A white paper is set to reflect the view of ministers and wonks that they can do nothing to stop the likes of Murdoch. They are wrong, argues David Cox
The coming communications revolution may instil more bafflement than wonder, but it is going to happen. The conversion of text, speech, music and still and moving images into digital data already enables all of these things to be easily manipulated, and cheaply stored, copied and transmitted. "Broadband" or "thick pipe" connections will allow any combination of them to reach us instantly. Personalising devices will hunt down and retrieve whatever conforms to our tastes.
Together, these developments will clear the path between the fruits of human creativity and our eyes and ears. The benefits will be enormous, but there is a downside. Driving this revolution is the might of international capital, for which entertainment has become a new frontier. Its purpose is not to enrich the human psyche, but to swamp the limitlessly expanding audio-visual realm with ever more of its own products.
As a result, we shall all benefit from a huge expansion of choice - in what is marketable. However, much that possesses social or aesthetic, but not commercial, value could be swept away in the tide, unless something is done to protect it. We could end up enriched as consumers, but impoverished as citizens. The expression of our national, regional and local identity, the emergence of illuminating but unprofitable ideas, the development of indigenous talent, the generation of communal dialogue and the analysis and debate of public issues could all go by the board. Bombarded by ever more plentiful sounds and images, but increasingly starved of challenge, we might find life coming to resemble permanent imprisonment in Disney World.
So what's to be done? Well, technological revolutions are right up new Labour's alley. A white paper setting out public policy towards the changing communications world is to be published before Christmas. We are apparently to be reassured that the public interest will be thoroughly protected by state-of-the-art regulation. But the document's real message will be that our audio-visual culture is to be thrown to the wolves of commercialism.
Central to the proposals will be the abolition of the eight or so regulatory bodies that currently police the film, radio, television, advertising and telecoms industries. They will be replaced with one grand super-regulator, which will administer the whole converging communications world. This will be presented as a masterly act of rationalisation, demonstrating the government's commitment to getting a grip. The problem lies in what is to be the new regulator's remit.
There will still, apparently, be rules governing how much of Britain's media can be controlled by any one organisation. These will be weakened, but re-engineered to take account of the blurring boundaries between print, broadcasting and the internet. The owners of distribution systems will be forbidden to favour their own material by keeping out rival producers.
These are not, however, the problems we most need regulation to address. If we are to retain what is valuable but not profitable, as well as what is profitable but not necessarily valuable, the content of what whizzes down those wires, into those dishes and along those airwaves must itself be regulated. In Britain, we are well used to a highly regulated audio-visual environment. This is not just a matter of curbs on sex, violence and rude words, or the timing of the nightly news. Far-reaching, proactive arrangements have ensured that broadcasters in particular have been obliged not just to entertain us, but to provide impartial news and current affairs, education, children's programmes, science, arts, religion, regional programmes and much else.
This system took a knock when Margaret Thatcher made the criterion for the award of commercial broadcasting franchises the size of cash bids, rather than the character of the proposed programming. This freed up franchise-holders to compete for audiences with fewer worries about regulatory approval. That, in turn, prompted public sector broadcasters to become more populist themselves, to maintain their audience share.
The new white paper is likely to carry these unfortunate developments to their logical conclusion. All content regulation is apparently to become "light touch". Most of the remaining obligations on commercial systems are to be lifted. The BBC, it seems, will be brought under the same regulatory regime and subjected to the same constraints, or lack of them, as its commercial counterparts. The stage will therefore be set for an all-against-all war for audiences. Look no more for anything that will not contribute to victory.
But why, you may wonder, would our leaders want to meet the looming threat to the health of our minds by deliberately making things worse? The answer lies in the world-view of most new Labour politicians and policy wonks, and of the civil servants who advise them. Their most important formative experience was the triumph of the world of business over their own public sphere in the 1980s. This trauma has induced a continuing sense of defeatism in the face of the might of capital.
Ministers gaze at the massed ranks of the newly amalgamated global media giants and feel a compulsion to prostrate themselves. No mere government could cramp the style of such monsters for long, they reason. So why try? Instead of aiming to force these beasts to come to terms with the public interest (which is actually their job), they have substituted another ambition. If we cannot beat Rupert Murdoch and his ilk, we should try to ensure that they are joined by at least some home-grown monsters of our own.
This month's white paper is not, as might be expected, simply a product of Chris Smith's Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is a co-production between it and the Department of Trade and Industry. Understandably enough, the DTI sees the communications revolution not as a threat to the well-being of our souls, but as an opportunity for British business.
At present, not a single British media organisation can really claim to play in the global big league. Ministers and bureaucrats responsible for the sector have found this an insupportable embarrassment. In the hope that they might yet be able to hold up their heads, they asked our existing media companies what it would take to enable them to assume the kind of role on the world stage to which Britain's imperial heritage surely entitled them. These companies answered, understandably enough, that they would need all the things that they happened to want anyway. This included freedom from burdensome obligations in the home market which might otherwise cramp their style. And this proved the killer argument for light-touch regulation.
Yet it is not true that by forgoing a public stake in the character of the nation's audio-visual output we shall enable British producers to bring Hollywood to its knees; or that positive regulation of the content of such output is beyond the power of modern politicians.
Surprising though it may seem, the communications revolution will put the media at the mercy of government as never before. Unlike printing or pirate radio, the new technology cannot hide, and it cannot move without the permission of public authorities. Those who would lay cables must seek the people's consent to dig up the streets. Satellite dishes require the approval of planners. Above all, the airwaves are under the total control of the government of the day, to be allocated on any terms it sees fit.
As the importance of mobile receiving equipment increases, these airwaves will grow even more valuable than they are already. At present, spectrum is provided free to public broadcasters, and at far below market rates to their commercial counterparts. The government has every right to impose more, not fewer, public obligations on licensees, as the value of this asset grows. It is equally well placed to demand anything it wants in return for the many other privileges it bestows.
The idea that to do so would hamstring potential British media giants just doesn't hold water. The Thatcher government's reduction in the public obligations of broadcasters was itself a response to the plea that they needed to have their path cleared to take on the world. In the event, they pocketed the concessions offered without lifting a finger to create global businesses. There is no real sign that they are any more disposed now to stir themselves from their lethargy. Certainly, making life easier for them is hardly the way to bring this about.
In any case, they have probably missed their moment. The reshaping of the global media landscape of the past two years has created titans that will not easily be pushed aside by johnny-come-lately Brits, however much their government indulges them. Not, however, that we should fall for the claim that media success depends on cushioning big companies. Britain's most impressive global entertainment successes at present have not come from Carlton, Granada, Pearson or the BBC. They are Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which was created by a small, independent producer, and the Harry Potter books, the work of a single mum scribbling in coffee bars.
Fortunately, there are signs that the government may be losing the courage of its own lack of conviction. The white paper, it appears, may turn out a little more greenish than was originally intended, as its authors quail in the face of doing anything at all. Probably nothing will happen this side of the election.
There is thus still scope for entrenching the values that have made our culture distinctive, instead of deliberately rooting them out. That way, we can embrace the changing future of the communications world with confidence and dignity, instead of on our knees in front of a brand of mindless commercialism that has long had its day.
David Cox is a television producer and former LWT executive
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