Speech to Voice of the Listener and Viewer conference, London
Tuesday 28 November 2006
Printable version
91Èȱ¬ Vision means better programmes for licence fee payers
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Good afternoon. I was hoping to store up a great surprise announcement for today's speech but as of last night I realised I didn't need to because Michael Grade had done it for me!
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I'm very grateful for this opportunity to talk to the VLV and take your questions.
The VLV does terrific work in its campaigning for high quality programmes and its support for the principles of public service broadcasting.
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In my new job, as director of 91Èȱ¬ Vision, I'm responsible for all the audio-visual content including television outside of Sport, Journalism and the Audio & Music groups.
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I don't intend to bore you with the intricate details of the latest 91Èȱ¬ restructuring that's produced this new role. All you really need to know about 91Èȱ¬ Vision is that it brings together a large number of formerly separate television programme-making divisions and our broadcasting arm.
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The rationale for doing this is simple: it's to enable us to give 91Èȱ¬ audiences a richer experience in return for their licence fee.
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What I want to do today is explain what I mean by that, and to give you some examples of how I hope the new structure holds real benefits for licence fee payers.
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The media landscape is changing fast
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It's become a cliché to say that the media landscape we live in is changing at dizzying speed. Cliché it may be. But it's still true.
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Media technology is changing all the time – there's always a glossy new games console, an improved mobile digital device, a faster broadband service.
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The corporate media landscape is always shifting too as you hardly need me to tell you today with what's happening at ITV.
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Audience expectations are changing too
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And, perhaps most important, audiences are rapidly changing too.
They are changing in the way they use media. And, crucially, their expectations of what media will deliver are changing too.
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Audiences now want much more from their media – not just different kinds of media delivered in different ways, but they also want a different relationship with their media, a relationship that gives them a measure of control, a measure of influence.
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From passive consumer to active participant
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The old model of media provision is based on the idea of the audience as passive consumer.
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You remember the old Radio Times illustration of the nuclear family gathered round the box in the corner, eyes shining, waiting eagerly to receive whatever Auntie would provide?
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That model, if it ever was accurate, certainly doesn't work today. The family may still gather Royle Family-style in front of the box – or, just as likely today, the plasma screen – in the corner.
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But they will also spend time during the day in front of other screens – not as passive consumers but as interactive partners: texting friends; emailing customers; editing pictures and uploading them to the internet to share with others; using the web to research family history; pressing the red button to vote; playing games - perhaps with people on the other side of the globe; watching video clips and giving instant feedback.
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What links all these activities is not just that they involve using a screen, but that there is also an element of interactivity, of the audience taking a degree of control.
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Audiences want to influence content
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Let me give you an example of this changing relationship.
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A couple of months ago 91Èȱ¬ One revised its channel ident. The red dancers were exchanged for imaginative and rather beautiful variations on the theme of the letter O – for One.
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But not imaginative enough for some of our viewers. Within two days they had taken our idea and used it as the basis for really-well crafted spoofs, which they published on YouTube.
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One used a variation on the Hitchcock shower scene from Psycho with the blood running down a plughole which, magically, translated into the letter O and the 91Èȱ¬ One logo.
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There's interactivity and influencing the content for you!
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The 91Èȱ¬ has to respond to these expectations
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When audiences who live in those media landscapes come to the 91Èȱ¬ they bring the expectations of these landscapes with them.
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Those expectations are:
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First, that high quality 91Èȱ¬ content will be available to them on whatever device they want, whenever they want it.
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Second, that audiences will have some degree of control, of influence over what is happening on their screen – not in every case, but in many.
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And, third, that if they want to know more about a particular topic that they see on the television, then the 91Èȱ¬ will enable them to pursue their interest – and pursue it to quite a sophisticated level.
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Now the 91Èȱ¬ already does meet those expectations to a degree. But we want to do more.
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The 91Èȱ¬ will build on strong multi-media foundations
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Here's a short film of the kind of things we're already doing now and on which we want to build in the future.
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They include Torchwood with its website creating a virtual world on the web; a Doctor Who online game and mobile episodes; Bamzooki on C91Èȱ¬, both broadband and tv; Spooks, the series and the red button game; and the Parenting on-demand trial.
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That film shows how the 91Èȱ¬ is already using new media and other means to extend audience enjoyment of our programmes.
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91Èȱ¬ Vision means we can do more…
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You can expect to see a lot more of that in the future. The restructuring we've just gone through puts us in much better shape to respond to those rising audience expectations I've spoken about.
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… More programmes that stimulate audience involvement:
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Play It Again
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Next year 91Èȱ¬ One is launching a new series called Play it Again.
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Well-known people will learn – or re-learn - musical instruments. They go back to meet the music teachers from their childhood who maybe pushed them too hard, or not hard enough.
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Each programme ends with a public performance by our musical guinea pig.
We have Robert Winston re-learning the saxophone, Bill Oddie the electric guitar and many more.
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What makes it a bit different is that we'll be running a series of events across the UK where people of any age or ability can come together to play or sing with members of the 91Èȱ¬ Orchestras and the 91Èȱ¬ Singers. There will also be related programmes on Radio 2 and Radio 3.
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It's a good example of the 91Èȱ¬ responding to audience wishes - not just to consume the arts passively, but to take part in the arts themselves.
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Who Do You Think You Are?
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It's the same with Who Do You Think You Are, which is not just a very watchable series about well-known people uncovering their roots, but through the 91Èȱ¬ family history website has given vast numbers of people the tools they need to research their own backgrounds.
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And extraordinary numbers of them have taken up the opportunity. So many, indeed, that when the series is on the General Records Office warns people applying for birth, marriage or death certificate that it's going to take twice as long because of the increased demand for their services.
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Springwatch
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But perhaps the best example of the 91Èȱ¬ responding to our audiences' desire to get involved is the Springwatch phenomenon.
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It now stretches across not just television for adults, but for children of all ages too.
It has a big presence on the web, and across the Nations and Regions.
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It has strong links with many wildlife organisations, and it's getting huge numbers of people switched on to the natural world in their own areas by getting them involved in wildlife surveys and staging weekend Springwatch events all round the UK. It is backed up by Breathing Places, a massive outreach campaign involving many partners helping people to access green spaces in the countryside and in urban areas.
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What's great about the Springwatch idea is that audiences can relate to it at any level they like.
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They can just enjoy the programmes. They can use the website to develop their interest further. They can go out into the garden and check if the ladybirds have arrived, or the frogspawn, and report their findings to help build the regular Springwatch databank on the coming of spring. Or they can decide to go the whole hog, get their hands dirty, and relate to nature close up.
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If we're to do more along these lines – and I very much want us to – then we're much more likely to be successful if we start thinking about all these variations on the main theme right from the start of the commissioning process.
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That's what the new structure of 91Èȱ¬ Vision allows us to do. It means we can get all the right people in the same room at the very start of the commissioning process to see how best a creative idea can be expressed across a range of different platforms.
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Not everything has changed
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Of course all this emphasis on new media doesn't mean we've abandoned our traditional strengths. We will still commission television programmes that work just as wonderful television programmes and have little or no manifestation beyond that.
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The adaptation of Jane Eyre that 91Èȱ¬ One showed recently is a case in point. A brilliant television series – and with a supporting website, with details of the cast and an area where viewers could post reviews of the series - but not much beyond that. And that's fine. Not every project should support the full multi-platform, multi-media approach.
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And we're very well aware that not everyone in our audience wants much beyond what comes out of the box in the corner.
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We have to keep faith with them and provide them with great programmes that surprise and delight just as stand-alone television programmes. And I think we are doing that.
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Look at the way Saturday nights on 91Èȱ¬ One have been transformed with Doctor Who, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?, Strictly Come Dancing and, now, Robin Hood – all high quality entertainment with 91Èȱ¬ stamped all through them.
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But if you want more, we'll give you more. Doctor Who, for example – and now its wonderful offshoot, Torchwood – make really inventive and intriguing use of the opportunities available on broadband. Visit Torchwood.org to see what I mean.
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Investment in new media doesn't threaten traditional television
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Occasionally viewers ask if we aren't in danger of spreading the jam a bit thinly, robbing the Peter of stand-alone television to pay the Paul of multi-platform production, which they're not particularly interested in.
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But it doesn't work like that.
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The licence fee means that the 91Èȱ¬ has to provide high quality content for everyone in the UK – and, of course, not everyone will have the same definition of high quality.
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The young audiences we are attracting to 91Èȱ¬ Three, for example, want high quality content but in genres and styles that particularly appeal to them.
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And, while some licence fee payers are happy to receive only our linear television channels, there are many others whose expectations are for something richer and more interactive and we have to respond to those expectations too.
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To give you just one example: we're about to put Question Time out to tender for a new three-year contract in the independent sector.
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We've told bidders for the new contract that we want everything the programme now achieves – but we've also asked them to come up with ways in which the Question Time audience can continue the debate after the programme is over.
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It's a way of adding value, of giving more to the Question Time audience should they want to take up the offer.
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Licence fee bid earmarks £1.6bn to raise quality
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When we made our licence fee bid we earmarked significant extra money – £1.6bn by 2013 – for a new programme strategy rooted in excellence and quality, with fewer repeats and derivative programmes.
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That's still our aspiration.
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More investment in Drama, Comedy and Entertainment, the Arts, Music, Journalism, Learning and Knowledge Building, and Children's programmes.
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All our audiences will benefit from that extra spending, whether they watch only the box in the corner or take full advantage of the riches of our developing digital offer.
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Old and new media complement each other
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The two wings of what we do are not mutually exclusive but gloriously complementary.
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For me the important question is not: is it old media or is it new media? The really important question is: is it any good?
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Children's shows the way ahead
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I mentioned Children's programmes just then as one of the key areas for new investment.
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Children are, of course, a key audience for the 91Èȱ¬. We've always taken the view that the quality levels of our children's output should be no different from the quality levels for our adult audiences.
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Richard Deverell, who leads the Children's group, always tells his staff he wants their programmes to be "shining examples of outstanding public service broadcasting".
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I think he's doing pretty well. CBeebies Springwatch – you saw a clip in the film a few minutes ago – won a Children's Bafta on Sunday.
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And yesterday saw the return to our screens of Jackanory, the classic story-telling format, updated for the 21st century with the story teller now able to enter the visual world of the characters and interact with them.
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It's an amazing production – all the traditional narrative strengths of the original Jackanory, but dramatically intensified through computer animation.
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John Sessions is the first story teller, with the tale of Muddle Earth – Tolkien-land, but with a distinct comic twist. And coming up, Ben Kingsley with the Magician of Samarkand.
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There's a website that offers downloads, trailers, a competition to design a character for a forthcoming online Jackanory game – and, very important, advice on other books that young readers whose interest has been stimulated by the stories on Jackanory might like to try.
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To sum up
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So, when I look ahead, I see a pretty good picture. The digital world holds unbelievable potential for the 91Èȱ¬ to deliver its public service mission in new and exciting ways.
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We intend to seize those opportunities on behalf of all our licence fee payers.
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Thank you.
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