The new Secretary of State for Culture, Tessa Jowell, has been quick to make her mark. Her brutish intervention in the Brass Eye paedophile rumpus has helped ensure that innovation, wit, intelligence and seriousness of purpose will become even rarer in British broadcasting than they are already. But speedy bandwagoning has been accompanied by unexpected lethargy as to the bigger picture.
Throughout Labour’s first term, we waited for the Blair regime to come up with ideas for the communications industry that it insisted was oh so vital. Finally, last December, it unveiled a white paper that was supposed to reshape the knowledge economy. A comprehensive communications bill was expected straight after the election. Instead, Jowell announced that the key issues would remain unresolved indefinitely.
To “maintain momentum”, existing broadcasting and telecoms regulators would be amalgamated into one new body, to be called Ofcom. A mini-bill to bring this about will get its second reading on 15 October. While Ofcom starts to take shape, however, the government appears to remain unsure what its duties should be.
This uncertainty has dismayed the industry. Granada’s chairman has fired off a panicky missive to No 10, warning that the delay could cause his mighty company to fall to a foreign predator. And, on the face of it, the hold-up is puzzling.
Admittedly, the white paper was hazy on certain points, but there was believed to be a particular reason for this. Among those who were wondering what the state had in store for the sector was Rupert Murdoch. Dominant though Murdoch’s position may be in UK print and satellite television, he is currently shut out of terrestrial broadcasting by a rule that bars newspaper owners with a market share of 20 per cent or more from holding an ITV, Channel 5 or radio franchise. Apparently, this irks him.
Were the government to have addressed Murdoch’s needs by promising the repeal of this irritating regulation, it might have been accused of trying to appease a media power-broker in the run-up to an election. On the other hand, to propose anything else might have provoked Murdoch’s wrath – an even more unthinkable prospect.
So, the document merely invited “comments on the reform of the cross-media ownership rules”. Labour’s election manifesto steered clear of the whole subject, and the Sun duly held Labour’s hand throughout the election campaign. Now, however, the landslide is in the bag. So why is there still no action?
Well, in June, Murdoch met Gordon Brown, doubtless to offer a few comments of the kind invited by the white paper. After this, ministers apparently fell prey to a new bout of indecision. Suppose that, after all, there were to be a referendum on the euro. Might not the Sun, firmly poised as it is in wrecking mode on the issue, prove even more dangerous than it might have done in a mere general election? The old dilemma seems to have re-emerged. Dare the government thwart Murdoch? If not, could it hack the flack?
It is on the resolution of this issue that the fate of our communications industry appears to wait. It shouldn’t. Not because Murdoch’s ambitions should be firmly knocked on the head, but because they should not be allowed to matter.
It would be undesirable for one news-paper proprietor to own too much of the newspaper industry, because he would be free to use the power this gave him to advance his personal political agenda. Yet British broadcasting has always been subject to controls, not only over ownership, but also over content. These have prevented owners from treating their TV and radio stations in the way Murdoch treats his papers. One of these regulations requires news programmes to be impartial, and Sky News, though produced by the Murdoch-dominated British Sky Broadcasting, achieves as high a level of objectivity as its BBC counterpart, News 24.
It is Ofcom’s performance on the regulation of content, not of ownership, that will determine its success or failure. Sadly, the outlook on this front is not good. The government continues to declare its undying commitment to public service broadcasting. However, it seems to have decided that content regulation of broadcasting should be done with a “light touch”, in the mistaken belief that this will free our entertainment industry to bring Hollywood to its knees. The white paper proposed a three-tier system of content controls for different types of broadcaster. This would build on the idea (already being introduced by the soon-to-be-subsumed Independent Television Commission) that broadcasters should make up their own public service obligations and then file their own annual reports on how well they have been meeting them. Now ain’t that dandy?
Regrettably, but understandably, experience has shown that, in the absence of fierce, proactive regulation, commercial broadcasters will flout any supposed obligations to society, in pursuit of higher ratings. Public sector broadcasters will then follow suit, for fear of losing audience share. This is what has been happening since the Tories castrated our previously formidable regulatory system in 1990, by introducing cash auctions for commercial broadcasting franchises.
Before that date, franchises were awarded to the applicants whose programme plans promised to deliver the most aesthetic, social and civic value. If the successful applicants failed to deliver, they were stripped of the right to broadcast. This system produced an unsurpassed flowering of regional, educational, arts, religious, children’s and current affairs programmes. It mattered not a jot that the owners of the stations involved were often metropolitan, ignorant, philistine, godless, childless, witless, or all of the above.
If Jowell wants British broadcasting to continue to foster creativity, to educate, buttress national identity and mediate public debate, she must require Ofcom to impose these obligations on broadcasters, and must equip it to ensure that they are properly discharged. She would have to license it to make bold judgements, and to enforce these with daunting penalties. An Ofcom so empowered would need to lose little sleep over the credentials of its clients.
David Cox is a television producer
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