Nowadays, a new chairman of the BBC board of governors is no longer simply nodded into place by a discreet phone call from No 10. To replace Sir Christopher Bland, who is off to BT at the end of the month, a colourful cast of candidates has been assembled. It includes a broadcaster in the shape of David Dimbleby, a charismatic showbiz go-getter (Michael Grade) and Britain’s highest-powered ethnic female, Heather Rabbatts. Not that any of the above has much of a chance. The real contest is between Tony Blair’s pushiest crony, Baroness Jay, and Gordon Brown’s favourite multimillionaire, Gavyn Davies.
All five hopefuls are none the less being solemnly interviewed. Officials will put a name to the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, who will put a name to the Prime Minister. And some time next month, the other 11 governors will find themselves politely applauding their new leader. Together, he or she and they – two academics, two civil servants, two economists and three industrialists, along with one theatre person and one trade unionist – will then assume sole charge of Britain’s mightiest cultural institution for the foreseeable future.
Or will they? There are signs that the 75-year reign of the BBC governors may soon have to come to an abrupt halt.
The board cannot but look ever more grotesque, as other pre-democratic anachronisms, such as the hereditary peers, fade from the scene. We now take accountability for granted, and expect it to involve external scrutiny. Yet the governors still both supervise the BBC’s management and represent the public interest in its doings. Each year, they publish a little report identifying modest short- comings and politely criticising themselves. This is how we regulate an institution that spends £2.4bn of our money every year.
Imagine, if you will, that you yourself were to be honoured with membership of this illustrious board. You would be busy with your day job most of the time. You would be bombarded with baffling paperwork, but the only secretariat available to interpret it for you would be staffed by the managers you were supposed to be regulating. Once a month, you and your fellow governors, with most of whom you could expect to have little in common, would assemble. Smooth-tongued apparatchiks would fill you all in on the ineffable rightness of the management’s chosen course. No alternative analysis would be available. Do you think you would have much impact on events?
Certainly, when a big issue presents itself, we hear little from dissident governors. Most of them become ciphers. Their chairman, on the other hand, usually becomes identified with the BBC’s management. Bland, who spends four days a week on the job and has an office in Broadcasting House, has become a strident apologist for the corporation’s cause.
Thus luxuriating in total regulatory capture, the BBC behaves much as you would expect any organisation to behave in the absence of either commercial discipline or democratic accountability. It elevates institutional interests above its supposed purposes. It wallows in bureaucracy, builds unnecessary empires and puts popularity before excellence. It loses sight of its civic, social and creative obligations.
All of this has been appreciated for years. So the governors’ fate seemed sealed when the government decided last year to transform broadcasting regulation. To meet the challenge of technological change, Britain’s numerous broadcasting and telecoms regulators were to be merged into one body. This would be called Ofcom, and charged with setting technical, economic and cultural standards for the industry as a whole. It was assumed that the BBC, which controls 43 per cent of viewing and listening, would form a central chunk of Ofcom’s fiefdom.
However, the BBC’s top brass had other ideas. Its army of lobbyists fought back. An election was looming. Did the government really want to upset them just then? And when the communications white paper came out last December, the governors had miraculously slipped the noose. Ofcom would indeed regulate everything – except the BBC. The corporation would remain almost totally under the governors’ tutelage.
Now, however, the election is long gone, and Ofcom is under construction. The chief executives of the current regulatory organisations are trying to work out how the new body can be made to function effectively. And the absurdity of setting up a single broadcasting regulator whose writ excludes the BBC is becoming daily more apparent.
Last month, ITV’s director of programmes, David Liddiment, protested that commercial broadcasters are prevented from taking creative risks by competition from ratings-oriented BBC pap. Suppose that, at some point in the future, Ofcom found that most of its broadcasting clients were underperforming for just this reason. What could it do? Meanwhile, digital TV operators are complaining that unfair, licence-fee-funded competition from proposed new BBC channels threatens to destroy their businesses. Will Ofcom be powerless to address such issues?
The BBC’s justification for continued auto-regulation is that accountability would impugn its independence. Yet it is the absence of any other form of external regulation that prompts politicians to intervene increasingly in the corporation’s affairs. While the governors stay silent, it is left to ministers to rail against dubious BBC stratagems such as last year’s rescheduling of the nightly TV news against News at Ten. And it is the government that has felt obliged to adjudicate on those contentious digital services.
The BBC needs to be regulated, but not by the government of the day. A strong content division within Ofcom, equipped by parliament with clear objectives and armed with the muscle to enforce them, could transform the performance of all our broadcasters – so long as it can get its teeth into the biggest potential offender. Should the government fail to see this, it may find its hand forced. The European Commission has decided that all state broadcasters should be independently regulated for the protection of their commercial rivals. New guidelines embodying this view are out for consultation.
In the meantime, it would make no sense to allow Ofcom to stumble into existence on terms that would leave it incapable of doing its job. In such circumstances, it might fail to attract the high-profile leadership on which its credibility will depend. The government’s whole approach to what it sees as a vital sector could start to crumble. For Jowell and Blair, this ought to be rather more of a worry than the identity of the BBC’s next chairman. All that really matters about this character is that he or she should be the last of the breed.
David Cox is a television producer
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