Transcript of Mark Thompson interview

On Sunday 5th December Andrew Marr interviewed BBC Director General Mark Thompson.

Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

ANDREW MARR:

Well there have been plaudits for the BBC this autumn with record viewing figures for two radio stations, a string of awards for drama and television news programmes, and increasing take-up of the iPlayer system. Off air, the picture has been a bit less rosy: critics have attacked the number of managers getting paid huge sums, the government's pushed through a big cut in BBC funding, and the normally loyal staff have been so incensed by a decision to impose smaller pensions, they've been out on strike. Well the man in the eye of the storm is the Director General Mark Thompson. Welcome, Mr Thompson.

MARK THOMPSON:

Good morning, Andy.

ANDREW MARR:

Let's start with the pension problem. Do you think it was mishandled?

MARK THOMPSON:

No, I don't, to be honest. I think that the economic facts of life for the BBC pension scheme are the same as those for virtually every other traditional pension scheme in the country.

ANDREW MARR:

You don't think it was imposed too fast?

MARK THOMPSON:

Well we believe that the package of pension reforms, which I think are now pretty much agreed with across the BBC - there's one union still considering, but I think we're pretty much there - will save an enormous amount of money by reducing the deficit that we have to pay back, and I believe that we will get from the pension actuary hundreds of millions of pounds of credit. Now what that means is we can spend over the coming year, each year many tens of millions of pounds on programmes and services for the public rather than on paying down on our pension deficit. And by the way, that will also mean we will save hundreds, potentially thousands of jobs inside the BBC.

ANDREW MARR:

Wasn't the problem though the way it was rammed through, the way it was done? It seemed to be very abrupt, people were taken by surprise, and that provoked the strike.

MARK THOMPSON:

I think it's fair to say that people were taken by surprise. It's a very complicated topic. But it's worth saying …

ANDREW MARR:

And have you learned anything from that?

MARK THOMPSON:

Well it's worth saying that what we announced at the beginning of the summer was a set of proposals which were then followed, and on day one it was clear were going to be followed by a long period of consultation with BBC staff; and in the course of that consultation, as we always expected to do, amended those proposals. And the amended proposals, which have absolutely built in the concerns that were put to us by staff, have formed the basis of this new package. So to be honest, I mean we are one of many institutions which is going through the absolutely painful process of pension reform, but I believe it was necessary. And more than that, I'd say I think the public listening at home would be slightly surprised if the BBC or BBC staff believed that they could keep a package of pensions which was different from those available to the people who pay for the BBC.

ANDREW MARR:

They might also be surprised when they reflect on some of the very high salaries that BBC managers have had - including, I should say, yourself. Now you've taken a bit of a cut, other people have taken a bit of a cut. But I suppose the allegation is it's been too little too late, and that for a huge public institution that depends on the support and affection of the public, these salaries are really out of kilter.

MARK THOMPSON:

If you look at Will Hutton's interim report on public sector pay published a few days ago, he recognised that some institutions - certainly the BBC - are competing for both on air talent but also for the people who lead the organisation essentially in private markets, and they've got to walk a difficult line between what the public expect of public institutions and the reality of competition for people to either present programmes or to indeed edit programmes or run channels. Now I don't think there's a public institution which has done more in the last eighteen months or so to limit executive pay. We're reducing the number of senior management by 20%; we're reducing senior management pay, the total pay bill by 25%. Many individual senior managers - I'm one of them - are seeing their pay going down by, I think in my case, more than 20%. And I don't look around the rest of the public sector and see many other institutions taking as much action so early.

ANDREW MARR:

I think it's fair to say, however, that the pay of the people at the top of the BBC is way ahead in terms of pure cash the pay of most people in the public sector - even managers. I mean it's way ahead of Whitehall.

MARK THOMPSON:

Well though, as you'll also know, a very small percentage of what's paid to people doing equivalent jobs in other broadcasting organisations. There are many people at the top of the BBC being paid perhaps a third or less than a third as much as people doing similar jobs elsewhere. So if you compare the BBC with other broadcasters, senior management pay looks very low. If you look at many other public sector jobs, of course it looks high.

ANDREW MARR:

Sure. What about the actual overall settlement the BBC's struck with the government? It's quite clearly an extraordinary sort of last minute haggle - I think you were pulled back on your way home and all the rest of it was done late at night.

MARK THOMPSON:

What we proposed, Andy, we proposed to the government that if they wanted us to talk about taking things like the World Service into licence fee funding - which we think is a good idea - that could only be done in the context of a complete settlement; and I believe that although we only started working on that settlement about nine days before the conclusion, I thought there was enough time for us to think it through.

ANDREW MARR:

You've …

MARK THOMPSON:

But there were one or two interesting moments in the negotiations definitely.

ANDREW MARR:

Sure. And you've spoken of it being a 16% cut.

MARK THOMPSON:

To be quite clear, it's not a cut. What it is is a freezing of the licence fee.

ANDREW MARR:

Sure. But the effect in terms of money available for programmes over the period has been described as 16% down.

MARK THOMPSON:

But, if I may say so, that's essentially wrong. What's happening is the level of the licence fee's frozen at £145.50 until 2016, but of course the numbers of people paying the licence fee, because the number of households goes up, we expect also to get …

ANDREW MARR:

There's also inflation, there's also the extra bits of digital crossover and all the things the BBC's being asked to do.

MARK THOMPSON:

So it's a complicated sum. On the upside, we expect more households to be paying, we expect to reduce evasion further, we expect commercial revenue to go up. And so there are many ways in which the amount of money gets bigger, but of course there are rising prices and some new obligations. But the reason we thought that although it's a tough settlement, it was a good settlement - not just for the BBC, but for licence payers - was because we believed that we could get the economics to work and that we can deliver services of what I hope will be higher quality than we deliver at the moment to the public within this framework.

ANDREW MARR:

Is it going to be possible to keep the same quality of programmes or higher quality of programmes of all kinds to the public with this lesser amount of money? Is the public going to hear or listen or online notice any difference?

MARK THOMPSON:

I think people will notice differences, but I hope that the effect of the differences in the end will be positive. So, for example, we're in the process of pruning our website. And our website has been a great success and is very popular, but it's vast and it's got many, many millions of pages. We're going to reduce the size of the website, the numbers of sections …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) That's because the BBC's critics …

MARK THOMPSON:

Well …

ANDREW MARR:

… think it's aggressive and it's too much …

MARK THOMPSON:

But it's also …

ANDREW MARR:

… and it's imposing on commercial areas.

MARK THOMPSON:

It's also because sometimes focusing what you do means you can deliver what you do deliver to a higher quality. So I believe that the website - which will become about 25% smaller, we'll spend 25% less money on it - will actually be a more effective, more valuable, higher quality website as a result. And I think the question for us, the challenge for the BBC over the next couple of years is as we look across our services, are there ways in which we can focus what we do? Sometimes it means doing fewer things better, raising standards. Perhaps instead of doing three documentaries, you do two but you spend more money on them and you make sure they're higher quality.

ANDREW MARR:

Do you think that we'll see fewer programmes being made overall?

MARK THOMPSON:

I think in some areas, you will see slightly fewer programmes. In recent years, for example …

ANDREW MARR:

So more repeats and so on?

MARK THOMPSON:

Well in recent years, we've slightly reduced the numbers of hours of factual programmes we make for network television, but because we've really focused on big, ambitious things - this year, for example, science across the BBC, our opera season - we're trying to concentrate our efforts. Or if you think of radio and A History of the World in 100 Objects, we're trying to find the really big, exciting, ambitious projects which stay in the mind. Quality from the BBC is as much about what you remember, about the really big programmes, the really big projects which you remember, as it is about literally the numbers of hours of programmes made.

ANDREW MARR:

So there will be probably fewer hours of programmes made overall, but you hope better …

MARK THOMPSON:

(over) But to higher quality, but to higher quality.

ANDREW MARR:

And what about the survival of channels like BBC3, some of the radio channels? A lot of people have said the BBC should pull in its horns a bit and get rid of some of those.

MARK THOMPSON:

They do. Though one of the experiences of this year is that they say that until you actually start looking at an individual service. And we had this experience with 6 Music and the Asian Network, which is that, to be honest, the public like the spread of services they get from the BBC. There is absolutely no public pressure actually to reduce the number of services. Inside the BBC people sometimes you know look at another service - and to be honest never the service they're working on themselves - and say wouldn't it be better if we didn't do that? Actually I believe that the television and radio portfolios and the BBC website have proven their success, and the reason that usage of the BBC and approval of the BBC services is so high is partly because the BBC has done this, made these changes and launched these services. So I think it's more about where you put your money within the services than it necessarily is a sort of can we find a sacrificial victim amongst the services?

ANDREW MARR:

Almost nobody would say that it was wrong for Panorama to investigate FIFA and honestly expose and broadcast what it found. A lot of people think that the timing was incredibly insensitive and definitely damaged England's bid to host the World Cup.

MARK THOMPSON:

I'm not a party - I don't know if you were, but I wasn't in Zurich and I'm not a party to what happened - and I think in a sense that …

ANDREW MARR:

I just hear a lot of people complaining about it, about the timing of it.

MARK THOMPSON:

I've heard opinions about this. I mean I think these are the facts. Panorama got information, I think significant information about matters of very serious public interest and public concern only a few weeks before this programme. They spent time checking the provenance of this information, putting a number of specific allegations to the people involved - as we must do - and when the programme was ready to transmit, we transmitted it. And I have to say I believe that in the end although I understand there are often reasons to believe that transmitting a programme might be impolitic or inconvenient, if you believe that you have a matter of real public concern to broadcast, there have got to be overwhelmingly powerful reasons for not broadcasting it. And I have to say …

ANDREW MARR:

No regrets on this one, really?

MARK THOMPSON:

I believe we were right to broadcast and I have to say I believe that we have very strong support from the British public in broadcasting.

ANDREW MARR:

Let me ask you about this new product that the BBC and lots of other broadcasters are going to be producing called YouView. It used to be called Canvas, I think, and it's a sort of box of some kind. It's coming out next year and will allow us to do what exactly?

MARK THOMPSON:

So you have to imagine that you can turn on your television and in addition to BBC1 and ITV and Channel Four and lots of other channels that also you can get services like iPlayer, 4oD, ITV.com and many other services which use the internet to bring you archive, to bring you catch-up services, and to bring you frankly lots of applications and forms of content that we need to dream up.

ANDREW MARR:

So if you miss something, you'll be able to catch up?

MARK THOMPSON:

So it's bringing the internet to your television, but in a way you can use with your television handset, massively increasing choice. If you think of the Olympic Games, for example, somebody with a YouView box - let's imagine it's a Freeview box, a digital terrestrial television box which has also got YouView, you'll be able to watch the Olympics on the BBC in real time on all of our channels, but also you'll be able to see much of our archive. You'll be able to get data and facts, all of which will be available on your television screen. So I mean I believe this is a big revolution in broadcasting.

ANDREW MARR:

And when is this going to happen and how much is it going to cost?

MARK THOMPSON:

Well what will happen is YouView will be launched next year. I expect in the middle of next year the first YouView boxes will come onto the market. What you'll do is you'll buy a box. The initial cost we're not yet clear on.

ANDREW MARR:

Expensive or … ?

MARK THOMPSON:

Well we're talking about a box which will probably be somewhere between £100 and £200. And which once you've got the box, you can plug it in … Again if it's a DTT box, you plug it into your aerial and your television is normal, but you also plug it into your broadband connection, you fire it up and then you start getting all of these services. And the way that iPlayer worked …

ANDREW MARR:

Sorry, does this mean that people for instance abroad will be able to use to get access to BBC services without paying their licence fee?

MARK THOMPSON:

No, no it doesn't. YouView is absolutely about using the web as it appears both here, and YouView's absolutely intended to be used in the UK. Now what we'll also do next year is launch an international version of the iPlayer, but that will be a version where people using the iPlayer will either have to pay a subscription or see advertising and that money will itself come back to the BBC in the UK and will be used to produce more public service programmes on BBC television and radio.

ANDREW MARR:

Alright, Mark Thompson, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning.

MARK THOMPSON:

Thank you.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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