlement and cost-saving initiatives, we still face funding issues - on BBC 1 as well as the digital channels. ITV spends more than £100 million more than BBC 1 does on its drama each year.
That gap limits BBC 1 creatively and leaves it rely- ing – as the Governors pointed out in this year’s Annual Report - too much on factual programmes. Documentaries are one of the glories of BBC produc- tion but, even in documentaries, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
So, one of the purposes of the review of our televi- sion strategy is to ensure that that investment goes to the right programmes and the right places.
This new investment is a unique chance - probably the last - for the BBC to re-invent itself and prepare its services for the digital future. If we disappoint the pub-
will be through the serendipity of the viewer rather than the calculation of the scheduler.
Alongside that idea comes the notion of symbol- ism - that programmes of high seriousness should sit in every part of every public service schedule, simply because they should. Even if no one watches them.
There is a real danger that public broadcasters find themselves caught between a cultural elite who are desperate to re-assert the primacy of high serious- ness, and a wider public who are marching to a very different drum.
When BBC 2 launched in 1964, there were only two other channels: BBC 1 and ITV. Today, most viewers in the UK have a minimum of five channels from which to choose and many have scores. Despite the pressure, the channel has held the cultural high ground more res- olutely than any other channel in Britain, and probably more than most channels in the world: but it has changed its mix to a degree.
So does that mean that BBC Television has lost its cultural soul, or is the BBC right focus on the tastes of the majority of people who actually pay for it, rather than on the rar- efied cultural demands of the few?
BBC 1 and 2 have a responsibility to capture the big cultural moments in our national life. We also have to keep faith with the most ambitious artistic achieve- ments, and the biggest ideas of our civilisa- tion are an imperative that goes beyond the question of audience size.
But trying to discharge all of our cul- tural responsibilities on modern broad- spectrum channels like BBC 1 and BBC 2 does sometimes lead to compromise both in scheduling and content.
BBC Radio solved this problem in the 1960s by segmenting out into a suite of sta- tions with quite different remits. Each has pursued a public service agenda in very different, but comple- mentary, ways - and, despite the inevitable outcry that accompanied the evolution of BBC Radio, such a
restructuring was its saviour and not its destroyer.
TV is more complex than radio, but I’ve come to believe that segmenting will be part of the solution in
television as well.
Once you accept that notions of hammocking and
symbolism are part of television’s past rather than its future, I think it’s easier to see where public service broadcasters like the BBC really can make a difference in the digital era.
In our case, we’ll be there to support British talent and production and invest billions of pounds in British writers, producers, directors, and actors. And to re- dedicate ourselves to quality - centre stage on every one of our channels. If a programme could be made in one year, but it could be great if you gave the producer two years, think about giving them three.
These values, together with a conviction that TV can be a force for good (BBC Television, for example, helped raise more than £100 million for charity last year) which should be available for all audiences, aren’t obsolete or old-fashioned. They’re more relevant than ever. But that is no excuse for not confronting the need for change. ■
channel to another. Into the ghetto, say our But exactly how far away, in the great does this ghetto lie? About a quarter of an inch, as the thumb flies, across the average
remote-control.
And fly it does. The audience certainly
know how to use it. They are relishing the choice now on offer. We’ve been looking at the way in which viewers consume digital television, and in particular, how they use the electronic programme guide. They love it. And in the States, they love TiVO, the first home storage device, too.
The two systems put them - not the broadcaster - in control. And the scary thing is that, although many families still turn to the terrestrial channels for blockbuster pro- grammes, we came across quite a few households who are excluding terrestrial TV altogether.
critics. media city,
“We still have to question the value and place of every programme we have - there can be no sacred cows – because if we don’t, the viewer will”
The BBC has argued for many years that one of the things that makes us different from our commercial com- petitors is the sheer range of programmes in our schedule. Each year we report to Parliament how many different kinds of programmes we show on our main channels: this past year, for example, we showed 14 different genres on BBC 1 in peak-time.
Don’t get me wrong: commissioning a truly broad range of programmes, including less popular genres like the arts, music, religion, current affairs, as well the popular ones, really is an article of faith for a public broadcaster.
The question is whether, in the world of the EPG and TiVO, it will still make sense to place them all on a single channel. The whole point of the EPG is to enable viewers to assemble their own mix.
I’m not saying that we should pass go, collect the licence fee and go straight to monothematic channels. But I am suggesting that eventually every channel or cluster of content will need to have a clear proposition, an attitudinal focus or flavour, from which viewers can mix their own schedule. And unless we start the jour- ney soon, we risk becoming irrelevant.
We’ve learned the hard way with BBC Choice and BBC Knowledge that the BBC shouldn’t attempt to launch new TV channels with too little money. Some viewers are clearly watching and enjoying new ultra-
lic, who have no choice about paying a licence-fee to us, we will not be forgiven.
We have already announced a new commission- ing and flatter organisational structure designed to help deliver more value and more quality to the screen, and by the early autumn, we intend to put some concrete ideas about the channels before the public and the politicians. Judging by reaction to the Banff speech, I have no doubt that those ideas will be developed, adapted and enriched by the lively public debate that will follow.
The road ahead is a controversial one - not least because behind the idea of that traditional mixed schedule lie some of the oldest and dearest ideas of public service broadcasting.
For instance, the idea of hammocking programmes is an ideal that goes all the way back to the founder of the BBC, John Reith. But today - even before the digital devices take full effect - hammocking is a dying art. If the audience doesn’t fancy what it sees, their thumb does the talking and off they go.
That doesn’t mean that the programmes we used to hammock, typically the more serious or experimen- tal pieces, are also dead. We will still make them and audiences who want to watch them will still find them; sometimes too, viewers will stumble upon the unex- pected and stay to watch and enjoy and learn - but it
6