Channel vision

As the Law Society of Scotland marks its 60th anniversary, so broadcasting too has cause to look back at what six decades have brought, and to contemplate its future.

On 17 December 1949, the Sutton Coldfield television transmitter opened in the English Midlands, making it the first part of the UK outside London to receive BBC Television, the only television on offer. Earlier that year, Westminster Council in London approved the wiring of all its flats to receive aerial reception, and by the end of the year there were almost half a million television licences. The 1951 census put the population of the UK at 50 million.

Sixty years on, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 38 million pieces of video were viewed in the UK. From a population of 60.9 million (national statistics 2007), 13% watched video downloads of the Games online. In 2009 there are considerably more television sets than there are people, but there is also a multitude of new technologies, platforms, and content available to all – increasingly without wires. We are in the middle of the transition from an analogue to a digital world. By 2012, the digital switchover programme will be complete, and the analogue signal will be turned off.

Public service

So who are the players in this field? Ofcom licenses and regulates broadcasters other than the BBC, certain of them to hold specific public service broadcasting obligations (often broadly described in the UK as the commercial PSBs). STV is the commercial PSB for Scotland. It is also a producer of content, “content” being the generic platform-neutral term for what would formerly have been classed “programming”.

Content can be both traditional long form “television-like”, and short form “made-for-broadband”. And what is PSB? Well it defines our culture, our diversity, is driven by plurality of sources of supply and production, and it must have reach and appeal. In short, it means high quality impartial news, and home grown drama and documentary. It includes children’s programming and probably comedy too.

As STV is a producer/broadcaster, my role is to advise on the development and production of content, and its distribution. In my time, I have read many a Taggart script; legalled (for compliance with the Broadcasting Code and the laws of the land) three series of Club Reps, one of the first factual reality shows produced and developed in the UK – a casebook study for getting to grips with the Data Protection Act!; and advised on the launch of www.stv.tv, initially as a broadcast-related support site, and increasingly a content distribution platform – on demand, anytime, anywhere.

Rights protection versus rights exploitation – in STV’s legal team we see it from all sides. Interesting work, but what is my major preoccupation right now in 2009? It is the future of public service broadcasting in the UK.

That transition from the analogue world to the digital one moves us from limited competition and scarce access to the airwaves, to a digital world of choice, competition and disintegrating business models. The regulators are preoccupied with reviews, reports, recommendations and radical approaches.

No licence to print money

On 21 January 2009, Ofcom completed its statutory review of the state of PSB in the UK, and published its statement containing a set of recommendations for strengthening and maintaining PSB on the approach to digital switchover. A week later followed the interim report on Digital Britain, spearheaded by Lord Carter, Minister for Telecommunications (see Journal, March, 36). There will be a final Digital Britain report in June this year. It should lead the way for new broadcasting legislation to update the Communications Act 2003, no longer fit for the purpose of the digital age.

An important conclusion of Ofcom’s review is that PSB should be available across all digital media and not just linear broadcasting, a theme continued in the Digital Britain report.

Ofcom’s statement confirms the harsh winds of reality blowing through the industry. Gone are the days of limited competition and effective and ample funding through the licence fee and advertising revenue. It was a balanced system of different funding sources which supported the competing models and created a UK television industry renowned for its exports the world over, and valued by the nation. With declining advertising revenues, even more so since the economic downturn, on top of the plethora of competing digital channels, the commercial PSBs (including ITV, Channel 4 and Five) cannot maintain investment in their PSB programming.

Sky, for its part, generates cash through its prescription model. In November 2008, it was still on target to reach its goal of 10 million customers by the end of the decade. With an entertainment package including sports programmes retailing at £40 a month, that is someone with £360m a month in their coffers. Sky too will undoubtedly be hit by the credit crunch – but with an eye for opportunity it promotes “staying in as the new going out”, and people will still pay for compelling content to entertain them. However, for all that Sky has raised the bar with its award winning news and sports coverage, many would say it contributes little to UK original programming in other forms of PSB.

Maintaining diversity

That leaves the BBC, with its secure funding through the licence fee settled up until 2013. But the BBC is not enough. Its financial investment in programming may be good enough to ensure “high quality” and reach into every household in the land, but creativity and innovation need competition. Ofcom’s research published in its statement has confirmed three “givens”:

• UK audiences value public service content;
• they want it sustained; and
• they think it important that there is a choice beyond the BBC.

The Digital Britain report has digital connectivity and a broadband Britain at its core, but it too seeks solutions to maintain the dispersal of public service content, and above all a settlement for Scotland.

Both reports recognise the likelihood of new funding models to maintain PSB for the future, and new partnerships – but no one is providing any premature pledges of money. That will be for Government, mindful of the need for fair competition, public interest in creating PSB and promoting our creative industries, and conscious that in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, no one size fits all. Scotland is a devolved nation, and democracy within a devolved nation needs plurality of impartial, accurate and relevant news supply. Furthermore, in Scotland there has long been a unique ecology – an interwoven talented industry around film, broadcasting, the visual arts and new media which could sustain a creative cluster provided there was a critical mass of production at the core. However, talent needs access to markets, and the markets are not there to commission work as the funding sources dry up.

Ofcom has proposed that it is important to maintain a second organisation with public purposes at its heart alongside the BBC. The obvious candidate is Channel 4, the much loved new entrant of the 1990s. However, it too suffers from declining advertising revenues, and needs an injection of direct public funding to sustain its ongoing public service role. Ofcom does not rule out clever schemes (such as a merger with Five, or a joint venture with the commercial arm of the BBC) which could reduce Channel 4’s reliance on public support, but in these times no one would put money on blue skies collaboration when survival is at the forefront of most business models.

Looking for an answer

There are no clear answers, and no quick fixes. There is one certainty – without any response to the pressures on the commercial public service broadcasters, there will be less programming made in the UK that meets the purposes and characteristics of public service broadcasting. The public say they do not want to lose it. Our times are changing enough. Do we want to lose society’s relevant touchpoints accessible on screen, and common connections and impartial news and information flow? That would be taking a punt on the market delivering in the future. The stakes are high. Do we want to lose the building blocks for business regeneration and work? Not in these times of economic meltdown.

STV wants to continue as a PSB. It values impartial delivery of news and has a track record of building audience and expanding online. And it wants to be instrumental in securing more content production for Scotland. New forms of funding are likely to be needed, but it is clear there will be no handouts: at best only contributions to sustainable models. However, all complex systems evolve. Broken models will break, and new entrants will emerge, but there can be no Stunde Null approach to 50 years of balanced PSB delivery. We are in transition and as the Digital Britain report maintains, it is the role of regulation and intervention to contribute to it constructively. The coming months will be telling.