Public Service Broadcasting (Communications Committee Report)

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, not only for bringing the debate to the Chamber but for so clearly stating the case. That was extremely helpful because not all of us have the noble Lord’s experience. I have always had one anxiety. I think that we in this country treat the BBC as a sacred cow. I am sure that noble Lords know what I mean. The BBC can get away with far more than any of the commercial channels, whether in its regulation or in showing something that would count as advertising in a commercial broadcast but does not in the BBC. I feel strongly that as we pay not £3.5 billion but £3.6 billion for the BBC this year, the regulation should be the same; there should at least be a level playing field in regulation because there is not one in any other sense. I have had some small experience in a regional television company called Meridian Broadcasting, which I joined when it started and stayed with until it was absorbed into ITV. There was always a feeling that the regulators came down much harder on the commercial companies than on the BBC. If there was a dispute, the BBC had an internal mechanism for resolving it while the ITV companies did not. I have never been happy with that. We should start looking at the BBC as part of the total provider sector in this country and not as something special to be protected as a sacred cow. When we started to talk about digital switchover, I thought that there was bound to be a lot more competition. There would be a lot more channels and a lot more people providing advertising, and that would affect us. I do not remember people getting very worked up about that. I was very surprised by that. I am not an expert, but it seemed to me logical to think that there would be a problem with having all those channels. I read somewhere that there was an idea that more time could be provided for advertisements. Clearly, that will not work because there is a finite amount of advertising. It just means that companies will compete with each other for that advertising; the total pot will not increase. Secondly, I fear that the quality of advertisements will decrease. I think that we have quite good quality advertisements in this country and we should protect them. We should not allow advertisements to become ridiculous and of poor quality. As has been stated, with that £3.6 billion there is now a gap between ITV and the BBC. For the first time, the BBC has more money than ITV, and that gap will grow. Next year, there will be a gap of £1 billion. Clearly, ITV will not be able to provide what it has been providing. It is useless to imagine that it can bridge that gap through revenue, which has been hurt not only by competition but by the current financial climate. That kind of gap will mean that we will not be able to stop at just finding a way to provide regional news; will have to find other ways to help commercial companies to stay viable and provide the best television. As has already been said, we have the best television, but I would also say that we do not have the best television from the BBC. No commercial provider would make some of the programmes broadcast on the BBC. Meridian was offered a programme about Spain—I have forgotten what it was called, but it was a serial about Spain. Meridian said that it was a ridiculous programme and refused it, but the BBC took it on. It ran for a while, but it was always a ridiculous programme. There was a very expensive serial called Gormenghast. I do not know if any noble Lords saw it or followed it, but I still do not know what it meant or what it was about. Perhaps I am stupid, but it did not seem to me worth sitting to watch. We get a lot of what I feel is a waste of a good amount of money. If you have to earn every penny and set up a department that has to sell advertising to get the money in, you do not make that sort of programme. Then you value the money that comes to you. If the money just arrives in the pot, obviously there is a slightly different attitude towards it, which is not a good thing. I once watched 48 hours of regional broadcasting from the BBC for diversity content. I am sorry to say that it had very poor diversity content. We were given cassettes, I am glad to say, because we could not have done it otherwise, but it had very poor diversity content. A lot of the documentaries that the BBC makes about minorities and minority areas are not nearly as good as those of Channel 4. I cannot imagine who would ever think that we can bring Channel 4 and five together. I do not see much merit in channel five. It never had merit to begin with and it has not acquired it. I do not speak for channel five. My other point is that the BBC paid money to Sky to go on its digital platform—£40 million, I am told. ITV tried to find an alternative. If the BBC had joined ITV to try to create an alternative platform, that would have meant real competition, because everything is now controlled by Sky, including cable. I have also been part of a cable company, and all the packages are put out by Sky. It controls them all. I find that distressing. Of course, it is water under the bridge and we can do nothing about it. However, it is time to start supporting our partner broadcaster in this country.