Speech to the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention
James Purnell's speech to the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention.
13 September 2007
Check against delivery
The fox, as Isaiah Berlin said, knows many things. The hedgehog, by contrast, knows just one big thing.
The fox pursues many ends, often unrelated, sometimes contradictory, even at times, anarchic.
That anarchy may ring a bell in this room. Today’s converging media world is a friendly habitat for foxes: so much technological possibility, so many doors to let in content, so many chances to speak.
But actually, and I know you can clip this sentence to make me look very foolish indeed, I am a hedgehog. I know one big thing: I know that broadcasting will continue to be central to our democracy.
Eighty years ago, broadcasting put entertainment, information and culture in everyone’s living room. It was a revolution from the top down. Most of us here are old enough to have grown up in the era in which broadcasting was defined by scarcity. The limited availability of spectrum led directly to a restricted field of vision.
Today’s revolution, in contrast, comes from the bottom up. It is a revolution in which everyone can get what they want. And if they can’t find it they can make it. The era defined by scarcity has gone for good, in both senses of the word. There is now plenty of broadcasting and all but an infinity of information.
Now, it’s almost a definition of the golden era that it happened yesterday. And it is easy to think of change as a threat. It would therefore be easy to give this speech in a gloomy tone. Judging from the mood I detected in Edinburgh there is a lot of that about.
But deep pessimism is very rarely appropriate. We mustn’t cover our anxiety in a fog of jargon and lose sight of the basic facts. The basic facts are that broadcasting in this country is very good, and that, in the end, it will be the quality of the output that settles all the big questions.
Of course, we can all find programmes we don’t like. However, that’s just as true of magazines, novels or films. Overall, our broadcasting compares well in the world. Which of my ministerial colleagues can so confidently raise a world class standard? Both private and public sectors are thriving. The output is educative, informative and entertaining.
Yes, the extraordinary fertility of the internet is unlike anything we have ever seen. Yes, old business models are declining. Yes, government and regulators will have to do things differently.
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But if you tend, as I do, to trust the essential intelligence of the audience, then you will be confident that, whatever platforms thrive, whichever technology triumphs, people will soon tire of poor quality, especially as they have become accustomed, over many years, to better television here than they see on their travels.
And, in that process, something very important to our society is preserved. One of the foundations of any democracy is that the people know what’s going on. There is no democracy without the free spread of information – through news and current affairs, but also through stories in popular dramas or the satire of the best comedians.
That’s why coups start in television studios. It’s why tyrants close down free papers. The media has always performed this role. The printing press broke the church’s monopoly over information. The dissident pamphleteers of the French and American revolutions helped break the monarchy’s monopoly over power. The British penny pamphleteers were the tribune of radical politics.
But distribution was difficult and not everybody could read. It wasn’t until the invention of broadcasting that we created a mass audience. Indeed, the very idea of the masses, greeted with great snobbery by intellectuals, is a product of the era of broadcasting.
This is my main point today. Broadcasting deepens our democracy. It gives you a window onto the world. You can see the day’s news. You get a ticket to the Proms or to the Cup Final. Spooks and Coronation Street play in theatres without walls. It takes you to the other side of the world and shows you a little bit of how they live there. It makes you laugh and it makes you cry, sometimes deliberately.
Democracy is the recognition that power belongs with the people. Technological change does not threaten this. It ensures it. Suddenly, the one-way relationship of broadcasting has a return path. People can respond at once to what they see. If it doesn’t satisfy them, they can say so, and those in power have to listen.
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In the first phase of broadcasting, access to the mass audience was tightly controlled. It was the preserve of an elite – your predecessors. Now, anyone can reach an audience for the price of an internet connection. Whatever else may follow from this, I cannot see that democracy is the loser.
Now, none of this is to say it hasn’t been a difficult year for television. It has. Of course, a politician talking to a journalist about trust is a bit like a City banker talking to a Premier League footballer about pay restraint.
But, even if I’m in no position to teach broadcasters any lessons, the same thing applies to us both. In both politics and television, you devalue the only currency you have if you forfeit the trust of the public.
I’m glad to see that there is a widespread recognition that something has seriously gone wrong and that it needs to be put right. Lessons need to be learned. But there is a right lesson and a wrong lesson to draw.
The right lesson is that broadcasters and producers need to respect their audience. You need to put your house in order, and if you don’t there will be a clamour for OFCOM and the BBC Trust to take further action.
The wrong lesson is that this shows the public are now liable to give up on public service broadcasting. Actually, the episode shows the opposite: an idea is dying when it no longer warrants any comment, not when it provokes outrage. The public outcry showed that people still rely on broadcasting for accurate and truthful information.
Contrast that with people’s expectations of the internet, where people understand that not everything they see will meet the same high standards as they expect from TV and radio. It is in the very nature of that medium that people can say anything legal they want, and then be judged in the court of public opinion.
At the end of a bad year, I don’t think the bell is tolling for broadcasting. I do think people feel let down. But you only get to feel let down if you hold something in high regard in the first place.
So, I look forward with great optimism and I hope you do too. In that spirit, I want to set out the things I think are of enduring value in British television, and to ask how we can achieve them in this anarchic market.
To say that the fundamentals are good is not the same as saying that nothing need change. Indeed, on the dictum that you never step into the same river twice, British broadcasting needs constantly to adapt precisely in order that its value can be preserved.
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Knowing what we don’t know
What will broadcasting need to adapt to? That’s the difficulty: we don’t know.
It’s important to say this. Far better regulation will follow from the premise that we don’t know than from any other. We will not devise intelligent regulation with accurate guesses about the future. Even in the unlikely event that our predictions are accurate, they will never last. No sooner a rigid settlement is in place than it will need to be revised. I’m going to skirt dangerously close to the Rumsfeld doctrine here, but the wisdom comes in knowing what we don’t know.
Look at what we thought would happen ten years ago in the light of what did. Yes, the internet became a mass medium – but a third of homes still don’t have it. Yes, new channels have found an audience – but the so called old networks still get two thirds of viewing. Yes, we have the most digital households in the world – but half of TV sets are still analogue.
Technophilia is very tempting for politicians. We think it makes us look like we understand the future. We delude ourselves that a technological utopia will remove unwelcome decisions about priorities. Admitting doubt can too often feel like a sign of weakness.
But the truth is that if this audience doesn’t know what’s going to happen, then politicians should be wary of acting as if we do. That’s why last year, DCMS asked Robin Foster to think about how we could regulate in the face of such uncertainty.
Robin set out for us a range of stylized possible futures. At one extreme, we could be heading for a world of ubiquitous broadband, where the television and the computer merge to become a home entertainment system. In this world people get what they want, when they want it.
At the other extreme, broadband penetration could stall. Broadcasting would remain the default distributor.
In the first scenario, competition could be plentiful, with low barriers to entry and products available on all platforms. The vast majority of homes would be included.
In the second, there might be significant consolidation and market power. There could be a serious digital divide, with millions of homes excluded from the content that others get.
Now we don’t need to know precisely what is going to happen to know that we wouldn’t welcome this outcome. The excluded viewers wouldn’t just lose entertainment. They would lose information that is vital to participating in a modern society.
This is the starting point for policy: Not “what is going to happen?” but “what do we want to achieve?”
What are our goals? I think we have three: we want our markets to be open, we want universal access to high quality output and we want individuals to consume and create what they want. These objectives are the still point of a turning world.
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An open market
First, an open market. This is a relatively new goal for broadcasting. Until barely twenty years ago, there were only two television organizations in Britain. The writ of politicians ran the industry. But today, broadcasting is a functioning market.
That’s a good thing. Markets tend to provide the best climate for innovation and creativity.
A good rule of thumb for the next decade is therefore that we should open up markets and remove outdated regulations so that consumers and producers can exploit the potential of these new technologies.
Of course, deregulation and competition are not synonymous. The example of the American telecoms market, where deregulation has lead to the recreation of many previous duopolies is a good warning. Sometimes you need regulation to achieve a competitive outcome.
We must guard against the risk of new bottlenecks and new gatekeepers emerging with the potential to stifle innovation and constrain access. Not everyone will want to create their own content – but we must make sure that those that do can find their audience, whether it be friends or consumers.
The challenge is to find a way of deregulating that increases competition. To achieve that goal, we need to ask ourselves some important questions.
How do regulators guard against monopoly without dictating the direction of technology? Should regulators intervene more in retrospect than in anticipation? When does there need to be intervention to get open access to networks or mandated access to content?
These are important issues to debate in the next few months. Combined with the inherent uncertainty of these markets, the answers may mean we need to regulate in future more through principles than detailed rules, as happens in financial services.
The Government’s approach to spectrum is a case in point. A sure way to freeze innovation would be to reserve new spectrum for existing users and incumbents.
That’s why we have a clear policy of using market mechanisms to allocate spectrum – because that is the best way of identifying the most productive use to which it can be put. OFCOM is examining the best process for allocating the spectrum to be released through digital switchover and will report later this year. It has recognized that some uses of the spectrum may be socially as well as commercially valuable.
I welcome its moves to offer protection for the use of wireless microphones where there is a genuine special case. But the threshold for any such exception is extremely high, particularly if it means that large parts of the released spectrum are not available for new entrants to bid for.
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Universal access to high quality programming
The second goal is universal access to distinctive and original content of very high quality.
I have just come back from meeting American broadcasters and internet companies. Many are foxes. They are cheerfully looking forward to anarchy in the next few years.
As markets work better, they say, the justification for public service broadcasting will evaporate. I’m a strong believer in the power of markets. We have already seen purely commercial providers move into some areas strongly associated with public service broadcasting, such as news and documentaries. This trend may well increase in the future.
But public service broadcasting has never solely been about plugging gaps in the market, important though that is. It is about improving the breadth and quality of what is on offer. Its cachet is its distinctiveness and originality. But it is also about ensuring that everyone can take part in the national conversation.
There are some good economic arguments for public service broadcasting. But, in the end, they are secondary to a cultural argument. And that is that the goods offered by broadcasting have a value to us as a nation. Broadcasting is a forum in which we come together. We value this over and above an economic formula.
It is quite common, where goods matter, to mitigate the unequal distribution that can result from the market. That’s why we have a welfare system, for example, not to replace markets, but to ensure a sufficient standard for all.
With broadcasting, there is a happy coincidence between the cultural argument and its economic characteristics. Once a programme has been made, it costs no more for millions of people to consume it than for one to do so. That means that we can maximise the benefits by maximizing access.
The risk is that, without public intervention, this will not happen. A vicious circle could emerge in which the wealthy pay to watch on demand, via technology which is not affordable to the rest. Advertising revenues could gravitate to this more affluent market, leaving a significant part of the population not only without access to these new types of content, but also finding the traditional broadcast channels dwindling.
A more fragmented audience would make some types of national conversation much harder to conduct.
With the right policy framework, the circle could be virtuous. An open market stimulates content creation. Public funding widens choice further. Good quality content encourages the take-up of new technologies, with government promoting universal access if it becomes appropriate, and public service broadcasters providing the water-cooler moments for our national conversation.
That commitment to universal access is one reason why we and all other industrialized nations are switching over to digital. In less than a month’s time, that process will start in Whitehaven. Enormous progress has been made. Over 80% of households now have digital TV and Digital UK’s figures show that awareness of digital switchover has climbed to 9 out of 10 people. And I welcome today’s announcement by the retailers and manufacturers that they will phase out analogue products ahead of switchover.
I know that many of you in this room have been putting huge efforts into this transition. Of course, it’s a process that will inevitably encounter some hitches and glitches. After all, it’s as complex as carrying out decimalization and North Sea gas conversion at the same time.
But if we didn’t have the courage to make the transition, millions would be stuck in an analogue ghetto, with fewer channels to choose from and fewer platforms. They would be paying for BBC digital services they were never going to see.
So far from being a distraction, switchover is fundamental to achieving our goal of universal access. But it is not sufficient. To achieve that goal, we will need to ask ourselves some difficult questions. How much public intervention will be needed to secure it and what forms should it take? Will there be a case for new institutions? Or new funding frameworks? How do we ensure competing providers for public service broadcasting?
Even asking these questions is sometimes difficult. In the end, we may decide that the answers are similar to the current framework. Certainly the BBC has an enduring role. We have fixed its remit until 2016 and its funding until 2013. Neither of those will be reopened.
But we’ll need to have answers to those wider questions well before 2012. And so we need to start serious thinking now. If not, we will find that we leave behind in the analogue world the goals we still cherish. OFCOM’s review of public service broadcasting – which is about to start - and our review of public service funding, will together address all of these questions.
We start from the premise that we value public service broadcasting as part of our public realm. It is more like a public park than it is like a consumer good. The big question is not whether but how we will deliver it.
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Empowering consumers
The third set of questions is about content regulation. Today, we have two very different regulatory systems: the internet, with little content regulation beyond the law of the many lands it covers; and broadcasting where content is still highly regulated. Those regulatory worlds will co-exist for the foreseeable future.
But content regulation of the traditional kind is no longer enough. The 9 o’clock watershed works in the world of the mass audience. But in the many-to-many world, the water starts getting in. Suddenly a child can get hold of material that wouldn’t be allowed on TV no matter what time of day it is.
The regulatory question isn’t just about preventing bad things. It’s also about not preventing good ones. The many-to-many world is a massive opportunity to give individuals more power, to articulate their concerns. It allows less power for the state to censor them or restrict free speech. A transfer of power from the state to the people – it could serve as the very definition of democracy.
And I think the second development may be the answer to the first. If we can give parents more power to control their children’s viewing, they will prove to be very keen regulators: certainly much sharper than the blunt instrument of censorship. Many parents are highly media literate. But where they are not we need to help them become so.
That why we’ve asked Tanya Byron to look at the ways in which we can strengthen measures to protect children and help parents to filter dangerous content.
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Conclusion
So, these are my three goals. These are some of the questions we face. There may well be others. And that’s why I’ve agreed with John Hutton that we will create a convergence think-tank made up of experts from both inside and outside government.
The first task of this think tank will be to organize a series of public debates on the questions I’ve set out today. These will start around the turn of the year, looking first at how we can secure open markets and empower consumers. We shall move on to look at the future of public service broadcasting later in 2008.
Of course, much of what I’ve said today may be wrong. That’s why we must plan ahead as best we can but make sure we proof our designs against our best efforts. Somewhere in the arithmetic an assumption will be wrong, for a reason that nobody could reasonably have foreseen.
Peter Drucker once said that “strategy is a sense of direction around which to improvise”. This might be going a bit far for media policy but I do think that the most important characteristic of a new regulatory system is its flexibility, its ability to change with the changes that are unforeseen and the consequences which are unintended.
The greater part of our thinking on regulation will therefore not be devising the minutiae of guidelines. It will instead be the articulation of clear goals, which can then be implemented flexibly.
Those goals would be, first, an open market, perhaps with a greater reliance on principles than on detailed rules. Second, the very best broadcasting should be open to everyone. And third, consumers should be in charge.
These principles can sound rather abstract. But they are justified not in themselves but for what they allow. If we are successful, the new market would be rich in information and almost endlessly diverse in subject matter. All shades of opinion would be represented and all kinds of people will be seen.
It would encompass shows that attract a substantial part of the nation and shows that satisfy a smaller audience deeply. It would have the incentive to follow the market in some places and the freedom to make an artistic judgment in others. We want people to find what they want and also to want what they find. Sometimes they will excite a hunger in themselves that they hadn’t quite known was there.
In his great book on nationalism Benedict Anderson said that the novel was crucial in creating, for the first time, the sense of an “imagined community” between people who were geographically distant. The pivotal moment was the invention of the printing press. From that moment on, a national sensibility was possible.
Broadcasting, and all the new forms, are all part of that long conversation. Each era finds a new way of conducting it. For William Caxton read John Logie-Baird. For Logie-Baird read Tim Berners-Lee.
It’s more complex now than it has ever been. The foxes are prowling. But the hedgehog’s point still stands. Democracy is enriched by diverse broadcasting, available to everyone. In the confusion of change, it will be the quality of the content you offer that will determine the fates in the future.
The future of broadcasting isn’t in my hands. It’s in yours. And you should be confident, as I am. Yes, the last few months have been gloomy. But maybe this conference is a time for optimism and resolve.