Mass media: broadcasting systems

Mass media: broadcasting systems

The Reithian tradition

Traditionally, British broadcasters have been particularly proud of their public service broadcasting, which developed under the first Director General of the BBC, Lord Reith. The term is difficult to define. One European Commissioner for Audio-visual, Information, Communication and Cultural Affairs said publicly: 'What is public service? I don't know, though it is very important to answer the question.' (Blumler (1993)) So, if even he doesn't know, you shouldn't be too worried if you find the notion confusing.

It is rather vaguely summarized in the mission to inform, educate and entertain. Certainly, Reith would have seen entertainment as being very definitely in third place. In his view, to the extent that the BBC was intended to entertain, it was also intended to educate listeners and viewers in matters of taste as regards entertainment. The BBC's independence from government was also close to Reith's heart. That and its reputation for 'impartiality' have certainly contributed to making the BBC respected throughout the world. However, there is always the danger that an organization funded by the government and directed by the upper-middle-class is likely to favour the government line. That, (in)famously, is what happened in the 1926 General Strike when Reith argued that the BBC was the people's service and the government was the people's choice, so it followed that the BBC supported the government.

To Reith, the notion that broadcasting's primary aim was to make money was anathema and he viewed with alarm the advent of commercial television (1956).

The direction of accountability in both the BBC and the independent broadcasters has always been upwards and at the top are to be found the white male Oxbridge graduates, the pillars of the Establishment drawn from finance and business backgrounds. Not surprisingly, then, the public service broadcasters, especially 'Auntie' BBC, have a reputation for cultural paternalism, which is reflected in the fact that even today the BBC TV channels are more popular with upper-middle-class viewers. This culture has often been the focus of attack from left-wing critics of the media, though, now that they have experienced what free market deregulation brings, many are rallying behind public service broadcasting. One is reminded here of Chomsky's advice that

In today's world, I think, the goals of a committed anarchist should be to defend some state institutions from the attack against them, while trying at the same time to pry them open to more meaningful public participation - and ultimately to dismantle them in a much more free society, if the appropriate circumstances can be achieved.

Chomsky (1996 : 75)

Attempted definition

Peacock

Thatcher, of course, considered the BBC to be stuffed full of pinko liberal intellectuals, a bastion of privilege and haven of restrictive practices. So the Peacock Commission was set up by Thatcher to investigate methods of financing the BBC. The Committee received from the Broadcasting Research Unit the following list of elements which make up public service broadcasting:

• geographic universality: this means that the broadcasts are available throughout the country; this principle of public service broadcasting clearly applies to existing channels, but is equally clearly broken with in the plans for Channel 5, which cannot ever be received all over the country;
• catering for all interests and tastes: this is evident in, say, the existence of BBC2, Channel 4 and Radio 3. BBC 2 and Channel 4 rarely achieve ratings in excess of around 8 million as against the regular 16 to 18 million for the soaps on BBC1 and ITV. In a purely commercial system they might well disappear;
• catering for minorities: not dissimilar from the above, though this would include also racial and sexual minorities etc; it is evident in particular in the programming of BBC2 and C4;
• concern for 'national identity and community': this is a traditional commitment of British broadcasters; however, it does imply the production of British programmes, which can be extremely expensive in comparison with cheap American and Australian soaps;
• detachment from vested interests and government: this has always been a requirement of British broadcasters; it is arguable, however, that the famed impartiality has rarely been as impartial as it might appear - in part because the broadcasters subscribe to values they see as entirely natural, but which in fact primarily serve the interests of the dominant classes (see ideology); in part because when the pressure is on the broadcasters cave in to government pressure.
• one broadcasting system to be directly funded by the corpus of users i.e. the BBC funded from the licence fee (so far);
• competition in good programming rather than for numbers i.e. the constant concern with 'quality' - the question here is how long this ideal can survive commercial competition;
• guidelines to liberate programme makers and not restrict them: broadly speaking, this is the case; programming policies are regulated by guidelines, rather than laws; however, those guidelines ultimately are backed by sanctions - the government has the power to freeze, reduce or remove the licence fee; the ITC has the power to impose fines and, ultimately, revoke licences; some British broadcasters have claimed (unfairly?) that our broadcasting system is the most regulated in the world.

Murdock

The 'four promises' of public service broadcasting, central to the development of a democratic culture, are defined by Graham Murdock (1997 : 95) as follows:

• a potential space for free expression and open debate, provided for by public service broadcasting's relative and continually threatened distance from private capital and government influence
• accessibility for everyone to this space of expression and debate, without additional charge for services
• an arena in which the politics of difference can be negotiated and a provisional notion of the common good arrived at, because public service broadcasting includes a range of experiences, perspectives and arguments within a single stream of mixed programming
• audiences are addressed by public service broadcasting as citizens, not as consumers

 Smith

Five key elements were pinpointed by Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (speech to the Royal Television Society on 14 October 1998):

• the BBC should act as a benchmark for quality, driving up standards across the board;
• it should provide something for everybody, making the good popular and the popular good;
• it should inform, educate and entertain, expanding people’s horizons with new and innovative programming;
• it should operate efficiently and effectively and provide value for money for licence fee payers;
• it should stimulate, support and reflect the diversity of cultural activity in the United Kingdom, acting as a cultural voice for the nation.

 Thomas

A broadly similar definition of public service aims is provided by Thomas (1999) in her statement of government's core cultural and economic objectives for broadcasting:

• Quality - cultural policy (including access to the arts, promotion of domestic and independent film industry) and protection of vulnerable programme types (news, children's programmes, high cost drama).
• Accuracy and impartiality - reliable and credible news, education and information for the public as a contribution to the national political debate
• Plurality and diversity - the allocation of scarce public resources to as wide a range of operators as possible and the promotion of diverse types of content to cater to all segments of society
• Access - universal affordable access to core services which provide high quality, accurate news and diverse content
• Taste and decency - consumer protection from an influential medium, including the protection of children from harmful material
• International competitiveness - an industrial policy goal to promote growth and development in international equipment, content and network markets

What is particularly worthy of note in that statement is, of course, the last objective, which did not traditionally figure in previous statements of the rôle of the public service broadcaster, but which, especially since Thatcher resolved to submit the BBC to the rigours of the marketplace, has come to be of ever increasing importance.

Regulation in the digital age

The astonishingly rapid technological developments in broadcasting and the Net inevitably raise questions about the future rôle of government regulation. The 1996 Broadcasting Act set a framework for the provision of some thirty-odd channels, a development which in itself must raise questions about government's regulatory rôle, since it voids the argument that a scarce resource (the airwave spectrum) needs to be centrally managed. Given that there is no central regulation of the press, what justification can there be for the central regulation of a broad range of broadcasters?

It may seem self-evident that increased competition amongst broadcasters for a share of a finite fund of advertising support must inevitably lead to lower funding for each and therefore lower quality output, but the press market suggests that that is not an inevitable development. Currently, advertisers are obliged to adopt something of a scattergun approach on television, which is not forced upon them in press advertising, where they have access to the detailed readership profiles of, for example, the NRS. Increased consumer choice in the television market is likely to lead to the development (which has in fact already begun) of narrowcasting, rather than broadcasting, which would allow advertisers to target their audiences more accurately. That could in fact lead to increased advertising revenue in the longer term, as products which cater for niche markets and which were previously not advertised on television are taken up by advertising agencies which can use television for the first time as a relatively precise tool.

There is some evidence from current non-terrestrial broadcasting that 'quality' television can be sustained in the free market (the Discovery Channel is an example which has a broad audience reach). However, the difference between the quality commercial television and quality BBC output is price, the latter costing a mere 28p per day for the entire range of its television and radio output. Consequently, a principal concern for government should continue to be the question of access. BBC1 at present maintains a healthy, though perhaps slowly declining, audience share of 30% to 40% or more and a 'reach' of 90%, meaning that 90% of the population tune in at least once a week. There is a strong argument that a government committed to the value of information, education and culture to a healthy democracy must ensure that such access is retained for the poorer sectors of the population. Quite what such a commitment would be a commitment to is, however, unclear at present. If, as is expected to be the case, digital broadcasting and its convergence with the Net eventually allows not merely narrowcasting, but unicasting, whereby each individual user can set up his or her very specific menu of programme preferences, it is not at all clear that there remains a well defined rôle for a broadcaster such as the BBC. A possible response might be to develop the BBC into something closer to the PBS in the USA, which, some commentators argue, does what the BBC does best even better than the BBC because it is totally free of any commercial constraints at all. Such a proposal might be anathema to the regulator committed to the public service ethos with its determination to 'cater for all interests and tastes' and avoid the ghettoization of public service broadcasting, leaving the masses to their gameshows and football while the intellectuals watch the subsidized Architecture of Wittgenstein, but it could turn out to be the only way for the BBC to preserve its credibility in the face of commercial pressures which, increasingly, are alleged to have led to the 'dumbing down' of its serious output (see the section on broadcasting in the UK). If there is substance in such allegations, then there could be a sound argument that the BBC should withdraw from competition entirely.

In this context perhaps yet another definition of the BBC's public service rôle is deserving of consideration. In this case, it's not so much a definition as a rough and ready attempt to answer the question what is the BBC for today? It is taken from the Davies Review, The Future Funding of the BBC (1999):

• The first [broad principle] is that, while the BBC is a public sector broadcaster, this does not mean that everything it does is public service broadcasting. Still less does it mean that the output of other broadcasters falls outside the definition of public service. To support the continued existence of the BBC as the recipient of a universal compulsory charge, we need to believe both that a large share of the Corporation’s output falls into the public service category, and also that by no means all of the private sector’s output does so.
• The second principle is that some form of market failure must lie at the heart of any concept of public service broadcasting. Beyond simply using the catch-phrase that public service broadcasting must “inform, educate and entertain”, we must add “inform, educate and entertain in a way which the private sector, left unregulated, would not do”. Otherwise, why not leave matters entirely to the private sector?
• The third principle is that, in order to believe in a full-scale BBC, we need to accept that a combination of the private sector’s profit motive, plus regulation, is insufficient to repair the market failure and deliver what we want. After all, the existence of public service broadcasting on ITV, and the success of Channel Four, shows that a fair ration of public service output can be generated from the private sector. In order to argue in favour of maintaining an expensive organisation dedicated to public service television, we need to be satisfied that regulation of the private sector is not, on its own, enough.

The Davies Panel considered that on this basis there was sufficient evidence of a rôle for the BBC to play as a public service broadcaster now and, in all likelihood for the next ten years, but, as the report pointed out, it was not necessarily evident that that would continue to be the case once the nation was 100% digital. However, they did consider that there would probably continue to be a 'market failure' in the sense referred to above: 'There is good reason to suppose that the market, left to itself, will not provide the broadcasting which our society wishes to foster.' Davies (1999 : 137). The sentence is a bit of a give-away, though. If there is a kind of output which 'our society' desires, then surely the market would provide it because there would be a demand for it. Presumably, 'our society' refers here to that particular class represented by the members of the panel? How to remedy that market failure becomes a much more contentious issue when there is a wealth of providers (of whatever 'broadcasting' is known as by then) than a small number limited by spectrum scarcity. Lord Reith's understanding of public service paid scant attention to what the public might want and was more concerned with giving them what he and his patrician class considered good for them. In an era of potentialy unlimited consumer choice, it would be politically difficult to argue for the continuation of a licence fee to support an organization whose output many (perhaps most) consumers would not be using.

The regulation of news and current affairs may also be considered questionable when digital TV will allow a wide range of competing representations of reality. When the broadcasting spectrum is a scarce resource and therefore has to be rationed between a very few corporations, it seems reasonable to require such standards as 'balance' and 'impartiality' of a pervasive medium (though it should be stressed that these notions are far from being as unproblematic as the regulators have often seemed to assume) and broadcasters will be willing under such circumstances to accept the imposition of some public service responsibility in return for access to a scarce resource. At the time that the public service role of TV was developed, television was  considered to be a uniquely powerful medium and indeed that assumption still underlies much current regulation, but there is little evidence that it is in fact so powerful, except to the extent that, if it is our sole source of information on current affairs, then four or five channels provide little scope for competing views. If we accept that the press are not required to be impartial - indeed we expect newspapers to speak to the prejudices of their readership and present the prejudices of their proprietors - it is not immediately apparent why we should require broadcasters to accept different standards in their presentation of news. In any case, it is not at all clear that television will be quite the distinctive medium that it is now. Assuming that convergence continues to develop at its present pace, then we will use the box in the corner to watch movies, read the paper, play games with people across the other side of the world, video-conference with relatives etc. In what sense is that a television? And that is, of course, a question which leads us the consideration of cross-media ownership rules, which are already beginning to look outdated as I can read the newspaper on-line or buy it from my local shop - is it then still a newspaper, or are we already talking about a matter of cross-media ownership? If I browse through the BBC's website, with its acres of text, but also its streaming video, its streaming audio broadcasts of Giddens's lectures, its animations of dinosaurs taken from its hugely successful TV series, am I watching TV, listening to the radio or reading a magazine? Furthermore, I am making the decisions about my unique mix, being much more active than conventional television would allow, even in some sense perhaps broadcasting, whether through my contribution to an on-line game or the development of a website. The then head of ITV, Richard Eyre, gave the 1999 MacTaggart lecture to the Guardian International Television Festival. The subject of the lecture was Is there a post-Reithian model of public service broadcasting that can thrive in the communicopia of the future?

Here is my answer to the question: public service broadcasting will soon be dead.

Eyre R. The Guardian August 28 1999

According to Eyre, public service broadcasting is facing oblivion because:

• it relies on the notion of an active broadcaster and a passive viewer and, in an era of wide choice, many viewers will 'pass on the wholesome, healthy and carefully crafted in favour of the easily digestible, pre-packaged and the undemanding'

• it relies on regulators who will be unable to do a comprehensive job

• an enduring definition of public service broadcasting will be impossible to formulate

None of the above is intended to suggest that I am opposed to regulation of broadcasting, but, rather, to indicate that the regulation is rapidly being outpaced by technological and commercial developments. This was recognized by Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in his September 1999 speech to the Royal Television Society's convention. Perhaps the most significant announcement made in that speech was the fixing of a date for the switch-off of analogue television between 2006 and 2010, which should encourage a firm commitment on behalf of the major players to the development and promotion of digital services. Smith also promised the consolidation of the plethora of regulatory bodies in the UK as well as announcing plans for a review of the way programme content is regulated. In response to points made by the Parliamentary Select Committee a year earlier, Smith also announced plans to allow ITV companies to merge. This was in part a response to the Select Committee's observation that:

Competition policy will need to balance the dangers of oligopoly on the one hand with the prospect on the other that excessive concern over ownership and size in a domestic context might create a market so fragmented that the United Kingdom lacks organisations with the range of skills and investment capital to compete effectively in increasingly global markets. Dominant positions are often beneficial viewed in an international context; they are also often a legitimate reward for risk and innovation. The aim of regulation should be to reduce the possibilities for the abuse of a dominant position, not to reduce dominance. They will depend greatly on swift, coherent and effective regulation of infrastructure and gateways. This regulation will require sector-specific skills and focus.

Department of Culture, Media and Sport (1998)

This clearly presents a very different emphasis from that which has traditionally informed British legislation on cross-media ownership.

Related articles:

Abigail Thomas's Regulation of Broadcasting in the Digital Age, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 1999 for a very thorough discussion of regulatory issues and an examination of the way they have been dealt with in other countries

Types of broadcasting system

De Fleur's model of the taste-differentiated audience

Broadcasting in the European Union

European Union legislation

Broadcasting in France

Broadcasting in Germany

Broadcasting in Holland

Broadcasting in Italy

Broadcasting in the UK

Regulation of the media in the UK