We need the BBC to be more secure than ever but its role must change

Big spender: the cost of one series of Netflix’s The Crown equals about 10 BBC dramas
Robert Viglasky/Netflix
Ed Vaizey15 October 2018
WEST END FINAL

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The BBC has never seemed to be in such rude health. From last weekend’s watch-from-behind-your-hands Strictly to the bonking Bodyguard , not to mention Blue Planet , it continues to achieve ratings that haven’t been seen in almost a decade.

But all is not what it seems. Only last week the head of content for the BBC, Charlotte Moore, pointed out in a high-profile media lecture that the BBC’s spending power has declined by almost a fifth in the past decade. British media companies now face a competitive environment that was unimaginable a decade ago.

When I first became David Cameron’s broadcast minister back in 2010, the BBC was still the big beast in the jungle. Wherever two or three media executives were gathered together, complaints would soon focus on the BBC and its impact on commercial broadcasting. A few years on, concerns were all about Google. Now all people want to talk about is Netflix.

The most valuable independent broadcast company in the UK is ITV, currently worth £8.5 billion. The BBC itself has an income of around £5 billion. Compare this with the US. A couple of weeks ago Comcast bought Sky for £39 billion, almost five times the value of ITV. Comcast is worth more than $150 billion, and Disney and Netflix weigh in at similar sizes. Amazon and Apple, two trillion-dollar companies, are also starting to play heavily in television.

By the end of the decade, the combined spend on content of many of these companies will reach $100 billion a year. Netflix is already responsible for 15 per cent of global internet traffic. In Europe, YouTube accounts for almost a third. The cost of one series of Netflix’s The Crown is about the same as 10 BBC dramas.

Ed Vaizey
Getty Images for Facebook

In many ways the size and scale of these global companies is a good thing for British talent and creativity.

After all, The Crown relies heavily on British talent and locations. Statistics from the British Film Industry published last week show that spending in the UK on high-end drama has doubled, and spending on film production has increased by almost 50 per cent in the past few years.

Three of the biggest film franchises in the world — James Bond , Star Wars and Harry Potter — are all made in the UK. The film and television sectors now make a real and significant contribution to our economy and to economic growth as a whole.

Great British actors, directors, producers and craftsmen and women are getting more than their fair share of this global pie, at least.

But if we want our success to continue, we cannot simply rely on large cheques from abroad. The BBC lies at the heart of our broadcasting ecology, and it is vital that it continues to thrive. The BBC Charter — its roadmap for the next 10 years — was concluded just two years ago. But there are elements within it that already risk severely damaging it. As I was one of the ministers involved with the Charter, what follows is something of a mea culpa.

The BBC is now responsible for funding the free TV licence for pensioners. This will save the Treasury a significant sum. The move was a wheeze to try and meet the welfare savings promised in the 2015 election. But by the end of the decade this will cost the BBC an estimated £700 million a year, a huge proportion of its budget.

Other Government-inspired initiatives have and will cost the BBC money it can ill afford to lose, albeit not on the same scale. Local television was never going to work in this country, and it has failed. But not before gobbling up £37 million of licence-fee money.

"If we want our success to continue, we cannot simply rely on large cheques coming in from abroad"

Now we are in danger of making the same kind of mistake again, with the introduction of something called “contestable funding”. This kind of fund has not been successful elsewhere, and I have severe doubts that this £60 million will end up being money well spent. Ironically, the money could even end up providing subsidies to Netflix and Amazon, who certainly don’t need it.

It’s true, of course, that the BBC doesn’t always help itself. Huge salaries for “top talent”, gender pay disparity and the hounding of Cliff Richard have all rightly brought criticism. But the sheer pace of technological change and the huge sums of money involved means we need to think hard about how we secure the BBC’s future. It remains the domestic leader in national and local radio, a vital provider of news and the host of national events such as The Proms, still one of the key organisations binding an increasingly fractured nation together.

Some choices are easy. Politicians need to stop imposing their own pet policy projects on Auntie, and now give her their full support. It should be politicians, not the BBC, who fund and decide on the future of the free licence fee. We should stop the contestable fund and call a halt to the subsidy for local TV.

But we should also be more radical. The BBC needs to be able to be free to join forces with Channel 4 and ITV, especially when competing abroad or online. It should consider charging for some services, such as those on iPlayer. And it should be able to seek private investment for new projects.

Charlotte Moore is right to warn that uniquely British content for British audiences is under threat — and we need to save it.

  • Ed Vaizey is a former minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries and the Conservative MP for Wantage

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