First cut or narrow escape?

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Posted by Nicholas Jones

Former BBC political correspondent, Nicholas Jones, believes the Green Paperprovides an opportunity for the BBC to identify and focus on priorities. But he warns that it could also be the start of a long and drawn-out death for the BBC. postamble();

The BBC has had a narrow escape.  It has been given another chance to identify and focus on its priorities.  Can it demonstrate and maintain its commitment to public service broadcasting? Can it be fresh and innovative?  My fear is that the green paper is the start of what could well be a death by a thousand cuts; that slowly Britain’s strong tradition of public service broadcasting is being smashed up, bit by bit, the demolition of one of the last truly great nationalised industries.

We mustn’t forget what’s happened already to independent television and commercial radio. How the Broadcasting Act, which took effect last year, scrapped all controls on foreign ownership and opens the way to the potential domination of our airwaves by big American corporations.

The Broadcasting Act -- and the new Ofcom regime -- have already triggered massive cut backs and closures in regional broadcasting in the independent sector and much more of that is on the way.

Yes the BBC has got a temporary ten year reprieve on the licence fee but every political correspondent I know has told me that that the bottom line from the government is that it is unsustainable, that this is the last throw for the licence fee.  They point out that although Tessa Jowell fought off John Birt in the short term, her statement had to make it clear that after the ten years are up, top slicing will take place. The BBC wont have exclusive use of such public money in the future. She also had to make it clear that subscription will probably be the way ahead. 

So already we are witnessing the first steps towards the sidelining of the BBC along the lines of national public broadcasting in America -- an under resourced, marginal service. The same processes are underway in Australia and Canada, two Commonwealth countries which modelled their public service broadcasting on the BBC. So we have to know what the future might very well hold: a marginalized BBC on subscription serving a minority audience. 

Perhaps by looking back for a few moments I can relate my experiences to the future. My three decades as a BBC correspondent were the golden years, a roller coaster ride of endless expansion and the arrival of one new service after another, all financed from the bonanza of the extra money from the higher licence fee for colour television.

Way back in the 1970s, breakfast television, rolling news and so on were just distant dreams. As a radio reporter my last outlet of the day in the BBC’s entire daily domestic output was the midnight newsroom on Radio 2.

By the early 1990s the management were having to take stock: there would have to be flexible working if the BBC was to stand any chance of sustaining all the services it had established or was planning. Bi media working was the price that would have to be paid. Radio correspondents would have to double up as television reporters and vice versa. But did bi-medial working really free up resources or was it just cost cutting to meet overstretch? It was obvious to me that the management was still failing to prioritise.

In November 1994 I was one of a hundred BBC workers plucked out of a hat and told to attend an “extending choice” seminar followed by a pep talk by John Birt, the director general.   Birt spewed out glossy reports, position papers and so and a formidable rate.  I have a pile of them in the loft, a couple of feet high. Here are my two “extending choice” workshop brochures.

When Birt appeared I asked if there would ever come a day when the BBC might have to concentrate on defending and sustaining what we do best. Can we go on expanding our services, spreading ever more thinly our expertise and resources? John Birt gave me a withering look: “Of course we must, we cant stand still, we have to embrace each new service, each new channel…we can’t stop.’

Birt went on to become Tony Blair’s blue skies thinker, no doubt producing just as many position papers in the bunker of No.10 Downing Street. What happened at the BBC? Well we lurched into the era of Greg Dyke. What was his response to all the verbiage of the Birt era.  Here it is, Dyke's famous yellow card : “Cut the crap. Make it happen". It's a treasured memento.

But while Greg Dyke chased the ratings -- and did so very successfully -- he failed in my view to define our public service role, to start focussing and prioritising on what the BBC does best.

Just let me give you one example that I pick up on as an outsider, as an ex BBC correspondent. The other night I was asked by the Royal Television Society to monitor the rival continuous news channels.

Why was it, asked the RTS, that with it all its resources, BBC News 24 limps along behind Sky News and is now facing far stiffer competition from another rival, a re-energised itv news. It’s obvious to me that the BBC is falling behind largely because it is still refusing to make News 24 the showcase for BBC television news.

In my view rolling news is undoubtedly the future.  People do want to turn on the news at the top of the hour at any time night or day. But the BBC refuses to make its top bulletins -- like the Ten O’clock News -- an integral part of News 24, something which itv has accomplished with its main bulletins with style and flair.  So when there’s a big story the BBC’s main bulletins take priority, and News 24 just limps along, producing what can only be a second rate duplicate service, wasting resources, until it can get access to the material transmitted half an hour earlier on BBC 1.

I don’t think the BBC has got much time to sort itself out, to work out for example how to structure the news, to stop waste and duplication. As I have said, top slicing hasn’t gone away, only been postponed. The Conservative party isn’t going to let up on that, nor are groups like Sky tv and its parent company, News International. We will still see the Sun championing those who refuse to pay their licence fee. So I look ahead with great apprehension.

Just a couple of other points. I do welcome the separation of the governors from day to day management. The job of the new trust is to hold the BBC’s managers to account. I hope it does. Another vital role for the trust is to make sure that the BBC does have a truly transparent complaints system.

A new arms length editorial complaints unit was announced last month, just before the green paper was published. It stipulates that the new trust must be the final arbiter. Unless the complaints system does become transparent, that job will be gobbled up by Ofcom which has already started to gain a foothold in monitoring the BBC’s standards.

The trouble has been that the complaints process within the BBC has always been the personal fiefdom of the director general. We all know what Greg Dyke’s response was to Alastair Campbell. It was even bluer than cut the crap. But if Campbell's complaint had been properly examined to begin with, there would have been transparency, and then perhaps the BBC wouldn’t be in the beleaguered position it is today. Of course that was precisely what Campbell didn't want to happen: he wanted to put pressure on Dyke behind the scenes, without any accountability either in Downing Street or at Broadcasting House.

Believe me unlike Greg Dyke, John Birt used the complaints system assiduously in order to bolster his political cronies. Offend them and you were hung out to dry; being taken off television was my punishment. I know all about that demeaning task of having to write or agree to grovelling apologies.

The BBC must have an effective, arms length system so that there is transparency, so that BBC journalists can be protected against unjustified complaints.

The CPBF must look ahead. We cant let up in the campaign to defend public service broadcasting. I was told the BBC wouldn’t put anyone up to speak for the BBC at this conference. Well I can speak with conviction about the BBC’s values and I hope to go on doing so. And I hope too that the CPBF can do its bit to defend the BBC’s uniqueness because we can see today how the very concept of public broadcasting is under threat as never before. postamble();

DATELINE: 24 January, 2010

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