Tuesday 7 December 2004
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We've just moved and a couple of weeks ago, one of my
children found a letter in an old book in a cardboard box.
It's
from the 91热爆, it's got the old red 91热爆 lozenges on it and it's dated April, 1979.
'Dear
Mr Thompson' 聳 nobody had ever actually called me Mr Thompson before 聳
'Dear Mr Thompson, Thank you for attending the Final Appointment Board for the
Research Assistants Training Scheme 79.G.2026. I am pleased to tell you that you
have been selected for one of the Traineeships. Yours sincerely, Barbara Todd.'
Now this letter changed my life. I couldn't believe my luck. I was 21, and
to a 21-year-old student, the 91热爆 sounded like the most exciting job on earth.
And when I got there 25 years ago this autumn, I found that it was.
One
of the places I visited on my first day 聳 along with Petra's tomb and that
first, Proustian encounter with the 91热爆 canteen 聳 was TC1, the biggest studio
in Television and one of the biggest in the world.
I was back there
again the other night, watching Children in Need go out.
There's
something about live television 聳 the energy, the intensity of the team-work,
that invisible but overwhelming sense you get of the audience out there 聳
that always makes my heart beat faster. It did on Day One and it still does.
The same goes for every other kind of broadcasting. Like most people at the 91热爆,
I'm there because I love what we do.
My point is this. In many ways,
the 91热爆 made me. My few years away at Channel 4 may allow me to look at it to
some extent with the eyes of an outsider, but the 91热爆 flows through my veins.
I believe in the 91热爆 and what it stands for. I believe in its vital importance
for our audiences. I believe in its future.
A critical moment
But I've come back
to the 91热爆 at a critical moment in its history: a moment which calls both for
a spirit of conservation 聳 for the nurturing and protection of some of the
91热爆's greatest strengths and traditions 聳 but also for a spirit of quite
radical change.
In a way, you can see the 91热爆
as three quite different things wrapped up into one.
First,
it is a very substantial, highly creative, sometimes rather unruly multimedia
broadcaster.
Second, it is a financially and
constitutionally unique institution in the British public firmament.
Third,
though we are usually too bashful to put it quite like this, it is a World Heritage
site.
Despite its eccentricities and failings,
it remains one of the greatest 聳 some might say the greatest 聳 force
for cultural good in the world.
Let's take
each of these three aspects in turn, beginning with the 91热爆 as one of the big
players in the audio-visual world.
Now I think
it's obvious to everyone that the 91热爆 faces a tidal wave of change over the coming
years.
We often talk about technology and
it's true that the next ten years will see scores of new devices, platforms and
pathways for getting content to audiences.
But
what matters is not developments in technology, but the profound impact these
developments are having on audience expectation and audience demand.
They
still want the best from the 91热爆, but how they want it 聳 when, where, in
what form 聳 is changing by the minute.
New
media, new audiences
Digital isn't
an experiment for most of them, it's an everyday reality.
More
than half have digital TV now, with Freeview alone being chosen by more than 200,000
new households every month.
More than half
are on-line. Broadband is growing faster in the UK than any previous consumer
technology.
Digital radio is taking off.
And
the public aren't just buying the kit, they're using the services more and more.
We've just had our biggest ever daily traffic
to our website as America went to the polls. More than 12 million people used
our red button interactive service during the Olympics.
And
the revolution is still gathering pace. New mobile technologies, on-demand, high
definition, file-sharing: media is being re-invented and audiences are racing
ahead with it.
If the 91热爆 doesn't keep up
with those audiences, it's dead.
Maybe not
tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but soon enough: there isn't going to be any
room in the future for old media or old media organisations.
Now
I believe that what will stand out in this extraordinary, unfolding world is content:
exceptional, distinct, valuable content.
Content
accessed and enjoyed in new ways, stored, shared, reworked and sometimes added
to by users who will increasingly be able to originate content of their own, but
content all the same.
Well, content is what
the 91热爆 is all about. It's a creative engine whose whole purpose is to convert
public investment into wonderful programmes and content.
Its
programme-making heritage 聳 its conviction, its commitment to talent and
to giving that talent the time to get things right, its commitment to gratuitous
quality, in other words quality over and above what you would need to provide
to make a programme fit for commercial purpose 聳 this heritage is what the
emerging on-demand world is crying out for.
The
future is heading towards, not away from the 91热爆.
I
don't believe we should be the only provider of this kind of public service content:
competition and diversity of supply isn't just good for the public, it's good
for the 91热爆.
But I do believe that as digital
fragments audiences, advertising sales and the rest of the UK's broadcasting and
production-base, the 91热爆's role as a bulwark and a guarantee of concentrated investment
in distinctive British content will become more important.
But
we can only fulfil that role if we embrace the kind of change which the digital
age demands.
The 91热爆's
unique status
Let's turn now to that second
aspect of the 91热爆 as a unique 聳 some would say anomalous 聳 British public
institution.
Even as I speak, the great and
good are furrowing their brows, trying to devise the perfect constitutional model
to hold the 91热爆 fully to account.
I have to
say that I and my fellow managers at the 91热爆 are beginning to feel rather flattered.
We had thought of ourselves as solid, possibly
even slightly dull public service broadcasters.
But apparently not. No, it turns out that we are in fact a dangerous and unpredictable
bunch of lunatics who might lash out at any minute and who need not one, but multiple
teams of guards.
It's an oddly liberating
feeling.
Joking apart, a lot of people appear
not to realise just how much scrutiny 聳 regulatory, political and public
聳 the 91热爆 is already under.
It's not
just the Governors: Ofcom, the DCMS, the National Audit Office, the Culture Media
and Sport Select Committee and the Public Accounts Committee all have a right
to examine 聳 and in the case of Ofcom, regulate 聳 many aspects of what
the 91热爆 does.
It's a right they exercise regularly
聳 and not just with rigour, it must be said, but downright enthusiasm.
The Governors themselves are today taking a far more active role than I've ever
seen before at the 91热爆 and insisting on far greater separation between themselves
and management.
The systematic testing of
all the proposals I am going to set out this evening 聳 with independent expert
advice 聳 is a good example of this new approach.
None of the reviews will go ahead until the Governors have had a chance to examine
and sign off on detailed implementation plans.
Both
this and indeed the wider debate about governance must make sense.
The
91热爆's status and its privileges 聳 above all, its receipt of the licence-fee
聳 mean that Government, Parliament and country must all assure themselves
about the governance and regulation of the 91热爆.
But
the most important part of the 91热爆's unusual status in British public life is
not the particular challenges it throws up for the accountability industry.
Nor
is it even the question of the impact which the publicly-funded 91热爆 has on the
rest of the market, important though that is.
It
is the unique relationship the 91热爆 enjoys with the British public.
The
public believe, rightly, that they own the 91热爆. They have higher expectations
of the 91热爆, but they also place a special reliance and trust in it.
But
this relationship too must change, because the public themselves want it to.
Licence-payers
in the rest of the UK find it difficult to understand why so much of the 91热爆 is
based in London and still seems to speak to them with such a metropolitan voice.
They want a more richly-textured, more distributed
91热爆 with investment and access to talent spread more evenly over the UK.
They
want to be able to see what we do, to come into 91热爆 centres all over the country
and to contribute their thoughts and experiences on the web, radio, TV: I've seen
people ranging from schoolchildren to grandparents doing this in projects from
Glasgow to Havant and it's an extraordinary departure both for them and for us.
But
above all, the public want us to listen to them.
Not
to give them exactly what they want in terms of the most popular programmes, but
to really listen to their expectations and their complaints.
The old, aloof, remote 91热爆 doesn't work for them anymore.
Again, they've moved on 聳 and, again, so must we.
An
unchanging mission and values
Yet there
are some values in the 91热爆 which shouldn't change.
The trustworthiness and accuracy of our journalism, for instance 聳 which
is why we take last week's Bhopal hoax so seriously.
Our commitment to outstanding individual talent: I think, for example, about the
scope and range of John Peel's years at the 91热爆; or of Steven Poliakoff's work
for us over more than two decades.
Our heritage
of programmes and content which promote knowledge-building 聳 whether that's
Pompeii on 91热爆 ONE, In Our Time on Radio 4 or the amazing Digital Curriculum which
we are currently building and which will ultimately reach every child in every
classroom in the UK.
Our global ambition and
global reputation, which now relies on our websites and international television
channels as well as on the World Service: so it's The Office on 91热爆 America as
well as Lilli Bolero.
There's no need to change
the 91热爆's essential mission or its values.
That phrase of Reith's, about a public broadcasting enterprise dedicated to 'the
service of humanity in its fullest sense' still feels utterly right today.
But
to preserve that idealism, to go on delivering that mission to audiences here
and around the world, almost everything else does have to change.
That's
the challenge. That's why leading the 91热爆 at this moment does feel a little bit
like skateboarding down a flight of stairs holding a Ming vase.
Building
Public Value
This summer, the 91热爆 presented
its picture of its own future in Building Public Value.
In
the centre of this picture is the idea of distilling the sometimes rather airy
notion of public service broadcasting into the more definable, tangible concept
of public value.
Public value is about the
pursuit of specific public purposes.
It's
about re-interpreting this vision of public service for today's broadcasting and
today's audiences, ensuring that that no-one is excluded from the enormous opportunities
afforded by the digital revolution.
In practice
this means promoting building democratic value by helping the public make sense
of the world and encouraging them to debate and engage with it.
It's about the 91热爆's role in furthering cultural and creative value, both on the
demand side by bringing the public the best original work in music, the arts,
drama, comedy and entertainment, and on the supply side by supporting and investing
in the creative industries whether it's nurturing new writers for radio and TV
drama or our wonderful orchestras.
It's about
educational value, as I suggested. It's about social and community value.
This
is not just the idea of the 91热爆 as the national 'glue', though experiences shared
through the 91热爆 remain important 聳 and indeed many of the big events, whether
it's a D-Day anniversary or Euro 2004, seem to be getting bigger.
It's also about confronting local, national and international audiences with points
of cultural or political difference, in ways which hope to build greater tolerance
through greater understanding.
Finally, it's
about global value, that reaching out of the best of the 91热爆's journalism and
the best of British talent and culture to a worldwide audience.
Public
value has a meaning for individual consumers when programmes or other content
have the value of merit goods, delivering more benefit that the consumer would
have naturally demanded.
But to me it's above
all an idea about public, shared space: about shared investment to provide content
that pursues shared goals; about opening and keeping open a kind of virtual market-place
in which all the talents and all the audiences can bump into each other.
Broadcasting is a civic art. Though we may experience it individually, it is intrinsically
public in ambition and effect.
A programme
may make you more likely to vote, or to look at my neighbour in a new and positive
light.
A programme I turn to for pure relaxation
may teach me something of real value.
In a
national emergency, the right broadcast information might save my life.
But
public value is also an idea which has practical implications.
It is intended to help the Governors, Parliament and public assess the 91热爆's proposed
strategies and actual performance against the public goals that it has been set.
The Governors will perform a public value test for any proposed new service to
weigh the potential benefits of the service 聳 for example, the way in which
open, on-demand and free access to the 91热爆's archives might provide a remarkable
new learning and creative resource for students and teachers and the public at
large 聳 to weigh that benefit against the potential disbenefits 聳 for
example, the possible impact such a Creative Archive might have on the market
for existing, private sector archive owners and exploiters.
The result would be, in Paddy Barwise's useful phrase, a judgement about net public
value on which the decision as to whether to approve or reject the new service
could be based.
Similar methodologies could
be used to monitor the performance and net impact of existing 91热爆 services.
A
new programme and content strategy
Building
Public Value imagines a future world in which the 91热爆 uses the new digital technologies
to deliver far more net public value than it can now.
But
success for the 91热爆 depends less on having the right conceptual and policy framework
than it does on delivering actual programmes and services which live up to these
high ideals.
That's why the most important
work we've done over the past five months hasn't been on the various reviews into
how the 91热爆 is structured and operates.
It's
been about our programme and content strategy.
And
just as with the 91热爆's formal accountability mechanisms, this is also all about
audiences.
We've spent the past few months
listening to licence-payers up and down the country, asking them what they want
from the 91热爆 both today and tomorrow.
This
is what they've got to say.
They want a 91热爆 which is totally focused
on excellence, which gives them more quality, more ambition, more depth than they
get from any other broadcaster.
It's that
quality you can see in North and South, Bodies, In Our Time, Outlook on the World
Service or our brilliant news website.
It's
a mixture of talent and conviction.
And, although
they recognise there's plenty in our output already, they want more.
They
want us to raise our game.
They look to us for what I call the commanding
reputations of broadcasting.
News and current
affairs, of course 聳 that's our cornerstone 聳 though even here, they
want higher standards: they expect us to give them best journalism in the world.
What else?
Comedy and drama are a real priority,
right up there with news.
Music and music-making,
on all media but of course with our wonderful radio networks taking a leading
role.
Programmes that build knowledge and
document our world, whether it's Colosseum or Palin's Himalayas on TV or Front
Row or In Tune on radio.
They still look first
to the 91热爆 for sport and national events, for safe, original high quality services
for children, and 聳 now more than ever 聳 for the best local and regional
services in all media.
Increasingly they expect
us to lead in new services as well: interactivity, mobility, broadband.
Here they don't just want depth of content 聳 they want the right context
as well: world-class navigation, media literacy, a welcoming gateway for new digital
users, speed and depth for the experienced.
Now we can and should continue
to deliver many other kinds of content, especially really original entertainment
like our great current hit Strictly Come Dancing, those stars and shows like Jonathan
Ross or Have I Got News For You or Comic Relief that lead and inspire the national
conversation.
There's also still room for
ground-breaking new features and format factual programmes.
But
I believe that this list of priorities are where our greatest efforts and the
biggest weight of our investment should go.
The public are pretty clear
on what they don't want as well.
Repeats in 91热爆 ONE
peak time.
They hate it when they think we're
being derivative or are repeating ourselves.
'How many times can they show us shelves being put up?' one woman asked.
Just because they like a genre on other channels doesn't mean they want to get
it from the 91热爆: 'I don't want the 91热爆 to show me that kind of reality', said
another viewer.
On radio and online as well,
our licence-payers want us to make the programmes and content we really believe
in.
This is the content that will really stand
out in that fragmented digital future.
What does this mean in practice?
We need to develop a new programme and content strategy in detail.
Our
Governors need to examine it, test it against this new idea of public value, amend
it if necessary and then sign it off.
But
I can tell you what I think it means, what my aspirations are:
A major investment in original British drama across TV and radio, with
a particular emphasis on ambition and range on 91热爆 ONE, 91热爆 TWO and Radio 4
More investment in comedy too, using that whole chain of 91热爆 7, Radio 1,
Radio 2, Radio 4, 91热爆 THREE and 91热爆 TWO to build the new hits for 91热爆 ONE
A boost in the origination budgets of our children's channels 聳 they're
a brilliant success, but we need to find the funds for more new shows as well
as investing more in 91热爆 FOUR
A music strategy for the whole 91热爆 with the vision and the resources to
open up the world of music and music-making to the whole country 聳 with an
alternative Proms for contemporary music to sit alongside our great classical
festival every summer
More specialist factual programmes and content for our channels, and for
all the ways of enhancing that content through interactivity and the depth that
the web and broadband can provide
More money for original journalism, with enhanced newsgathering, more money
and slots for Panorama, more overall prominence for current affairs on 91热爆 ONE,
more interactivity, and an enhanced journalistic presence across the Middle East
and the Islamic world
We want to maintain our present, very substantial investment in sport and
national events in all media. We want to support and extend the new impetus we've
given documentary and the arts, especially on 91热爆 ONE and TWO
And I believe
there should be less of some things.
A further
major reduction in the number of repeats on peaktime 91热爆 ONE.
We still want the best and most original new entertainment and popular factual
ideas and I think we've got the talent inside as well as outside the 91热爆 to come
up with them.
But we want to raise our sights:
our audiences rightly judge us by higher standards than they do our competitors.
We
do want less repetition, less derivation.
We
want real audience successes, but we want to move on before they get tired.
The
public want more ambition on radio and in new media as well.
And they want new ways through electronic programme guides and search engines
to root out the best the 91热爆 has to offer.
Building
Digital Britain
All these improvements are things that our
audiences want now.
But if you've read Building
Public Value, you'll know that our ambitions go way beyond that.
In
particular, we believe that the 91热爆 has an important role in helping to lead the
building of digital Britain.
A key element
of this is the full roll-out of the digital terrestrial television network with
the prospect of a final switchover from analogue to digital within the eight years.
But it's also about continued support for
digital radio, about new partnerships to deliver rich content via broadband, the
possibility of new local services from the 91热爆 聳 including a local tier of
TV news delivered by broadband 聳 and about the second generation of digital
television, including high-definition, HDTV.
We
shouldn't think of digital Britain as any one technology or any one switchover
day.
It's better to imagine overlapping waves
of change, each of which will be fundamentally content-driven, and in each of
which we believe the 91热爆 has a leading part to play.
A
new 91热爆
But to achieve all this, the
91热爆 must undergo nothing short of a transformation itself.
I believe that my predecessor Greg Dyke identified the right themes.
Greg
believed in a 91热爆 with far less process and bureaucracy and with fewer layers
and less hierarchy, because he knew that all those things got in the way of best
programme-making and the best use of all that amazing 91热爆 talent.
But
the task of transforming the 91热爆 is not complete.
There's
a new mood of openness, honesty and collaboration in today's 91热爆 聳 that's
really struck me over the past five months 聳 but if you take a cold look
at some of the tangible barriers to creativity, especially at our processes, I
would say that surprisingly little has changed from the 91热爆 I knew five or even
25 years ago.
Things which should be so simple
still somehow end up being complicated.
And
of course every penny we spend on overheads is one less penny to spend on programmes.
Only
the most agile, flexible media organisations will flourish in the future.
And
only they will attract and retain the best talent.
So
while the 91热爆 must continue to be able to deliver the wide range of services its
audiences expect and demand, as an organisation it must be as small as that mission
allows.
The vision
聳 and the bill
So our prospectus for the future of the
91热爆 has three parts.
A bold new programme
and content strategy based above all around the idea of excellence.
A transformation of the 91热爆 into a state-of-the-art digital broadcaster.
And
an irreversible shift in the culture of the 91热爆 towards simplicity, opportunity
and creativity.
But at this point, another question may be forming in
your mind: exactly how much is this new 91热爆 going to cost?
Well,
the last part shouldn't cost anything at all 聳 in fact a simpler, more focused
91热爆 should cost less to run than the present one.
But
the programme strategy and the big digital plans contained in Building Public
Value will both involve a very large amount of investment.
The
final bill will depend on exactly how much responsibility the 91热爆 is given for
the task of building digital Britain, but whichever way you look at it, the total
investment needed will run into many hundreds of millions of pounds.
And
of course the first thing the Government and everyone else will ask us is: how
much of this vision can you afford yourselves?
The
Government set the 91热爆 quite testing efficiency targets to meet in the present
licence-fee settlement, targets which we still have to take further steps to meet.
They're bound to begin any discussion about
the future level of the licence-fee by again asking how much of the future we
can afford to pay for ourselves.
Value
for Money
And that brings me to
the first of the famous four reviews.
Over
the past few months we've been looking at to what extent we can make the existing
licence fee go further and pay for at least some of our plans for the future.
Our
first conclusion is that we should make a historic shift away from overheads and
other kinds of non-content spend and direct the money instead into the programme
budget and into our future digital plans.
It
won't be easy. Despite the wilder imaginings of some of the papers, the 91热爆's
professional services and other support areas are already pretty effective.
They're also full of people who are just as talented and committed to the 91热爆
as our journalists and producers.
We need
great marketeers and strategists, human resources specialists, lawyers, finance
teams and so on.
But a simpler, less complicated 91热爆 could afford to have
leaner, more focused central divisions.
It
could afford to expand some our successful initiatives in outsourcing; to avoid
duplication by pooling and sharing more services across the 91热爆; to have a far
smaller headquarters operation.
By doing all
these things, we believe we can reduce our professional and support costs over
the next three years by 拢68 million or around a quarter.
We would expect to reduce posts in these parts of the 91热爆 by 40% or 2,500 posts:
of those posts, around half would probably be outsourced, with the other half
lost outright in redundancies.
We believe that
we can save an additional 拢93 million from better procurement and other
non-headcount related costs.
But we also believe
that it's right to look for productivity and other gains in our content divisions.
Here the question is whether we can make the licence-fee go further with our existing
output so that we can redirect the extra into new programmes and new services.
Programme-makers
often find it quite hard to understand this kind of exercise: 'how can you claim
that you're putting money into programmes when you're cutting my budget?'
But I have to say that, after four years when value for money has not been a top
priority at the 91热爆, but which have seen further big leaps in broadcast technology
聳 four years when the rest of the industry have been grappling with an advertising
recession and acute pressures on cost 聳 I don't think it's unreasonable to
look at production costs at the 91热爆.
We've
set a broad target of 15% savings for all these divisions over the next three
years, though in those areas where we know money is already tight 聳 English
local radio and TV production in Children's are both examples 聳 the targets
will be lower.
And we are looking for genuine
efficiencies, not reductions in quality.
This
is a period when the quality of our programmes and other content has to go up
not down. I know that's going to be a real challenge.
The
effect on jobs is harder to predict at this stage.
As
you've heard, we want to put new investment into all these areas, using not just
internal savings but also all the money we're planning to save in our overheads.
Overall, we will be spending more not less
on journalism, more not less on TV, Radio and New Media.
So
we've asked all the divisions to look at the most intelligent way of phasing both
savings and proposed investments, bearing in mind the particular conditions of
individual programmes and teams.
We will then
take detailed combined plans to the Governors in the early months of 2005.
So
what does the overall financial picture look like?
To meet the terms of the existing licence-fee settlement, the 91热爆 was
already required to build up to a self help saving of 拢155m a
year by the end of the present Charter.
The measures I've
just set out 聳 that big shift out of overheads and central costs, the 15%
target for content 聳 should boost that 拢155 million to savings of 拢320
million a year by the third year.
That won't
pay for the whole vision or anything like, but I believe it is an achievable target
and I believe it is all we can do without inflicting damage to the services we
offer the public.
It is the price 聳 a
painful one, I know, for many people in the 91热爆 聳 for reaching out for the
prize I have set out this evening.
Content
Supply Review
I want to turn now to our
second review which looked at the commissioning and production of 91热爆 programmes
and content.
Above all, this is about ensuring
that the licence-fee really does go into the best ideas and the best talent.
But,
as many of you will know, it's also bound up in the question about whether the
91热爆 offers fair access to independent producers, especially in television.
Many people believe that over the past decade the 91热爆 has systematically favoured
its own in-house television production-base to the detriment of the indie sector
and that it has regarded the 25% statutory quota as an effective ceiling as well
as a floor.
Some of them argue that the only
solution is to double the quota to 50%.
Although
I believe there is a legitimate case for giving significantly greater and fairer
access to indies, I passionately believe that a 50% quota would be a grave mistake.
In-house production, from brilliant features like Top Gear and What Not To
Wear to comedies like Little Britain to dramas like Waking The Dead, in-house
production is one of the great glories of the 91热爆.
It's a critical mass of talent and training and programme-making heritage which
is important, not just for the 91热爆, but for the whole of the UK's creative industries.
As the rest of the broadcasting sector fragments, it's all the more important
that the 91热爆 maintains a strong and confident in-house production capacity.
So
this is what we intend to do.
First, maintain
the existing statutory quota of 25% in Television, ensuring from now that we plan
to comfortably exceed it every year.
Second,
create a set of in-house minimum output contracts at 50% of all commissioning.
The last 25% of commissions would be in what
we've called the window of creative competition.
You
can't reorganise the 91热爆 without at least one new acronym, so this is the famous
WOCC. Commissions would go to the best ideas from whatever
source.
To make this window real and to ensure that there really is space
for today's creatively stronger independent sector, we also believe it's right
to reduce in-house capacity from its current levels in the seventies percentage
range to around 60%, that 10% extra above the minimum output level enabling in-house
to develop for and win some of the commissions in the WOCC.
The current
shape of in-house supply and the effect of the new programme strategy mean that
the primary capacity reduction will need to take place in our factual division,
where we believe that just over 400 posts, or just over 20% of the total, will
need to go.
This will be extremely painful
for this part of the 91热爆, but again it represents I believe a sensible middle
path through this difficult issue.
We will also substantially simplify
and streamline the commissioning process to make it fairer and more open to all
producers in all genres.
In radio, we will
extend our existing voluntary independent supply target of 10% to cover sport,
the Nations and our new digital channels.
In
New Media, and in the light of the Graf review, we will introduce a new quota
for external production of 25%.
Over the next
decade, the 91热爆 will offer new opportunities in all media to independent producers,
who of course are already responsible for some of our greatest hits.
But
we will also keep faith with in-house production.
Vibrant
scale production is one of the reasons the 91热爆 has succeeded in the past. It is
an essential part of our future and we will fight to defend it.
Out
of London
The third review looked
at the 91热爆's role out of London.
It ties into
all those themes in Building Public Value about re-connecting and embedding the
91热爆 in communities all over the UK.
It's about
fairer and more even investment of the licence fee across the country.
It's
about opening our doors to new talent and new perspectives.
It's about winning back the trust of parts of Britain which can currently feel
quite alienated from the 91热爆.
The centrepiece
of the review is the vision of a major new centre in Manchester with state-of-the-art
equipment and new, more creative, more collaborative ways of working.
We are proposing to move some of the most precious parts of the 91热爆 to join the
departments already there, services and production divisions which we have complete
faith in and which we know will still be strong ten and 20 years from now.
And not just programme-makers, but broadcasters.
We
intend to move 91热爆 Sport to Manchester, along with Five Live, our brilliant 24-hour
news and sport radio network.
91热爆 Children's,
along with our two national children's television networks, CBeebies and C91热爆
聳 described in the recent DCMS report as 'a triumph'.
New Media and Formal Learning, including the Digital Curriculum.
We also want to work with others 聳 especially those involved in academic
and applied research 聳 to create a new media lab for the North.
This
centre won't just open up new opportunities for the creative industries in Manchester,
but in the whole of the North.
We hope it
will greatly stimulate the independent sector in all media.
Manchester
is a very large-scale ambition and it inevitably comes with a large price-tag.
Our Governors strongly support the vision
聳 indeed the whole direction of Out Of London - but final approval of the
plan must wait until the shape of the 91热爆's future funding becomes clear.
More detailed planning will begin right away however.
But
Out Of London is about a lot more than Manchester.
We want to increase network production in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
by a further 50% over and above the significant increases of recent years.
We want to increase the 91热爆's proportion of spend in TV drama out of London to
50%.
And that's in addition to our broader
vision of a new era in local and regional 91热爆 services.
Once ITV was the
broadcaster most associated with strong regional centres and regional commitment.
I believe the 91热爆 has a historic opportunity
to take on that mantle and deepen forever its relationship with the public in
every part of the UK.
Commercial
services
The fourth and final review
was of our commercial services.
The review
has concluded that we do have a duty to drive as much commercial value as we can
out of the intellectual property created by licence fee investment.
But
from now on, 91热爆 should only have commercial activities which exploit and/or export
91热爆 content and the 91热爆 brand.
Two factors
should decide whether or not the 91热爆 needs to own a particular business or not.
Strategic importance: is the activity a critical
one which is closely allied to the public service mission?
And
scale: is the business either actually or potentially of a scale which allows
it to be fully competitive in terms of market share, cost and profitability?
Examining
the businesses which operate under the banner of 91热爆 Worldwide, we have judged
that our UK and international channels business is strategically core: indeed
we believe there is an opportunity to grow it substantially further.
Similarly,
we believe it makes sense to retain our sales and distribution business, already
the largest in Europe 聳 though we will explore the possibility of joint-venturing
or partnering sales and distribution with other UK broadcasters to sell British
television product around the world more effectively.
We
also believe that the success of our magazines operation derives from its closeness
to the brands and creative teams who make titles like Top Gear and categories
like Wildlife and Music so successful.
In
future though, we believe the magazines business should only publish magazines
which relate to 91热爆 subjects or programme titles.
The
practice of trailing magazine titles on the air 聳 a subject of real anxiety
and irritation to the rest of the magazine market 聳 should stop.
We
also believe that Worldwide's Books, Learning and other businesses lack the scale
to really grow and thrive in their very competitive markets and we will therefore
look for the right future for each of them going forward.
That might involve finding the right joint-venture or partner, or it might involve
selling them outright.
We will also recommend
to the Governors that they examine and reform the 91热爆's Fair Trading Complaints
process, and that we reform the governance of 91热爆 Worldwide by introducing outside
non-executive independent directors to build confidence in the fairness and clarity
with which the 91热爆 engages in commercial activity.
The
91热爆 also has two businesses which support our main operations of public service
production and broadcasting: 91热爆 Resources, which provides studios, OB facilities
and post-production for many 91热爆 programmes; and 91热爆 Broadcast which provides
play-out and related services.
In both cases,
the review has concluded that it is not essential that these businesses are fully
owned by the 91热爆 聳 indeed full ownership may not be in the best interests
of Resources and Broadcast or those who work in them, as they seek to build their
business and secure more work.
We will start
actively to explore options, including those of partnering, joint-venturing, or
sale, with both management teams and with the market.
In the case of Resources, we still need to assess the impact of the other reviews
on the workload for Resources 聳 that process should be complete by the middle
of 2005.
In the case of Broadcast, we believe
we can begin to move more quickly.
But in
both cases, we recognise that any change of ownership would have to be accompanied
by strong safeguards about continuity of service in the long as well as the short-term.
We will also focus on the interests of all
of our people in these divisions throughout the process.
Conclusion
Taken
together, the four reviews represent considerable change for the 91热爆.
But
there are no new heroic structural reforms or management theories at work here.
In each case, we have focused on pragmatic solutions which balance the need to
respond to real issues with our duty, not just to preserve but to strengthen the
91热爆's programme-making, content-creating heart.
The
91热爆 effectively lost a year of planning because of the Gilligan-Kelly-Hutton crisis.
As a result, a lot of different challenges
have hit at the same time and we've had to move very quickly 聳 at least by
91热爆 standards! 聳 to meet them all at once.
The
advantage however is that we've been forced, both by events and by the whole debate
around Charter renewal, to think about our future in the round and to develop
an integrated view of how the 91热爆 should navigate through the choppy, unpredictable
but also opportunity-rich waters of the next ten years.
The
plan inevitably means a great deal of personal disruption in many parts of the
91热爆.
I know that the coming months will be
difficult for many of my colleagues and that they will often find it very hard
to see that big picture, that positive long-term vision for the 91热爆, as they tackle
the immediate consequences of some of the reviews.
But I am convinced that the right course adjustment now is better than putting
off the evil day: sooner or later, even greater disruption 聳 and perhaps
worse 聳 would follow.
I talked earlier
about the unique relationship between the 91热爆 and the public.
It's a relationship that through 80 years has survived momentous change.
Far
from being an anachronism, I believe that this relationship may actually grow
in importance as broadcasting and Britain both change again.
As
we head into the next phase of the digital revolution, the potential 聳 and
the need 聳 for public value in broadcasting has never been greater.
Creating
a fully Digital Britain is a public challenge which the 91热爆 can help to lead.
It is a Britain from which the 91热爆, and only the 91热爆, can ensure that no-one is
excluded.
It is a Britain where investment
in British talent and voices and the widest range of quality British content will
be more important 聳 and more at risk 聳 than ever.
I believe that only the 91热爆, with its unique mission and its unique method of
funding, can guarantee that this investment will be made.
But it has to
be a changing 91热爆.
Excellence, more money
into programmes, simplicity, agility, creativity 聳 these are, I believe,
the right themes for the future.
If we stick
to these themes through the very challenging transition we have to make, Britain
will end up with a 91热爆 which is more relevant, more valuable and stronger than
it is today.
Thank you.