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Mass media: broadcasting
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Mass media: broadcasting
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For a broad overview of the regulation of media ownership in the UK, with links to the detail of Acts of Parliament, see the 
Department of Culture's Guide
The BBC was set up in 1927.
The BBC is established by Royal Charter. Unlike the Broadcasting Act 1990, the Charter does not have statutory force. In practice, however, the aims of the BBC are almost exactly the same as the requirements of ITV companies as regards its public service mission and its commitment to 'maintain a high general standard in all respects'.
It is funded by the licence fee.
Its licence is renewed every 15 years.
The first Director-General, Lord Reith, established the tradition of public service broadcasting, which was carried across to ITV (started 1956).
The BBC is run by 12 Governors, who set the BBC's policy and appoint the Director General and senior management. The Governors are appointed by the government.
In principle the BBC is immune from direct government interference. Conventional mythology has it that the BBC established robust independence of government from the outset, determined to serve the public interest, rather than the interests of the government of the day. In fact, Reith told J CC Davidson, whom Prime Minister Baldwin put in charge of publicity at the time of the General Strike, that
Assuming that the BBC is for the people and the Government is for the people, it follows that the BBC must be for the Government
It is hard to imagine that in a country like Britain, where the tradition of official secrecy is so deeply ingrained, the BBC could have developed in its early days into a genuinely impartial and independent organ, though it is conceivable that to the cultural Establishment parroting the views of the political Establishment may well have seemed like impartiality.
Today, of course, the BBC is genuinely more independent of government. Nevertheless, the government has the right to ban a particular programme or type of programme. In 1988, for example, broadcasters were forbidden to show visuals of interviews with members or supporters of terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland at the same time as broadcasting their voices. (This ban included Sinn Fein, a legitimate political party with MPs elected to Westminster).
Although the Secretary of State very rarely uses the power to ban a broadcast, intense pressure may often be exerted by the government. Since 1979 when the Conservatives came to power, there has been frequent intense government hostility. Examples include:
There have also been more general Tory attacks on the BBC for its supposed left-wing bias and the perceived rudeness and aggression of its interviewers. At the time of first writing this article, I mentioned here that the latest attack has come from Treasury Secretary Jonathan Aitken on respected journalist John Humphrys. In the meantime, Aitken has been imprisoned for his perjury in a libel suit he brought against The Guardian newspaper.
As a result, it is claimed by some in the leftish quality press, it has become almost a reflex action for the BBC to ask itself whether a planned programme is likely to upset the government and pull it if they think it might. The Guardian has been particularly critical of the Corporation for becoming the government's lapdog and caving in to government pressure. The Governors do, however, sometimes take an independent line.
Under the so-called 'New' Labour government (elected in 1997) attacks on the BBC have continued. The new government is suspected by some of being a triumph of form over substance as its 'spin doctors' seek to present a sanitized image of the government which will not upset middle England or big business. Upsetting single parents and other vulnerable groups does not seem to be of any great importance, unless of course media presentation of the savaging of single parent benefits happens to upset the spin doctors' carefully laid plans.
In December 1997 the government threatened to suspend co-operation with the BBC, a singularly stupid threat even for this presentation-obsessed government, after John Humphrys, the presenter of Radio Four's Today gave Harriett Harman (Social Security Secretary) a rough ride over plans to cut single parents' benefits.
In February 1998, there was a further outbreak of New Labour authoritarianism after Radio Four's World at One featured a speech by Labour rebel MP Brian Sedgemore who criticized New Labour. As one of the 47 New Labour MPs (though Mr Sedgemore might more properly be considered 'old Labour') who had voted against the benefits cuts, he criticized Prime Minister Blair as 'above God' and compared New Labour's women MPs with the Stepford Wives, suggesting that they had microprocessors implanted in their brains to keep them on-message. An official Labour spokesman responded: 'For the BBC to think that this is the most important thing to happen today and devote 13 minutes of radio time to it demonstrates their complete loss of perspective and their increasingly trivial agenda which we have come to expect.'
Shortly before this extraordinary attack on the BBC, the BBC's chief political correspondent, John Sergeant, had been roundly rebuked by Alistair Campbell, No. 10's very own spin doctor, for asking whether the Prime Minister, who was about to visit the USA, was worried that he might be questioned about the Lewinsky sex scandal surrounding the US President. Campbell replied that the question was irrelevant and described the BBC as a 'downmarket, dumbed-down, over-staffed, over-bureaucratic, ridiculous organization' (which sounds like a perfect description of New Labour to me).
Campbell's childish and peevish outburst (and there were similar attacks later during the Kosovo war - covered in the section on propaganda), continuing as it does the tradition of the previous administration's continuing attacks on the BBC, suggests that at least the BBC is continuing to discharge the duties it is paid to discharge in a democracy. If only the same could be said of New Labour.
However, although I do take the view that New Labour's frequently clumsy attempts at news management do often appear as mere petulance because they are not having their way with the media, I also consider that the claim of 'dumbing down' is certainly one which deserves attention. In fact it is a claim which has received increasing attention from the quality press over recent months (late 1999), especially in view of the impending retirement of the BBC's Director-General (John Birt) and the assessment of his record. I mention some of these criticisms of the BBC in the section below.
During the 1980s the free market ideology of Margaret Thatcher, coupled perhaps also with antagonism to an organization which was often critical of her government, led her to reduce the size of the BBC and temporarily freeze the licence fee, thereby forcing the BBC 'out into the market place'. The BBC already made money from selling programmes around the world, but was now forced to pay more attention to sales, including sales of airtime (for example night-time on BBC2). The 'Peacock Commission' was set up to examine alternative methods of funding the BBC, including advertising and 'pay-per-view'.
During the period of John Birt's Director-Generalship, which is due to end in early 2000, the BBC came in for frequent press criticism for spending very large amounts of money on management training and executives' salaries at the same time as the programming budget is greatly reduced. The blame was repeatedly laid at the feet of the Director-General, John Birt. Typical of such criticism was a swingeing attack by Janet Street-Porter, at the time managing director of L!VE TV and former head of independent production at BBC Entertainment Group. In a lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, she said:
British television currently faces a crisis. Talent is leaving, frustrated and fed-up; morale has never been lower; ground-breaking ideas are not getting on to the screen often enough. We might face a multi-channel future, but the only thing multiplying is management and it doesn't seem to have a clue what it's doing .....
A terminal blight has hit the TV industry .... This blight is management - the dreaded four Ms: male, middle class, middle-aged and mediocre ....
Britain as a nation has always led the world in a number of fields and crummy management is certainly one of them
Street-Porter (1995)
This was widely reported in the press as an outspoken attack on the new managerialism of Birt's régime. Whilst conceding that similar criticism has been repeatedly voiced during Birt's period of office, I think it's worth bearing in mind that Ms Street-Porter was speaking from the position of rival (albeit a minor one) to the BBC. Any criticism of the BBC is obviously grist to its competitors' mills and they will naturally seize on it and seek to ensure that it receives maximum coverage.
Under John Major's government, there was less outspoken criticism of, and attempted interference in, the BBC's activities than there had been under Thatcher, but Major's support was lukewarm at best. Though the Charter and the licence fee were both extended, it was clear that the Conservative government intended to force the BBC further out into the marketplace.
It is an intriguing fact, in view of Britain's reluctance in the fifties to allow commercial television, that we now find ourselves at the forefront of the drive to introduce digital services. It was almost thirty years before the the 'comfortable duopoly' of the BBC and ITV was opened up by the establishment of Channel 4 in 1982, a commercial channel which had a carefully formulated public service remit, and then 'only' a further fifteen years for Channel 5 to be granted a licence. By now, 1999, the BBC finds itself in the thick of the maelstrom of broadcasting and telecommunications innovations which pose a serious threat to the BBC and indeed to the very notion of the regulation which permitted the Corporation's development.
A major shift in the broadcasting landscape was signalled by the 1996 Broadcasting Act.It provided for 6 multiplexes, each of which could carry six channels, potentially giving consumers some thirty-odd channels to choose from, a vastly expanded range of choice which increases the potential for narrowcasting rather than broadcasting and raises significant questions about the appropriate structure of any regulatory framework for the digital age (see the section on public service broadcasting).
By now, late 1999, the BBC's future is uncertain, against the background of the surprisingly rapid development of the Net in the direction of a broadband medium, the introduction of digital TV and the likelihood that current regulatory controls will be cut back to allow cable companies to operate nationwide. It begins to look as if the BBC's unique position will not last for much longer. As Peter Golding points out, the BBC's reputation makes it a very attractive partner for joint commercial ventures, but, as such ventures gradually develop, so the justification for the licence fee disappears. 'The translation of the Corporation into a commercially-driven organization is irresistible.' (Golding 1994))
In 1995, viewing of cables and satellite channels increased, mainly at the expense of the BBC, whose audience share in cable-owning homes fell from 24.3% to 21.2%. In cable-connected homes, cable stations accounted for 54% of total viewing by youngsters under 15 and nearly 64% among those aged under 9. (source: Continental Research for the ITC, The Guardian, 23/12/95) The 1995 figures are shown in the table on the right. BBC1's audience share currently (1999) hovers around the 30% to 40% mark.
This trend has continued until the present (1999). The BBC has found it ever more difficult to compete on equal terms with the other players in the media market and 1999 was something of an annus horribilis for BBC television as several of its most familiar faces from entertainment, sport and current affairs walked off to more lucrative contracts with the independent competition, with even star Noel Edmonds, responsible for some of the most mindless pap ever broadcast, complaining about the BBC's dumbing down. Harsh criticism indeed. Dumbing down - John Humphrys
Perhaps the critique of the BBC which received the most attention was that which came from veteran current affairs broadcaster, John Humphrys, in his book The Devil's Advocate (1999). Humphrys is a highly respected broadcaster, whose aggressive cross-examination of politicians on Radio 4's Today programme, as well as his contributions to BBC TV, have frequently led him to be in the firing line when governments and their spin-doctors vent their ire on the broadcasters, a fact which has only increased the respect many listeners and viewers have for him.
In an article in The Guardian Humphrys presented a brief review of the development of BBC TV's Six O'Clock News since its relaunch in the spring of 1999. In his view, 'the Six has gone softer and opted for an agenda dominated by social issues with a consumerist angle'. The BBC has certainly never since the launch of ITV been able to sit on the sidelines in the ratings war, since it has always had to demonstrate to the government that it is able to retain a sufficient audience share to justify the maintenance of the licence fee. In Humphry's opinion, it is now the case that
the problem for the programme-makers, with the ratings-chasers on their backs, is that they dare not risk offering any fare that may be too challenging. That means making programmes that are 'accessible'. What is meant by 'accessible' is anything that we can relate to from experience in our own lives, the patronising assumption being that anything outside our experience will be a turn-off. So out goes much of the difficult stuff and in comes the story to which we can 'relate'. Or the private lives of the famous. Or crime. Or consumer affairs. Or something funny or whimsical. Anything to do with sex, jealousy, conflict, money, power, suffering, anything from which you can elicit an emotional response, is deemed to be 'accessible'. This is where populist television news takes us.
Humphrys, The Guardian, August 30, 1999
Humphrys charts the development of emotional reporting in current affairs programmes, where dispassionate, cool, 'objective' reporting is abandoned in favour of a style where the reporter tells us what the experience of famine, refugees, war is doing to him or her. Whilst recognizing that one could always ask the question 'whose objectivity' of the old-style reporter and that the supposed objectivity was always relative, Humphrys considers that the newer approach is essentially more superficial and more manipulative. Here Humphrys parts company with the equally respected correspondent, Martin Bell, who, during the period of his coverage of the war in Bosnia, began to argue off-screen for a
journalism that cares as well as knows; that is aware of its responsibilities and will not stand neutrally between good and evil, right and wrong, the victim and the oppressor
Whilst recognizing that the Bosnian war was an enormous emotional drain on Bell, Humphrys argues that the approach he advocates would be fundamentally misguided and that journalists of the old school were not morally neutral; rather they sought out the worst excesses of man's inhumanity to man and presented them honestly and have attempted to investigate the causes behind them, leaving their viewers or readers to decide what stand to take and what to do about it. Ultimately, in Humphrys' view, the BBC's ratings will fall however programming develops. That he sees as inevitable when there is increased competition, but he argues that they can only be sustained at an acceptable level if the BBC attempts to maintain its standards of quality programming and a commitment to serious coverage of the issues of the day.
A further critique of television which caught the media's attention in 99 was the report produced by Steve Barnett, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Westminster, and Emily Weymour on behalf of the Campaign for Quality Television, a report whose criticisms, unlike many of Humphrys', did not solely target the BBC, indeed adduced that 'the BBC is becoming almost the sole repository of political and economic coverage'. Barnett's study, which compared schedules in 1978, 1988 and 1998, pointed to a rise in 'quick-fix' TV which is intended to increase ratings. To justify his claim of the Disneyfication of British television, Barnett pointed to the fact that the number of single dramas has halved over the last twenty years, while soap operas have increased fivefold (there are now (1999) five mainstream soaps, some of which have three episodes a week and a weekend omnibus edition), as programmers, pressured to respond to the ratings, are obliged to schedule drama likely to bring the viewers back repeatedly. In further support of his thesis, Barnett quoted from interviews with thirty anonymous programme-makers and commissioning editors. These showed, he claimed, increasing disillusionment and a belief that the major ground-breaking dramas tackling social issues, such as Cathy Come Home would not now be funded, as they would be perceived as too risky in the ratings war. Barnett claimed there had been a shift towards a 'focus-group mentality' in broadcasting, the results of which were little or no training in journalistic techniques, less thorough research in current affairs and a declining craft base:
Ultimately all the problems - centralisation, homogeneity, the focus-group mentality - come down to money and ratings in a world of deregulated competition and diminishing budgets. Producers throughout the industry are now expected, even on minority channels, to perform according to ratings targets and on budgets which are progressively being cut (sometimes even in the middle of filming). In the BBC, the result is a growing culture of self-censorship: 'Every year, they keep cutting. We feel we've become so budget-oriented that we've clipped our own wings - we don't even suggest ideas because we think it will be too expensive'.
Barnett and Seymour, The Guardian, 25/10/99
Where the coverage of political issues is concerned, Barnett argues that attention to policies has given way to an obsession with scandals and personalities, in part because of increased competition within the media market and in part because of the ever-present threat from media regulation. Barnett quotes Greg Dyke from before he was appointed BBC Director-General:
It will take a very brave ITV broadcaster to make or broadcast a controversial programme about government if by doing so it believes it is seriously threatening its chance of persuading the government to change a particular piece of legislation.
(quoted in Politics Under Pressure, Steve Barnett and Ivor Gaber, The Guardian, April 23 2001)
According to Barnett, Channel 4, under increasing threat of privatization, and the BBC, under constant siege from commercial competitors, face similar pressures.
Whether Greg Dyke (Director General from 2000) can reverse this trend remains to be seen. In his first speech as Director General designate (October 1999) he set out his vision of a BBC which would have education at the forefront of its agenda, co-operating closely with teachers to develop educational materials using a variety of interconnected media to educate both in and outside the classroom, drawing on the BBC's resources to create a digital interactive curriculum, which will be accessible initially through schools and libraries and ultimately in homes. The BBC has of course been involved in the production of educational materials for some time, but Dyke's speech made it clear that there will be considerable development of this rôle and almost suggested that he sees it as central to his vision of the BBC's purpose. Whether this means a major reorientation of the BBC's focus will be interesting to see, though it should be acknowledged that the BBC is already well placed in this sector, having a long record of educational programmes in conventional media and having shown extraordinarily rapid development in the new media, with over two thirds of GCSE students accessing its website for revision purposes in 1998 (source: Davies (1999)).
At the moment (August 2000) it's no doubt too early to tell what effect Dyke will have, though he has been making promising noises about ridding the BBC of the layers of bureaucratic management introduced by his predecessor. So far, however, the reduction of the run of Panorama, the Corporation's highly respected current affairs flagship, from 38 weeks to 30 hardly suggests less dumbing down.
Of course, the allegation that broadcasting is now engaged in dumbing down is always set against the assumption that it was once engaged in a process of clevering up. The BBC's first Director General, Lord Reith, no doubt did consider that that was one of the purposes of broadcasting, perhaps the foremost. However, upon closer inspection, Reith's mission appears highly questionable, when set against the notion of public service broadcasting as defined by more contemporary observers of the media. Reith's BBC would certainly have failed the test of 'detachment from vested interests and government' since he plainly stated that, since both the BBC and the Government were for the people, then it followed that the BBC was for the Government. His BBC would also have failed the test of 'catering for all interests and tastes'. There were three radio stations only, one of which was exclusively devoted to 'classical' music and 'great' poetry and drama, but the other two strongly reflected the tastes of the upper(ish) middle classes, by and large. Amongst commentators who bemoan the dumbing down of broadcasting, Kenneth Clark's series Civilization, first broadcast in 1969, is regularly trotted out as an example of the glory days of television. However, at a time when there was a choice between only three television channels, each of which broadcast for far less than today's standard twenty-four hours a day, the first edition of Clark's series was watched by a mere 900,000 viewers. What's more, the series was shown on Sunday evenings, whilst today broadcasters are roundly criticized for shunting challenging programmes into the Sunday evening ghetto. An examination of the TV schedules of 1969 shows that, although terrestrial TV then offered a somewhat higher proportion of arts programming than it does now, an utterly enthralling series with the breadth and ambition of Civlization was certainly an exception. What's more, it can become difficult to fight the corner for a publicly funded broadcasting channel when we British buy in masterpieces like The American Civil War, Friends, Frasier etc., all produced within an almost entirely commercial broadcasting system.
Intriguingly, since I wrote that last section, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (11/09/01) has taken place and seems to have reversed the fortunes of current affairs television, BBC1's Panorama being given four weekday slots to cover related issues and Channel 4 devoting large chunks of airtime to aspects of the 'war on terrorism', with much more time being given to specialist contributors. The ratings show, contrary to all expectations, that the young in particular are hungry, not just for news of the war, but also for in-depth exploration of the background issues. Whether this is a temporary or permanent change of direction remains to be seen, but the statistics suggest that it may turn out to be a long-term trend. Whilst it is true that current affairs programmes such as Panorama and World in Action have been marginalized, it is also the case that Channel 4 News is a considerably longer news programme than we used to have in the supposed golden age of broadcasting, as is BBC 2's Newsnight, both of which are shown every weekday, and both of which have have seen a consistent increase in their audience numbers since the early 80s.
ITV companies are subject to regulation by the ITC
The ITC's rôle and those of other regulatory bodies are set out in the Broadcasting Act 1990
When ITV started in 1956, its aims, despite the fact that it was a commercial venture, were clearly in accord with the Reithian tradition: to inform, educate and entertain.
This changed to some extent under Thatcher, who was ideologically opposed to the whole notion of public service broadcasting. She was also particularly angered by a Thames TV programme called Death on the Rock and some consider that the sale of franchises under the Broadcasting Act 1990 was her revenge attack on Thames.
As a result of the Broadcasting Act, the ITV licences were put out to tender. It was Thatcher's intention that they should be awarded simply to the highest bidder, but she was finally forced to accept a form of the Act which provided for a so-called 'quality threshold'. The companies who made bids had to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the ITC that their business plans were such as to guarantee 'quality programming'. Thus, although, the underlying criterion was the amount of money bid, this was tempered by considerations of quality. As a result, Central TV, which had a proven track-record of producing quality programmes, risked a bid as low as £2000 and was successful. Television South West bid more than West Country TV, but failed to secure the franchise because the ITC felt that they would have insufficient money left over to guarantee quality programming.
Thames TV, incidentally, lost out to Carlton.
The Broadcasting Act removes or dilutes a number of the stringent regulations which had applied to ITV companies and thus begins a process of deregulation.
There was unremitting pressure to move News at Ten to an earlier time, so as to allow the uninterrupted showing of movies during peak time.
This was ruled out by the ITC for some considerable time, but was finally
acceded to in 1999:
Those who argue for current affairs programmes to stay in peak-time are just not accepting things as they are ... under the new licences ITV is mandated to be a popular channel that gets an audience, earns revenue and sustains business.
The Guardian May 6 1992, cited in (Golding 1994))
Since ITV's news bulletin was moved to the later 11pm slot, ratings fell by some 14%. After due monitoring of ITV's output, the ITC announced that it considered the new 11pm bulletin to be satisafctory and that the range of new programmes promised for the peak time of 9pm to 11pm had indeed been delivered. However, ITV remains under an obligation to perform a public servie rôle and its declining numbers for the bulletin suggested that it was failing to do so. There was unremitting protest from MPs and the ITC eventually somewhat unexpectedly bared its teeth, ordering ITV to come up with programming improvements. An extraordinary attack by some of ITN's most famous names was submitted to the ITC, complaining of a 'fundamental decay at ITV's heart' - essentially the same 'dumbing-down' allegation as is levelled at the BBC.
Golding also refers to a recent report on children's programmes which shows that factual content has fallen in favour of cartoons and other entertainment formats.
The case of Ray Fitzwalter is also cited by Golding. He was Granada's Head of Current Affairs and the force behind the highly respected documentary series World in Action. According to Golding, he was 'eased out of' the company in early 1994, saying that the rich were about to make themselves seriously rich by 'unremitting ratings maximisation, cheaper trouble-free programmes, sacrificing range and diversity in peak time'.
It begins to seem highly unlikely that the public service ideal will survive the move towards a market-driven broadcasting system.
In December 1995, the government's Broadcasting Bill planned the removal of the two-licence limit on ITV companies. ITV companies may now (assuming that the bill becomes law) own as many licences as they like, subject to a limit of a 15% share of the total viewing public.
In mid 1997 the development of digital TV quickened markedly. Writing in the Observer, John Tusa, formerly managing director of the BBC World Service, made it clear that he sees digital TV as one more nail in the coffin of public service broadcasting. He suggests that more can indeed mean less, since in his view, the proliferation of channels, many of which will be single-interest channels, will lead to the decline of a sense of shared experience and shared community which is provided by the limited number of network channels. In addition, there will be little chance for TV to surprise viewers, perhaps awakening in them an interest which they had not previously had, through the mixture of broadcasting content which is a requirement of network TV. Tusa considers that network TV emphasized what viewers have in common, whereas single-issue channels will emphasize what separates them, acting as a 'further atomizer of social interchange'.
The pressure to move the News at Ten to a slot outside peak viewing time was finally succumbed to in 1999, with ITN continuing to meet its current affairs obligations by providing Tonight with Trevor Macdonald at around 11pm (half an hour past the average bedtime) each evening. Steve Barnett and Emily Seymour quoted one producer as describing the slot as 'an utterly cynical form of journalism' because of its appetite for CCTV footage and sensational or shocking material: 'An entire item constructed not because there's any journalistic of public service ... just so long as you can cram [in] as much video of people getting hurt or cars crashing [as possible]' (Barnett and Seymour, The Guardian, 25/10/99)
Lord Melvyn Bragg, controller of arts programmes at London Weekend Television and presenter of the arts programme, The South Bank Show also launched into an attack on broadcasters in the latter part of 1999, complaining that they were dumbing down, not because they were in fact aiming at the lowest common denominator, but rather because they consistently overlooked the pull which 'difficult' fare actually has for audiences. He cited his own show as evidence for the attractiveness of such material, but there is no doubt some substance to JG Ballard's riposte that 'The South Bank Show is a classic example of dumbing down: most television trivializes the already trivial, but the South Bank Show trivializes the serious, which is far more dangerous.'
Types of broadcasting system
De Fleur's model of the taste-differentiated audience
Public Service broadcasting
Broadcasting in the European Union
European Union legislation
Broadcasting in France
Broadcasting in Germany
Broadcasting in Holland
Broadcasting in Italy
Regulation of the media in the UK
to make a comment or complaint or request information from the BBC
BBC website
to find the full text of the BBC's Charter
ITC website
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