Mark Thompson’s war on the Murdochs obscures the point
Mark Thompson’s speech to the television faithful and media rat pack in Edinburgh seems to have nicely missed the point (see Adam’s earlier post for a related commentary). The BBC DG seems to have decided that running the BBC is not enough for him, so he wants ITV and Channel 4 to get retransmission revenues from Sky (maybe he wants to do Adam Crozier’s and David Abraham’s jobs too).
And, in the simple use of the attack is the best form of defence tactic, he sought to inflame the BBC-Sky war started by James Murdoch in the Scottish capital a year ago. Or rather he followed on from the assault begun earlier in the day by Top Gear producer Andy Willman who described Harper Collins (the Murdoch owned book publisher) as a bunch of ‘chancers’ for trying to publish a reveal-all biography of The Stig.
Particularly significant was Thompson’s reference to Claire Enders, the media analyst. She has been telling people for several weeks that News Corp’s proposed takeover of the 61 per cent of Sky it does not already own would make the UK the most concentrated media market in Europe bar (possibly) Albania. Citing her, Thompson said that News Corp-Sky would be “a concentration of cross-media ownership which would not be allowed in the United States or Australia, News Corp’s other two most important markets”.
Perhaps so. Sky is already bigger than the BBC, as Mr Thompson noted. And he is right to at least argue that Sky should spend more on content (Sky One has long been disappointing creatively), but unlike ITV which needs the ratings, popular programming doesn’t matter to the Sky P ‘n’ L. In reality spending on Sky Arts and even Sky News is really sophisticated marketing for the super-profitable broadcaster, while what the viewers really value is the sport, a broad sense of choice from having lots of channels, and of course high definition.
So great is the desire for a counter strike (after the BBC has endured months of criticism in the newspapers, mainly over nothing much stories about executive pay and expenses), that all sorts of people are now being dragged in. It was suggested that when Mr Thompson quoted “one journalist” who allegedly said: “It doesn’t matter about the facts, they just want to trash you” that the reporter in question was Times man Patrick Foster. Maybe it was too, but surely the DG is above picking out individual hacks at News Corp titles who have raised his ire.
In a way this all promises to be good knockabout action, and, frankly, it is hard not to sympathise a bit with Mr T. The BBC has been on the ropes, taking a beating in the public prints for far too long, and it can and should gently point out that when criticisms of the Beeb are made they often suit rival corporate interests. And there are good reasons to repeat Claire Enders' concerns about the massively powerful position that a combined News Corp-Sky (turnover £7.5 billion and with handy access to ministers) would have on the UK scene.
Yet, all this allows the BBC boss to duck lots of important questions. What is the future of the licence fee? He did not say. Does the BBC have too many TV channels - is its quality stretched? Are there too many repeats? He did not discuss. What really is the future of broadcasting in the social media era? He could not bothered to answer. (Although in refusing to get drawn on the boring topic of BBC governance, he was absolutely right).
Yes, Mr Thompson promised further efficiencies, and even hinted at "further significant movement on executive pay", but there wasn't quite the admission that the BBC had to address the perception that all its executives lead charmed five-star, six-figure lives. And nor really was there much of an attempt to define what the BBC was for, other than a big institution that spends more money on content than the beleagued ITV and Channel 4 - and works a damn sight harder on drama than Sky.
Mr Thompson was right to make noises about the scale and power of News Corp and Sky, but he can't duck the charge that the BBC is large and at times over powerful too. Britain has already become a media duopoly (and no amount of bellicose rhetoric on either side will disguise that) but what matters in a democracy that there are a variety of powerful voices in the marketplace, so no one owner can decide how we should think.
That, of course, was part of the point Mr Thompson was trying to make when he was lobbying for Sky money to be handed over to ITV and Channel 4, but coming from him it had no credibility (much like James Murdoch last year complaining about an overmighty BBC). When you are already dominant - and indeed publicly funded - it is more important to define what you are for than what you are against.
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Tags: bbc, James Murdoch, mark thompson, News Corporation, Sky
This entry was posted on August 28, 2010 at 12:28 am and is filed under Politics, Press, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Dan,
I know that somewhere it is set in stone that once you become a journalist for Times, Sun, News Of World, Daily Telegraph etc – you automatically sign-up to your proprietors’ anti-BBC slant, but Dan you’re writing online and presumably now have a bit more freedom to articulate what you REALLY think.
It’s been a long time since I worked for a commercial to the BBC, but it did take about two years to cleanse my mind of the crap that was spoken internally and the anti-BBC lobbying that was carried out. The fact is that our readers like the BBC – a lot! Most believe that it provides incredible value for money. If anything they want to see its PSB remit expanded – particularly in the area of local news.
“Sky One has long been disappointing creatively” – DISAPPOINTING! Have you seen their schedules not just Sky One, but Two and Three.
Thompson didn’t mention the journalist – you have though! That’s fair game in my view. The Tory press hates the idea of PSB and the BBC and any balanced reporting goes out the window.
It is a time now for all those who support the BBC and the PSB model to make themselves heard. Now.