Blogging the Beeb

Keep Broadcasting Public

The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom has a conference on the BBC's future next March:

The conference ‘Keep Broadcasting Public: BBC Charter Renewal’ is a joint initiative of the TUC, Federation of Entertainment Unions and the CPBF. It will be hosted by the TUC at Congress House in London and opened by TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.

Lords Committee Report (updated)

The House of Lords Select Committee is due to report today on its inital conclusions on the BBC. The Mail has this. MediaGuardian has a summary of the document. The BBC has issued a short statement.

The Committee's press release is here. The full report is downloadable here.

Key conclusions:

• The process for agreeing the BBC’s constitution should be open, transparent and established by statute rather than by Royal Charter.

• The BBC’s funding until 2017 should be through a licence fee set in an open and transparent manner. Licence fee settlements above the rate of inflation require exceptional reasons . The National Audit Office should evaluate the BBC’s funding requirements.

• There should be a unitary board with a majority of non-executives, sitting above a management committee headed by the Director-General.

• The Chairman of the BBC should be chosen by a truly independent panel with a majority of non-political members and a chairman who is neither a politician nor a civil servant.

• Ofcom should have regulatory responsibility for BBC content as it has for other free-to-air public service broadcasters. Its Content Board should be significantly strengthened, and would adjudicate on appeals against decisions made by the BBC Board.

• The BBC’s fair trading rules should be subject to Ofcom’s approval.

Ofcomwatch likes it.

My initial observations are that the BBC has won endorsement of the Licence Fee through to 2017, but there is no support for the current bid. The statute proposal, which has been kicked around for decades, will not be welcome and may be seen as risking politicising the process even more than it is currently. Ofcom's further powers over BBC content will worry the BBC. The BBC seemed to roll over very quickly at the proposal for the BBC Trust post-Green Paper - for fear of something worse - the new proposals will not be welcome.

I do not intend to post a lot about these issues at this stage since governance and funding will form the core of the last chapter of my book. However, I have always been uneasy about the Trust proposal set out in the Green Paper. In many ways it seemed to offer less separation of Governors and Management than Michael Grade's earlier proposals for the Governors, which were certainly an improvement on what had gone before.

All views welcome as ever!

Dyke on Licence Fee

Greg Dyke believes:

While the BBC cannot expect to get its full bid, I would suspect that the licence fee increase will be somewhere around inflation plus 1 per cent which, if you look at the growth in new households each year, means a real increase of close to 2 per cent a year.

The leadership of the BBC should be happy with that.

BBC Licence Fee Future

A number of articles today take up the longer-term debate on the future of the Licence Fee. See Will Hutton and David Elstein in the Observer, and Tim Luckhurst in the Indie.

Will Hutton also mentions this report he did with the BBC, in which he argues:

that a mixed economy in broadcasting with a public service broadcaster at its heart has delivered an enviable track record of creativity and served audiences well. However, there are a number of shifts in the broadcasting landscape that taken in combination are putting this balance at risk.

Rapid changes in technology are presenting a new challenge to broadcasters and producers about how they are creative as audiences shift away from passively consuming programmes at set times. Increasingly, they want to access and interact with content through new platforms.

For a broadcaster to be able to deliver in this new context, it must own the rights to the content. However, the Communications Act 2003 has seen the balance tip in favour of the independent sector as the broadcaster has to pay for rights on top.

Gavyn Davies on the Licence Fee

Forgot to post the former BBC Chairman's views yesterday.

Doing too much?

Ex-BBC exec Janet Street-Porter suggests - a common complaint - that the BBC is doing too much (registration site).

BBC seeks City funding

Media Guardian is reporting that the BBC is seeking to negotiate a bond with the City, and this will be part of the discussions with the Treasury:

A bond would have the effect of reducing the immediate rise needed, on top of the controversial 2.3% figure, and would also take advantage of low interest rates, and the BBC's status as a highly rated, credit-worthy organisation.

BBC Licence Fee bid reaction

It was inevitable that Mark Thompson's infamous remark as Channel 4 Chief Executive that the BBC was awash in a jacuzzi of cash would come back to haunt him.

And how. The Sun sums it all up in a brilliant caption today, which can't be reproduced here for copyright reasons. It's a swimming pool of cash now. It's still 'a poll tax'. The Mail asks for readers' views.

The Times says the BBC has been summoned to see Gordon Brown. The paper asks if the BBC's claim is a negotiating position. It has a nice graphic on the BBC's spending. The Guardian says the Treasury will reject the BBC's plans.

Thompson has set out efficiency measures, though understandably these are lost in the coverage.

BBC Licence Fee bid 2

So  the BBC Licence Fee bid would amount to an increase of 2.3% a year above inflation, amounting to about £180 per year in 2013, according to the Guardian:

The BBC is asking for a funding settlement of inflation (RPI) plus 2.3% annually between 2007 and 2013, which would see the licence fee rise from the current £126.50 per household to £150.50.

However, assuming an annual RPI of 2.5% - the Bank of England's target figure - licence fee payers would actually be paying £176.46 by 2013, according to MediaGuardian.co.uk's calculations

The BBC News description of what this would pay for is set out here. Torin Douglas's description of the Select Committee is here. This is the BBC Press Release. The BBC Powerpoint presentation is here. This is the full supporting documentation.

Here's why this would benefit BBC Wales, according to BBC Wales. And Scotland. And Northern Ireland. England doesn't get a separate press release....

BBC Licence Fee Bid

The BBC is set to reveal its licence fee bid.

Former D-G Greg Dyke's argument against C4 getting a share of the licence fee in yesterday's Independent is now online.