I declare an interest as a freelance TV producer who has worked for all four public service broadcasters. I thank the Voice of the Listener & Viewer and the Media Reform Coalition for their support in putting this speech together, and the commercial public service broadcasters for their information. I am also grateful to noble Lords who have attached their names to this amendment.
I welcome a lot of the Bill. However, I have tabled this amendment because I am convinced that the public service remit set out in Clause 1 is not worthy of the name. The White Paper says that it replaces the
“outdated set of fourteen overlapping purposes … with a new, shorter remit, focussed on the things that”
the PSBs
“are uniquely positioned to deliver”.
Unfortunately, this new remit does not deliver either of those things for audiences or for the industry.
I degrouped this amendment so that noble Lords would have a chance to direct their speeches specifically towards the need for genres within public service broadcasting. In looking at Clause 1, I ask the Minister: are the Government really not going to insist that our commercial PSBs commission and broadcast any content on science, on the arts, on social issues, any content of international significance—or, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds said earlier, any content on religion? In a society where there is a desperate lack of knowledge about those matters, surely the media, which has been so privileged and protected in this Bill, should be mandated to battle against ignorance and bring illumination and context to the lives of people in this country. It has never been more important than now to have reliable information easily accessible by everybody. Surely, this is the antidote to the swirl of fake news and conspiracy theories which so dominate the internet.
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The list of genres laid out in my amendment builds on Amendments 1, 2, 3 and 7, which I also support, tabled by my noble friend Lady Bull. She has already explained that they aim to maintain the public service remit established in the Communications Act 2003: that PSBs adhere to the Reithian ambition to educate,
inform and entertain audiences. These principles, when applied to the PSB ecosystem, have made our great British channels the envy of the world, providing content that is distinctive and reflects Britain back to itself. As many other noble Lords have said, they are the markers of excellence in a media world full of content aimed at a global rather than a British audience, and whose only mission is to entertain.
My amendment backs up this concern about the new mission principles with a clear list of genres which instructs Ofcom to monitor the content created by the public service broadcasters. There was no reference in the original draft Media Bill to the word “genre”. As the Bill stands, the only specific content requirements on the PSBs are to broadcast some news and some children’s programming. Will this limited palette make our public service broadcasters distinctive and, more than that, distinctively British?
Only after concerns were expressed by the industry and civic groups did the Government insert into the Bill subsection (6) at Committee in the other place. Now, the new subsection requires Ofcom to ensure that a
“range of genres of audiovisual content made available by the public service broadcasters (taken together) constitutes an appropriate range of genres”.
If that is a sop to our concerns, it does absolutely nothing to reassure civic groups, nor myself. As the honourable member for Barnsley East, Stephanie Peacock, said in Committee in the other place, the new subsection is supposed to be an instruction to Ofcom to measure the breath of content in the PSB world, but there is no clear specification in the phrase a “range of genres”. The Minister in the other place responded that Ofcom will have a duty to ensure that a broad range of different aspects of public service broadcasting is delivered. The Minister has already cited this subsection as proving that there was no need for a list of genres.
How is Ofcom to measure the range of genres without some kind of clear guidance from Parliament? The Minister has said that Ofcom will revisit the remit every five years, but five years in broadcasting is a lifetime. Look what has happened in the last five years in broadcasting—it has had a complete revolution. In another five years, who knows where we will be? At the moment, the mission guidance is on the vague themes of economic, cultural and democratic content. It could be argued that soap operas meet the cultural requirements, that ITV’s “Dickinson’s Real Deal”, in which people try to sell their household objects, is seen as economic content. The Bill as it stands is too vague for Ofcom to make specific judgments on genre range in its subsequent reviews.
Some broadcasters are concerned that the entire list of genres will apply to each broadcaster. I reassure them that the crucial phrase in Amendment 9 is
“the public service broadcasters (taken together)”,
which means that the genres need to appear somewhere across the PSB system; they do not all have to be commissioned by every channel.
I am aware that the arrival of the streamers has put extraordinary pressure on our PSBs. In this environment, the channels will want to fight for the biggest audiences, which, as we all know, are garnered through entertainment
shows. However, if the Government allow an entire ecosystem based on entertainment to emerge, our commercial PSB channels will just become poorer versions of Netflix or Disney+. If the Minister wants proof of the commercial imperative for PSBs to move away from informing and educating audiences towards a concentration on entertainment, he has only to look at what happened to children’s programming after the quota was removed from commercial PSBs in 2003.
I realise that children’s programming is now in this Bill, but its absence from the list of genres in 2003 is a salutary lesson in what can happen when the subject is taken away from the required genre list of programming for the commercial PSBs. Between 2004 and 2018, children’s content almost completely disappeared from commercial PSBs, leaving only the BBC to carry this programming. Between 2004 and 2018, the total hours of first-run UK-originated children’s content fell from 1,889 to 661—a 65% decrease. The genre was only kept afloat by the BBC and its own charter remit. By 2014, the BBC accounted for 95% of total expenditure on first-run UK children’s content. This Bill does require children’s content, but my point is that, when legal requirements for a genre are taken away, commercial expenditure on that subject collapses. This Bill must do all it can to ensure that that does not happen.
To add to my concerns over the effect that Clause 1, as it stands, will have on the PSB system, I ask noble Lords to look at the pressure that it will place on an already beleaguered BBC. This Bill is not directed at the BBC but, as the new charter review approaches, we must ensure that it does not drive the corporation into becoming the sole repository of market failure genres, particularly in unscripted factual programming. To dilute the range of genres on commercial PSBs is to weaken the PSB system as a whole, including the BBC.
A public service broadcaster should aim not just to attract the biggest, most profitable audiences but for a degree of universality. It does not have to be their guiding mission, as with the BBC, but it is our duty as legislators to ensure that the entire viewing public of this country are given a wide choice of content to watch on our PSBs. For myself, I do not watch much drama; I watch documentaries and factual content. I want to be served not just by the BBC but by the other PSBs, which are benefiting from the new regime set up in this Bill.
The last Communications Act was in 2003, over 20 years ago. The next one may well not be for another 20 years. It is our duty, in a very fast-changing media landscape, to future-proof our precious PSB system so that it remains distinctive and British, not just a poor imitation of the American-owned global broadcasters that dominate our digital channels. I ask the Minister, on behalf of the viewers of this country, to support Amendment 9, which would ensure that we have a British television industry to be proud of well into the future.