THE BBC….MENACE TO QUALITY AND PLURALITY

‘The BBC’s expansion plans sound like a bid for global media domination.

Media companies and advertisers are right to complain that an overfunded BBC represents a serious market distortion. It threatens to stifle competition and innovation because, feather-bedded by the licence, Auntie can always wield a fatter cheque book than its rivals.’

But hey, let’s not talk about the BBC….let’s talk about those nasty big commercial companies ruining it for everyone…….

The bankrupt Guardian is trying to buy itself some time by selling off its local radio network to Global Radio….it seems that there are no friends in Media as the Guardian’s close friend and ally, the BBC, sticks the knife in.

Today (3rd August) Jeremy Hunt announces that he will investigate the deal…..

‘The Office of Fair Trading had already been looking into the deal, which was finalised at the end of June for an estimated £50m to £70m. Global had hoped it would be fast-tracked to the Competition Commission.

However, Hunt’s intervention means he will now make the decision as to whether to send it to the commission.

Hunt said: “On the basis of the information available to me, I have decided that under all the circumstances and, in particular the concentration of ownership which will occur in some parts of the UK, the merger may be relevant to the issue of plurality, particularly in those areas… I am therefore asking Ofcom to prepare a report advising me in greater detail about plurality.

Global’s rivals claim the enlarged Global Radio would have a dominant share of commercial radio listening in Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff and Manchester.

Ofcom will consider content types, audiences, media platforms, control of media enterprises and future developments in the media landscape.’

Just who could be those rivals?

Oh look….the Today programme on the 31st of July brings us all the news about the sell off….

John Humphrys: ‘You will be left with big commercial groups (leaving the BBC aside) controlling everything….what would be the consequences for quality and diversity?’

Answer: ‘Well you could hardly call it good news.’

Note that ‘Leaving the BBC aside’….how can you possibly sideline the BBC in a discussion about media domination by massive corporations?

I wonder how much pressure the BBC put onto Hunt to investigate this….and just how much he felt ‘obliged’ to do the BBC a favour after the Leveson inquiry and his willingness to approve the BSkyB takeover?

Curious that the BBC should be so concerned about what its commercial ‘rivals’ get up to considering the BBC’s income hardly depends upon it competing for viewers and advertising revenue (In radio, for example, the BBC already shells out nearly as much as the commercial sector’s total revenues.).

The BBC is the dominant player in the UK in all media areas, even in print it out muscles many publishers of magazines (With sales of about 100m a year, the magazine division is the third largest publisher in the UK.) and on the internet (The Newspaper Society says the BBC is being anti-competitive in that a huge corporation is stifling attempts by local media to get a foothold on the internet.)　

The BBC has 55% of all radio listeners….and despite its insistence that Local radio is on its last legs there seems to be plenty of life in it yet, especially in London….it is clear that the BBC is a major block on commercial radios growth and ability to just survive….which is possibly why it needs to merge into bigger groups to compete with the BBC (though BBC journalists beg to differ…. ‘Even where the BBC is seen as competing directly with its commercial rivals, it is doing so by occupying a different space. A space that is very clearly seen as a Public Service Broadcasting space, against competitors who are very much occupying a commercial space. This is widely understood by the public that the BBC serves. ):

‘Radio audience figures released by Rajar in February showed that BBC radio stations, including its local stations, had a 55% listening share.

Although the London market continues to be fiercely competitive the agency buyers were not concerned any increases or decreases reflected any particular trend at the stations, which will be good news for Magic and Smooth.

Elsewhere, the growth of BBC Radio 2 is highlighted as a worry for commercial radio.

“A slight worry for commercial radio fans is that BBC Radio 2 have achieved impressive growth by increasing its year on year share of total listening hours from 14.9% to 16.1% and this station is undoubtedly the main barrier preventing commercial radio’s strive for greater share of listening.

“What is clear is Absolute is starting to see the benefit of years of major investment in programming, talent and with the additional digital stations (60s through 00s) they will certainly be one to watch in the coming years.

“In London, 95.8 Capital FM steals the crown in reach and at breakfast. However, Heart can claim number one based on share. In truth, London remains as competitive as ever, as the top four (Kiss, Magic, Heart and Capital) continue to leapfrog one another each quarter.’

　

There has been a lot of concern about the power and dominance of the BBC in recent years, though not much has been done about it:

Labour’s Ben Bradshaw said this when they were in power:

“The BBC with eight linear TV channels, several interactive and high definition channels, nine national radio stations and a dominant local radio network, the iPlayer, a world-leading online presence, and a commercial publishing, dvd , television and multi-media empire of some scale.

And if it were to continue on anything like that trajectory, the rest of the industry would be right to be worried and the mixed economy would be seriously imbalanced.”

Andrew Marr, BBC journalist, said this “we have become too powerful, too much the interpreters, using our talents as communicators to crowd them (politicians) out. On paper we mock them more than ever before and report them less than ever before. On television and radio, we commentators are edging them out ever more carelessly”.

John Lloyd said “You have to ask the question: is it the purpose of the news media to make an impact or to report the news?”.

　

David Cameron, said: “We’ve all seen in our own constituencies small internet businesses, often involved in education or other information provision, working away to create a market, to make some money, and then the BBC comes along and squish, like a big foot on an ant, and that business goes out. And I think that we need to look at ways of actually making sure that the BBC doesn’t over-extend itself.”

He said there needed to be a “a better set of rules that stops the BBC from charging in . . . and actually putting other people who are struggling to provide a market, out of work.”

Emma Duncan, deputy editor of the Economist, highlighted the specific threat that the BBC’s online news service poses to newspapers: “The Corporation has a fantastic website. That’s hardly surprising since it spends £145m a year of licence-fee payers’ money on it. Britain’s national newspapers put together spend around £100m on their online efforts. If the BBC is allowed to go on dominating online news it will undermine other news providers’ ability to survive on the internet, and thus threaten the diversity of news sources that is crucial to a democracy

An all-powerful BBC bestriding the media plains? It was never supposed to be like this.
The row clearly demonstrated how much power has accrued to the BBC in some unexpected ways. As respect for other national institutions (politics, church, traditional family hierarchies) recedes, the BBC has assumed more cultural influence. It has become the place where national debates about moral, political and ethical disputes are increasingly being aired.

　

Globe-trotting Auntie alarms rivals
(Filed: 31/03/2006)

BBC’s ‘aggressive pursuit of profit’ is fuelling fears of unfair competition, writes Russell Hotten

The BBC’s expansion plans sound like a bid for global media domination. There will be an “aggressive” pursuit of profit, said BBC executive John Smith, as he talked this week of proposals for children’s programmes in the US, satellite TV in India and a new global website.

You could feel the blood boiling in the offices of the Beeb’s commercial rivals. And just to rub their noses in it, Smith said BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s money-making arm, was on course to exceed its profits target.
At the root of opposition to the BBC’s commercial activities is that it is not compatible with the corporation’s public service broadcasting remit.’

That’s a fairly conclusive and comprehensive critical judgement of the BBC and its overarching power over social and political life in Britain…as well as over the commercial media sector.

The BBC has become too big and too powerful, completely unaccountable and arrogant about that power, safe in the knowledge that politicians are too afraid to really attempt a radical overhaul to pull the teeth of the many headed monster that the BBC has become.

 

And as for quality what has the BBC ever done for you?

It does have some exellent programmes on radio and television….but look through the offerings on the iPlayer and you soon realise that there is little new, original, stimulating or innovative tumbling off the BBC production line.

 

In fact it all too often lowers the tone…even John Humphrys admits it:

They say Murdoch has coarsened Britain but Humphrys says TV is just as bad:

‘The good television of today is better than the best television of the old days. The bad television is worse. It is not only bad, it is damaging. Meretricious. Seedy. Cynical.

Good television does not balance the bad. Not if it coarsens and brutalises and turns us into voyeurs. The good cannot pay the dues of the bad when the bad is indefensible. And some of our worst television is indefensible. It does harm.

I was shocked by some of what I saw when I came out of my Rip Van Winkle state. So much of it seemed not just vulgar and obsessed with sex, but altogether more confrontational than I’d remembered. The violence of the language surprised me. It seemed almost impossible to switch on without encountering some sort of aggression, even in the soaps.
what of that other vital aspect of public service broadcasting: news – the most important thing we do. By a mile. If we get it wrong, we forfeit the right to exist.

It was Greg Dyke’s view that we hadn’t faced up to the fact that politics is boring and it’s our job to make it less boring.

Even if it were true, it’s not our job to make it fun. It’s a serious business and it’s our job to report it seriously. We shouldn’t be trying to lure people into politics by pretending that it’s just another game show. Greg got it wrong.
But there’s a more serious charge: that our own cynical approach has turned people off politics. This is the thesis of John Lloyd’s book, What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics.

The question is not whether there is cynicism about politics, but whether journalism is the cause.

But I don’t believe it. For one thing, don’t politicians have some responsibility for it? What about the so-called Tory sleaze and the way Labour made capital from it? Or the war many believe (rightly or wrongly) they were misled into supporting?
We should not be fearful of standing up to those in power. That is our job: to be fearless in the face of power. In any era.

We need more, not less, in-depth interviewing of politicians. The idea that tough questions prevent politicians from giving answers, and gentle chats seduce them into candour is, frankly, risible. We need more, not less, investigative journalism. We need much more straightforward political analysis. Public service broadcasting can and must make an important contribution to the democratic process. It can do so only if not cowed by those in power.’