Conservative u-turn on BBC license fee will not be received well
Dear Jeremy Hunt,
As Shadow Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, there is plenty for you to talk about. With the Olympics no more than two years after the election, your supposedly cushy brief could end up with you walking into the lion’s den in 2010. However, more pressing is the issue of the BBC. It seemed to pass many people by that even though you shadow the DCMS, David Cameron took control of handling the Brand/Ross saga over the past week or so. This just goes to show how keenly he feels a need to ’speak to the nation’ and jump on media bandwagons. Sadly, it appears that he also now intends to wind back your plans from March this year to ‘top-slice’ the license fee in order to give Channel 4 additional funding instead of the BBC.
Even though the BBC, like the NHS, is often seen as dangerous territory for a centre-right politician to step on, your plans to move some of the license fee to help Channel 4 meet their public service broadcasting requirement seemed eminently sensible. There is no justification for seeing the BBC as the only potential source of high-quality public service programmes and your proposals were received extremely well. It was therefore with some regret that I read this morning that David Cameron is backtracking on your plans. On this issue, he said on Radio 4 yesterday: ”I’m sceptical of that. I think we need to look at this issue of top-slicing but I think there are quite a lot of difficulties with it. On the whole I think we should celebrate the success of British broadcasting. It is based on the fact that the licence fee goes to the BBC, advertising income is available for Channel 4 and ITV, and subscription flows into Sky. Because of these three streams of revenue we have got very good programming making, very good production of drama, very good news and reporting. There is a lot to celebrate and I don’t want to upset that ecology.” Instead, Cameron wants a refund for poorer households if BBC did not spend all the money it was given in the last licence fee settlement. He is joking, right?
David Cameron thinks that the “success of British broadcasting” is based around us giving the BBC £130 each a year to produce whatever they want whenever they want without fear of losing any funding despite their appalling TV listings. How does this constitute ’success’? I don’t remember hearing anyone saying that British TV is a success. In fact, the BBC is bloated beyond belief and a brief glance at their daily schedules shows how little (if any) of their shows are actually ’serving the public’ at all. As far as I can see, the BBC has plummetted to the most appalling depths and scrapes the barrel just to put together a single day’s television – and don’t even get me started on the fact that my license fee pays for Eastenders when Coronation Street and Emmerdale are both free-standing and funded by advertising. ITV and Channel 4 have to produce good shows or they wouldn’t survive, and even though a lot of what they put on is also mindless trash at least they have an incentive to perform well – where is the BBC’s incentive? Why should Sky have to survive on subscriptions when the BBC gets hundreds of millions every year with no strings attached? And since when did we have good news broadcasting on the BBC? I wish! The general standard of programme-making is abysmal as our most TV dramas.
You said in March 2008, at the launch of your top-slicing proposals, that encouraging competition in programme-making “has been vital in raising standards across British broadcasting”, and I think competition is absolutely right in broadcasting. But how can anyone claim that competition exists when the BBC receives every penny of our license fee? I know that approaching the issue of reducing the license fee is a very tricky area to approach this side of an election, but top-slicing the license fee would at least light the fuse for getting the BBC to work harder for their money in future. I am bitterly disappointed that Cameron has made you look like a mug on this issue and I don’t think the leader of the opposition wading into some stupid row about idiotic radio broadcasts has helped the Conservatives one bit.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
I disagree with you on top-slicing.
As I recall, past licence fee settlements included provision for the costs of switching to digital. In time, those costs will drop out as the switch is completed. Top-slicing suggests that the money that is then no longer needed by the BBC can be used for C4.
This is wholly the wrong approach. This looks at the money raised through (what is in effect) taxation as being the property of the collectors to distribute as they wish and without regard for the original justification for raising it. Or, to put it another way, we’ve got the money now so it’s ours to do with as we please.
When the original justification for the tax has passed, it is then time to stop collecting the tax and leave the money in the hands of those who earned it. Meanwhile, if C4 has a good case for receiving public money, let it make that case – independently of what is going on at the BBC.
I for one was pleased to hear Cameron say something that suggested he appreciated this point.
Point taken, but we’re not in complete disagreement.
As I hinted at in the last paragraph, I think the license fee should be drastically cut so that the BBC only receives funding for programmes that unequivocally demonstrate their public service credentials. This means that Eastenders, pointless daytime TV, Radio 1 and 2 and a whole host of other slots should no longer receive our money and should have adverts instead. Channel 4 and the BBC should both receive funding for public service broadcasting, which does still exist and should still exist, but that aside the license fee should be cut to reflect the new advertising revenues that the BBC must now attract.
Top-slicing is not the whole answer, but at least it shows that the Conservatives are willing to touch a previously untouchable political topic. Walking away from top-slicing does not bode well for a future Conservative government in terms of their desire to sort out the BBC.
It occurs to me that the possibility of having to endure endlessly repeated shampoo commercials in the middle of Doctor Who isn’t the most persuasive argument against the licence fee.
Odd that the BBC reported Cameron’s comments, but (somehow) completely missed out his comments on BBC bias.
Madeley, I don’t think Dr Who counts as a ‘public service’, despite being enjoyed by many. Why should BBC dramas have no ad breaks but ITV and Channel 4 be stuck with them? Or were you just complaining about shampoo commercials in general?
Patently, good spot. Cameron seemed to be winding up for an assault on the BBC when he went after the high salaries at the top of the organisation, but taking the top-slicing proposal off the table doesn’t seem to match with this sentiment.
taking the top-slicing proposal off the table
As ever, it depends how you define it. A simple abandonment of “top-slicing” is indeed inconsistent. I read his comments, however, as being that instead of sending the excess over to C4, it should go to actually reducing the licence fee. That way, the BBC doesn’t get the money whether the fee is “top-sliced” or not.
Put that way, it sounds consistent. I won’t hold my breath, though.
“I think the license fee should be drastically cut so that the BBC only receives funding for programmes that unequivocally demonstrate their public service credentials. This means that Eastenders, pointless daytime TV, Radio 1 and 2 and a whole host of other slots should no longer receive our money and should have adverts instead”
That is potentially something you & I could agree on. You will appreciate that my instincts are to defend the BBC & a lot of the attacks on it are philistine (this desire for a British Fox News, for example).
However, I cannot defend mindless celebrity shyte. They should, indisputably, concentrate on worthwhile programmes which might struggle to find commercial backers, on which people don’t want to view adverts.
I do support a license fee, as it seems to be the best way of ensuring a vague independence & impartiality. The model should be something like the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, not a government department.
We should be able to point to the BBC’s achievements with pride & have other countries envy & try to emulate us. The World Service etc. accomplish this. I have no sympathy for EastEnders & whatever else it is.
I myself only watch University Challenge. I can see the point of documentaries etc, but I prefer to occupy my time reading, blogging & listening to records if I’m at home
The desire for Fox News is partly born out of tne insistence that every broadcaster is ‘impartial’ instead of letting them choose their own line as they do in America. If you support freedom of speech then the impartiality criteria is unsustainable.
I agree that the BBC does some excellent things, but that shouldn’t mean they get money for producing endless piles of dumbed-down rubbish.
Yes, I certainly support free speech, & any idiot has got the right to spout.
I do dislike some of the implications of “impartiality”, as it leads to moral equivalence quite quickly. Everyone is entitled to a view, but not all views are equally valid & it can be harmful (not to mention silly) to pretend otherwise.
This is the kind of relativism that would have “intelligent design” taught in science classes & so on.
But again, there’s no foreseeable way of altering that without producing even worse outcomes.
It was with a sinking feeling that I read Cameron’s words. One has to ask what the point of a Conservative government is if they won’t do anything about the BBC or the EU, which are the two greatest blights on our democracy as well as the two institutional strongholds of the Left. Can we have Douglas Carswell next?
The conflict between the principles of freedom and choice versus the BBC and the EU couldn’t be clearer, so if a future Conservative government bottled it on either issue then the whole conservative moment would feel the strain.
I think Anthony Jay’s suggestion, reducing the BBC to one national TV station, and one nation radio station, is the minimum the Conservatives should do.
I’d much rather they just shut it down.