What is "distinctiveness", why is it important and how can we ensure the BBC is committed to it?

The government’s green paper on the BBC’s Charter Review asks about the distinctiveness of BBC content and how it should be measured and many stakeholders have been commenting on this in their responses, sparking, in some areas, some debate over what would be right for the BBC.

The Trust has been discussing this at our series of public seminars but have found that even expert panellists find it tricky when distinctiveness lacks a widely agreed definition. Having a definition might also help to move the general debate along as it is hard to argue for something that people don’t agree how to define – does a distinctive BBC mean that it focusses on areas of market failure?

So we thought we would share (again) the results of joint work undertaken by the BBC Trust and Executive a few years ago which sought answers to this and two other questions:

1. Why is distinctiveness important for the BBC?
2. Is distinctiveness linked to market failure?
3. How should we define distinctiveness?

And we have some suggestions which we are discussing with government for how the BBC’s commitment to being distinctive could be clarified in the next Charter.

Why is distinctiveness important for the BBC?

We concluded that distinctiveness is essential to the BBC in justifying its public funding. The Trust and BBC Executive agreed that there is little justification for public funding if the BBC cannot show that it is significantly different from commercial operators in ways that are of value to licence fee payers.

We agreed that delivery of its public purposes is not sufficient to demonstrate BBC distinctiveness. While the BBC is unique in existing to deliver its public purposes, we accepted that commercial operators are also capable of delivering these purposes – newspapers deliver ‘citizenship’ and Channel 4 delivers ‘culture and creativity’. So delivery of the purposes alone cannot provide sufficient evidence of the BBC’s distinctiveness.

So we agreed that distinctiveness lies in how the BBC delivers the public purposes: what distinguishes the BBC from those who can also deliver its purposes must be the ways in which it provides them. The BBC, by virtue of its public funding, will pursue values and demonstrate behaviours that mark it apart from commercial operators and, in so doing, provide something of particular value to audiences.

Is distinctiveness linked to market impact?

We concluded that distinctiveness should be considered separately from the issue of market impact. A claimed lack of distinctiveness on the BBC’s part is often seen as synonymous with it having undue negative market impact. But there are many examples of how a more distinctive programme or service can also be more popular – and therefore have greater market impact. 6 Music is a good example of this as, after 2009 when it began to focus more on its mission to “celebrate the alternative spirit in popular music”, its listening figures rose from 600,000 each week to 2.1 million. Similarly, BBC News Online is highly distinctive, in adhering to the BBC’s unique editorial guidelines, but it is also popular with users in the UK and abroad, so undoubtedly has an impact on the market.

How should we define distinctiveness?

After a lot of detailed discussion, we settled on four values which we believe define distinctiveness. They are:

• High editorial standards

• Creative and editorial ambition

• Range and depth

• UK-focused content and indigenous talent.

The values vary in importance by type of programme or service, but a distinctive programme or service will clearly demonstrate at least one of these values. Here are some examples:

• High editorial standards: BBC news across TV, radio and online is distinctive because displays very high editorial standards. Specifically, it is held to higher standards of accuracy, impartiality and independence than other news providers are. In an online world where there are more sources of news than ever before, the BBC can claim to be more distinctive than ever by virtue of its unique editorial values. And audiences implicitly recognise this: there is an enduring high level of trust in the BBC’s news content amongst those who consume it.



• Creative and editorial ambition: This value was described beautifully simply by producer Jane Tranter at a recent Trust Charter seminar as “be bold”. We judge that this value is what defines distinctive BBC TV output. For example, it was bold to create BBC entertainment shows based on baking or ballroom dancing and these are distinctive programmes. BBC Three programming has been characterised by its boldness, perhaps because it has always felt like it was a place where, in the words of one of its former controllers, there was the freedom to fail. So this is what the Trust proposes safeguarding on other BBC channels if permission is given to close BBC Three as a broadcast channel. The value is well understood within the BBC: BBC One controller Charlotte Moore was reported in Broadcast magazine recently: “Charlotte Moore has reasserted her desire for distinctive programming for BBC One, declaring: 'If it feels like it’s more of the same, then I’m not interested.' Charlotte explained, 'The nature of the licence fee allows us to take those creative risks.'" [see footnote 1]



• BBC television established a metric which could be used to measure audience perceptions of every programme in this respect: ‘fresh and new’. It reports regularly on how services (although not individual programmes) are performing in this respect and the scores have been rising in recent years.



• Range and depth: This value is best represented by a service, rather than a programme. The BBC’s music radio services display this value well. For example, the range and type of music they play sets them materially apart from commercial stations even though, to a casual or light listener, they might seem similar. Each station has service licence quotas which underpin their points of distinctiveness:

1. Radio 1’s music mix is distinctive because it plays a large number of tracks and more new, UK and live music than most other pop radio stations. Around half of its music output is not played on other UK radio stations. [see footnote 2]

2. Radio 2’s music is distinctive because it mixes new music with a very wide range of musical genres from across many eras and has a very low repetition of tracks. Around three quarters of its music output is not played on any other UK radio station.

3. Radio 3 plays a much wider range of music and from a larger number of composers than the UK’s other Classical music station, Classic FM.

• UK focussed content and talent: The BBC’s remit and funding makes it entirely focussed on serving UK licence fee payers. As media markets become more global – both online and in broadcasting – a focus on serving the needs of a UK audience becomes an increasingly important point of distinctiveness and a critical driver in delivering some of the BBC’s public purposes, around representation of the UK and its nations, regions and communities and the stimulation of UK culture and creativity. A high proportion of the BBC’s online service is very focussed on UK users: news, sports, travel, weather, formal and informal learning content. Of course, there are other UK providers of content in many of these areas too, but much internet use in the UK is of international sites.

Given how important distinctiveness is for the BBC, we strongly support that it should be enshrined in the next Charter, linked to the public purposes. And the nature of the commitment for each BBC service should be set out more clearly.

To achieve this, we recommend that each BBC service should have clear commitments relating its distinctiveness included in its service licence. This will enable the BBC to be held to account more easily in this area and for everyone to have a common basis on which to judge its performance.

Finally, while it is clear that every BBC programme should aspire to be distinctive when it is developed, not all will succeed and some may be emulated by the market, so we agree with the BBC Executive that the BBC should only be held accountable at the level of each service, rather than programme.

[1] Broadcast, 8 October 2015: Charlotte Moore explains BBC1 vision

[2] Based on BBC Radio music monitoring from June 2014 which compares Radio 1 and Radio 2 with seven commercial stations