Four things we still don’t know about the future of the BBC

The White Paper about the BBC was less revolutionary than had been hoped for by the Corporation’s critics or feared by its friends.

At a Media Society discussion yesterday evening, the government’s plans were given a unanimous thumbs up by an unlikely trio: a Conservative MP, a BBC policy strategist and a long-standing BBC critic.

But for all the relief within the BBC about what turned out to be unfounded rumours, such as that the Corporation would be told not to schedule Strictly against ITV hits, there is still much to be worked out. As the Media Society evening wore on, speakers repeatedly warned that the ‘the devil is in the detail’. 

Here’s what we don’t know about how the next Charter period will work out in practice:

1. Licence fee

Although the licence fee stays, the continuing drift towards online consumption of BBC content means that the need to supplement or replace the licence fee with a charge for online use will become ever more urgent.

The BBC is invited to make proposals for a subscription mechanism. But how that will work technically, and how easy it will be for the BBC to agree with its regulators on such a radical change, are still unknown.

David Elstein (below), former Head of Programming at Sky Television and a long-standing critic of the licence fee, was “disappointed” by the White Paper in that respect. He says he blames its survival on weakness in the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS):

2. Distinctiveness

The White Paper requires the BBC to produce “distinctive content”. The one BBC member of the Media Society panel, James Heath, BBC Director of Policy, said the BBC “wants to be distinctive”. He was comfortable that BBC “should do something different from the market.”

But for Professor Patrick Barwise of the London Business School, the idea of distinctiveness is not as simple as that: “when the BBC says distinctive, they mean good”. But by accepting distinctiveness as the yardstick, they’re “giving a gift to their enemies”.

Sophie Chalk from the Voice of the Listener and Viewer, agreed: if the BBC only makes programmes that its commercial rivals don’t make – where there’s so-called “market failure” – it won’t have many popular programmes: 

3. Independence

Conservative MP Huw Merriman questioned whether the new arrangements would really give the BBC the independence they appear to.

Midway through the charter period there’ll be a “health check” – a government review to look at funding and other matters, but not a fundamental rethink of the structures. But is there scope for the “health check” to be more radical than it sounds? “To me it seems quite wide,” Merriman warned: “if this is an optional termination clause, it’s not an 11 year charter.”

Another concern, described by both James Heath and BBC director general Tony Hall as an “honest disagreement” between the BBC and the government, is over the appointment of members of the new BBC Board by the government.

For Professor Richard Tait, a former BBC governor, now at Cardiff School of Journalism, the source of appointments isn’t as important as who’s picked: “there is no system that will save the BBC if the wrong people are appointed.” Tait pointed out that the Chair of the BBC is appointed by the government; but once in the job, most have “pushed back” in defence of the BBC’s independence, he said.

4. Diversity

A requirement for greater diversity is part of the government’s plan for the BBC. Former BBC correspondent Professor Kurt Barling said the BBC needs to follow the lead of Channel Four on diversity. Instead, he complained, “the BBC is the house of the privileged and it keeps a lot of people out.” Chairing the discussion, Phil Harding asked whether Barling would favour quotas for diversity. No, said Barling, otherwise black and Asian people will be “beaten with the quota stick”. He stressed the importance of diversity in the makeup of the new BBC Board.

Richard Tait said that the problem lies with BBC management: “it’s a culture where if the managers want to not do something, they have ways of not doing it.” Huw Merriman warned of diversity targets, that the BBC shouldn’t “lose sight of the quality of broadcasting because you’re obsessing with figures and stats.”

White Paper spin

The sunny reception the White Paper received was partly because rumours of more radical measures turned out to be wrong. But were those rumours an elaborate spin operation by the BBC to stir up public support in its defence, asked Phil Harding.

Huw Merriman admitted that an awareness of the feelings of the audience was an ingredient of political considerations: “we’d have been frankly mad to take on our own voters.” But James Heath denied Harding’s conspiracy theory: the rumours “weren’t coming from the BBC.”

At best, this week's publication may be a temporary truce between the BBC and its critics. David Elstein said he’d award the White Paper “eight or nine out of ten”. But it hasn’t done much to address his basic complaints about the Corporation: