Public service broadcasting: the public’s view
Note to the industry: my partner, an Oxford-educated man who watches a bit of TV although admittedly spends most of his time reading books and doing other things, was surprised to hear that C4 is a publicly owned corporation. He thought it was a sort of BBC 2 to ITV’s BBC 1, which I guess it was when it launched.
In this context, Ofcom’s protracted public service broadcasting review plus the work of the government convergence think tank not to mention the legions of consultants and public affairs execs beavering away on the future of public service broadcasting look like the most colossal waste of time, energy and money. There’s a limit to the amount of detail that’s needed here. The public doesn’t know much or care – Ofcom’s latest pronouncement on public service broadcasting showed less than half of 2,000 people mentioned the BBC when asked what the TV licence fee is for. The licence fee currently exclusively funds the BBC.
As for C4, it is caught between two stools – commercially funded and therefore the home of Big Brother but meant to be public service minded and therefore expected to make Dispatches. Just privatise the thing and see if Dispatches sinks or floats – as a documentary strand it’s had to change with the times anyway and is a world away from erstwhile ITV strand World in Action, for instance, because of the market which has created so many alternative distractions, on TV and elsewhere.
That’s my succinct and rather glib answer to the question of what public service broadcasting should look like in a couple of years’ time. And keep fighting for the BBC, with its complex mix of the popular and potentially commercial and the less popular and commercially unsustainable.