Examination of Witnesses
(Questions 20 - 39)
TUESDAY 20 OCTOBER 1998
SIR CHRISTOPHER
BLAND, SIR
JOHN BIRT,
MR WILL
WYATT MR
RUPERT GAVIN,
MR JOHN
SMITH AND
MS PATRICIA
HODGSON
20. Will that include regional broadcasting
because for someone like myself it would be an enormous advantage
if I could listen to BBC Scotland news on your Web-site because
I can then get Web which I cannot get on the radio.
(Mr Wyatt) All these things are possible within finance
and certainly we are looking at how we can extend the ability
for people to have news in particular when it is convenient for
them to have it.
21. You also gave us a demonstration of what
you call Where's Q? which is a digitalisation of all your
records and where you have gone so far. That is essentially a
Web-site demonstration. How far are you in terms of getting that
to the general public? If so, how are people going to pay for
it?
(Mr Wyatt) It is essentially an on-demand proposition,
whether via the Web or some other sort of return path to their
home. Actually to introduce something like that would obviously
be very expensive but first it is essential that there is a good
return path and that the quality of the picture which can be delivered
is satisfactory. We are not there yet. We developed that system
in order to learn for ourselves about what might be possible and
how we might need to organise ourselves so to do. In time these
are systems of delivery of programmes and services of the BBC
which we clearly wish to be able to use.
22. May I turn briefly to sport. You are obviously
beginning to lose out quite heavily, having lost the test matches
to Channel 4, yet sport is one of the major areas that makes the
BBC attractive to licence fee payers. What are you going to do
about it, or can you do anything about it?
(Mr Wyatt) I cannot pretend that losing cricket was
not a great disappointment. We are investing considerably. We
are spending around £120 million in this current year in
television sport and production and that is a lot of money. The
top level sporting rights over the past nine years have gone up
by something like over 30 per cent per annum in real terms. Our
income over that period has been going up by 3 per cent per annum,
which demonstrates in itself that we have been investing increasingly
in sport in order to stay in the game and provide a good service
for the licence payer. We plan to keep investing in sport. It
is an issue of how much more can we afford to invest given the
other responsibilities we have, which are laid out in the Annual
Report, to children, to news, and science, and the other regional
broadcasting and all the other things we have to do. Yes, we have
invested and we intend to continue to do so, but we do not have
a bottomless purse. We cannot bid what will give us the right
result in every contract on every occasion within the limits of
our funding.
23. Did you consider using one of your channels
on terrestrial digitals as a sports channel?
(Mr Wyatt) We are going to use BBC Choice, which is
our main new general channel on digital services, which is already
launched on satellite and launches on digital terrestrial in about
three weeks' time. We will be using that for extended coverage
of sporting events that we cannot include elsewhere in the schedules.
It does not provide us with any further income. It is a channel
which is free to the public but it is a way in which we can get
more sport to the public and make more use of the events that
we have already acquired.
24. I will just see if I can be marginally parochial.
First of all, where are you in terms of your plans to shift BBC
headquarters in Scotland, where there are proposals to build a
brand new building; get out of that awful one you are in at the
present time. Where are you in that? Secondly, which is in a sense
related, what are you planning in terms of coverage of the new
Scottish Parliament, and your relationship with that Parliament
when it start next July?
(Sir John Birt) We are actively looking at the accommodation
in Scotland and I agree with Mr Maxton. It is some of the least
satisfactory accommodation right across the BBC. We are taking,
right across the United Kingdom, a hard look at our property to
see whether it is appropriate to new production styles in the
digital age. I have no doubt at all that we will be coming forward
in the near future with new plans in Scotland which will offer
people who work there much more congenial circumstances, much
better access to technology. It is just a question of how rather
than whether we will do that. There are a number of options that
we have to explore to make sure that whatever we do is the most
cost effective.
25. I am disappointed to hear you say there
is a variety of options. I thought there was only one and that
was that you stay in Glasgow and do not dream of moving to Edinburgh.
(Sir John Birt) It is not a question of moving to
Edinburgh. There are really two options on the table which we
need to explore but we explore them very much with the ambition
to improve our operation in Scotland.
(Sir Christopher Bland) And to get the best possible
deal on any property acquisition and rebuilding. Under those circumstances,
it is never wise to consider only a single site.
26. And the Scottish Parliament?
(Sir Christopher Bland) The coverage of Scottish Parliament
and indeed our total programme response to devolution in Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland is being actively considered at the
moment. The governors are going to Scotland tomorrow and the next
day and are meeting with the Broadcasting Council for Scotland
to listen to their further views on our draft proposals from the
Executive Committee in terms of the programme responses and options.
We then hope to present our plans in either November or December.
27. Supposedly, according to the media, there
is a dispute between yourselves, BBC Scotland and the Broadcasting
Council over news coverage in Scotland where there are proposals
that the news in Scotland should be done as a package from Scotland,
which allows them to headline Scottish news rather than being
headlined by news which is potentially English. The word is that
you are resisting this. I am not saying you are wrong—I
do not have a view on it—but you are resisting it. Is that
correct?
(Sir Christopher Bland) I think "dispute"
and "resisting" are not words that we would use. There
is an extremely healthy and energetic debate going on as to exactly
the right way to respond to these issues. I think it is one of
the most complicated issues that the BBC has faced, certainly
in my time as Chairman. The BBC finds itself not only commenting
on the political process but being almost part of it. It needs
to pull itself back and respond, not either to move ahead of legislation
or to trail behind it. It is a very careful judgment as to exactly
how that programme response should mirror what Parliament's present
intentions are in relation to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
It is a very complicated decision and it is not surprising that
there are some pretty strong views expressed, not so much from
either side but around all the corners of the argument. The debate
is by no means over.
Mrs Golding
28. In the financial statement it says that
£109 million was spent on licence fee collection and enforcement.
That was an increase of about 13 per cent over the previous year.
Yet, on page 50 of the report, it says that the reduced evasion
and collection costs from the current level of 13.1 per cent of
the licence fee came down. Why has it increased by 13 per cent?
(Mr Smith) When one is looking at the cost of the
licence fee, one needs to look at two different things. First
of all, the actual cost of collection and, secondly, the rate
of evasion. The two things go hand in hand and they relate to
each other such that an increased spend in the cost and collection
can have an effect in reducing the cost of evasion. The important
things to note are that, when we first took over responsibility
for the collection and enforcement of the licence fee in about
1990, the combined cost of collection and evasion at that point
was about 16 per cent. In the year before the year under review—i.e.,
the 1997 financial year—the combined cost of those things
was 13.1 per cent. In the year under review, 1997-98, the combined
cost is 12.6 per cent. Indeed, in our statement of promises, we
have promised to reduce the combined cost further in the current
financial year, the 1998 financial year. It remains our general
intent to reduce the combined cost of the two. Within the combined
cost, there is a one to twenty relationship so that, if a £1
increase in the cost of collection has an effect of reducing evasion,
it has a £20 payback. It is worth investing more in the cost
if it has the effect of bringing down the overall level of evasion.
It is in our interests therefore to increase the costs to reduce
evasion and that is what we are doing in order to bring the combined
cost of the two down.
29. It seems to me very odd that the additional
benefit from reducing the cost of evasion means that it actually
costs you 13 per cent more in one year. I just do not understand
how you can justify it. I have listened to what you say but it
does not make sense to me.
(Sir Christopher Bland) Perhaps I can develop the
argument. If you created the reductio ad absurdum and we
spent no money on collecting, we would plainly have no licence
fees, as the Director of Finance said. It is one of the relatively
few areas of human activity in semi-commercial areas where the
more we spend, provided we spend it sensibly, the better return
we get. We have put more financial resources into collection and
as a result we get more licence fee money back. To cap the spend
at, say, three per cent would make that figure good, but it would
reduce the total take from the licence fee.
(Mr Smith) If I may give one other piece of information
on this, if one looks at page 60 of the Annual Report, where we
show the actual licence fee income that came in in the year, at
the very top of page 60, you can see a figure of £2,009,000,000.
If you look at the equipment figure further down in that column
for 1997, you see a licence income of £1.915m. You can see
a very sizeable increase in the overall level of income as a result
of our extra investment in collection costs. Of that increase,
about £40 million comes from the fact that inflation has
increased that income anyway and increased the level of the licence
fee but crucially within it £30 to £40 million extra
licence revenue comes from increasing the number of licences as
a result of our change in coverage, as a result of our increased
investment in the collection costs. While our costs rise slightly,
our revenue rises by a much bigger figure, so the investment is
worth it.
30. You spend to save, in other words?
(Mr Smith) We spend in order to generate more income.
31. In 1997-98, there was a promise to spend
one third of the BBC's network programme budget outside London
and the south east. You did not achieve that target. I understand
the reason why, but in the coming year you have now changed it
to "broadly" spend. Why should "broadly" be
put in there? Do you not think that the rest of the country is
entitled to at least a third of the spend?
(Sir Christopher Bland) A third is our target. I think
I agree with you. I think "broadly" is a bit weaselly.
We shall probably take it out. Our intention is to get to a third.
That is our target. Perhaps Will could explain exactly why we
fell only slightly short of our target.
(Mr Wyatt) It has bobbed around. When we originally
set ourselves a target, it was agreed with the then board that
broadly a third was the sensible thing to go for, but frankly
we try and work to a third. We slipped under 31.2 in the year
here. I am confident we will get back to a third this year. The
chief reason for it there was a major series from BBC Scotland
called Invasion Earth. It was a science fiction drama series which
cost about £3.5 million to make, which had been commissioned
for delivery in February of this year, but it was a complicated
programme with some special effects that had to be done after
production. They were unable to deliver it until the current financial
year. Thus, it did not fall within these figures. Had that been
there, we would have achieved the third.
32. Could I repeat the question? Do you think
a third is enough?
(Sir Christopher Bland) Yes.
(Sir John Birt) Yes, I do. Perhaps I might explain
why I think a third is the right figure and do it against the
sweep of history. If you go back ten years or more, you would
have found a BBC in which something like 90 per cent of all of
our production was in London and in the south east. I for one
thought that was not defensible. Over the ten years, firstly because
of the obligation to make independent production and, secondly,
our own choice in moving towards a major shift of production out
of London to the rest of the United Kingdom, we have moved away
from that 90 per cent in London to a completely different picture
which is roughly 25 per cent independent production, 25 per cent
made within the BBC out of London and 50 per cent made within
the BBC in London. In short, the historic centre of BBC production
used to be something like 90 per cent of all production. Now it
is down to about 50 per cent. One of the reasons for our great
creative strength is the strength of our production departments
in London. Now I think we have a healthy balance between strong
London departments, strong production outside of London and strong
contribution to the BBC from the independent sector. I think that
is a lot healthier position than we used to be in and broadly
right. One has to use the word "broadly" because the
odd percentage point here or there is not going to make much difference
to that new balance, but I think broadly it is the right balance
in our affairs.
Mr Fabricant
33. The financing of the BBC, like any organisation,
is a balance between income and expenditure. It is income I want
to concentrate on but first can I just pick up something on the
expenditure side? A little earlier this morning in response to
Mr Fearn's question the Finance Director said—and I am paraphrasing
him—"There has been rationalisation of the organisation
to make efficiency savings." He spoke about savings of £281
million so far and then he said, "There will be further efficiency
savings too". Some might argue within the corporation—and
indeed have argued—that this is a sword of Damocles that
still continues to hang over employees' heads. Some would further
argue that this has resulted in low staff morale, high staff turnover
and a reduction of the creativity within the BBC. I wonder if
I might invite the DG to comment?
(Sir John Birt) Perhaps a word, first of all, about
the big picture. We have been doing some work on this recently
and, since the beginning of the decade, 1989/90, our costs as
an organisation have dropped by something like 40 per cent. Currently
they are projected, by the end of the decade, to have dropped
by 50 per cent. Put another way, the cost of programme making
in the BBC during this decade will have dropped in real terms
by something like a half. I think you broadly know how that has
been done so far. We have had vast surplus capacity as an organisation,
both in facilities and in people. We have addressed that issue
and reinvested literally hundreds of millions of pounds in new
services and a great expansion in the programmes that the BBC
makes. We make a lot more programmes than we did at the beginning
of the decade. How will we do it in the future? To some extent,
the process I have just mentioned is never at an end. You always
have to look at your capacity, but the main way in which we will
make savings over the next few years is, first and foremost, by
introducing the new digital technologies which enable much more
efficient working of one's programme makers. They enable you to
do other things as well. For instance, Mr Smith is in the process
of fundamentally reforming the BBC's accountancy support systems.
Like many organisations of our kind, we had literally scores and
scores of different systems right across the BBC, all working
to slightly different accountancy procedures, people putting the
same information into different systems and endlessly keying it
in, over and over again, again not an unusual picture of British
industry. We are in the process of reforming that. That will bring
a big annual saving to the organisation. A lot of what happens
is away from the programme front line and is in the jargon of
the back office operations. We see major savings to be made over
the next few years. Has it had an impact on quality? I believe
it has not. The evidence is here in the annual report. For those
who went to the BAFTAs last year at the Sony awards, the BBC won
80 per cent of the BAFTAs in the year in question. The scale of
our success is slightly embarrassing. We won 80 per cent of the
awards at Sony. This was a year in which the BBC set the nation
talking again with programmes like Teletubbies, This Life,
Our Mutual Friend, The Nazis and Driving School. I
detect, far from a reduction in the course of BBC programming,
the very fact that for ten years or more we have been in a position
where our income has barely increased in real terms—the
figures that Mr Wyatt gave earlier were nominal increases because
of inflation—has forced us, like any organisation, to make
sure that whatever we do is really good and to address shortcomings
where they exist. There always will be shortcomings. We are even
less tolerant of quality lapses in the BBC now than we used to
be. In short, no, there has not been any diminution in our commitment
to quality. There never could be. It is integral to our culture
and our whole way of operating.
34. Thank you for that full answer but, on a
day when sadly there is going to be a BBC strike, can you paraphrase
part of your answer by saying that on the creative side you do
not envisage further, major cuts in staff numbers, which is I
believe what you were actually saying?
(Sir John Birt) There have not been cuts in overall
numbers amongst our creative staff over the last ten years. Again,
the big picture is of major reductions in resource staff and support
staff matched by a very substantial increase in the number of
programme makers in the BBC making many more programmes. That
is a process that I anticipate continuing. Will the BBC be making
more programmes, supplying more services? This is a year when
we introduced a number of new services to the BBC. We have already
discussed Online. We introduced News 24. There will be many more
services; there will be many more programme makers working on
them, but those programme makers will be working in new circumstances
with new technologies and, as you know, it is not always easy
to introduce new technologies. There are invariably teething problems,
but in the end you work through those problems and you have more
effective ways of working.
35. Now let us move to the other side of the
equation which is the question of income. The Chairman said again
earlier today that if there were not a licence fee it would result
in a quite different BBC and a loss of universality. I agree.
I also think—which the Chairman did not say—it would
have a very deleterious effect. This came out actually in the
inquiry that our predecessor Committee, the National Heritage
Committee, made. It would have a disastrous effect on commercial
broadcasters in the UK if you were funded by advertising. Nevertheless,
I do wonder whether there are other alternative sources of funds
that you could consider, whether or not you are permitted to do
so at the moment by legislation. Let me put this to you: the BBC's
existing analogue terrestrial services traditionally have always
been funded by the licence fee. The view of the Committee was
that the licence fee is not satisfactory but, like democracy,
probably for the time being it is the best of several worse alternatives.
Would you like to consider—I know you cannot make policy
on the hoof—a number of other options? One is you have BBC
Online which costs I believe £21 million to operate from
the licence fee. Beeb@the BBC is a commercial operation. What
is to prevent there being sponsorship, it being a commercial operation,
of the whole of your excellent BBC Online services? After all,
it is a winner. You are already getting, as you said today, 30
million hits a month in Europe alone. That is a possibility. Another
possibility might be the BBC has lost out, as we have already
heard, with coverage of sporting events. What about the possibility
of sponsorship of outside broadcasts or broadcasts which cover
existing events such as The Proms? They are existing events. Therefore,
it would not necessarily mean that the sponsors would have any
influence at all on how the events are performed. You would continue
to carry them as before but the outside broadcasts would be sponsored.
What about services like News 24 and some of your new digital
channels? Could these not have some degree of sponsorship or advertising?
I do not expect you to make policy on the hoof and your answer
quite correctly will be it would be difficult to do so anyway
because the legislation prevents you from doing so. The real bottom
line question is: are you prepared to even consider these options
and maybe discuss them with the other Mr Smith, the Secretary
of State?
(Sir Christopher Bland) I will ask John to respond
specifically to the Online and the Beeb question, but the general
question has to be looked at in terms of the philosophy of funding
a public service broadcaster. Sponsorship, as the ITV companies
have found, does not greatly increase the total amount of advertising
take from the system. It simply redistributes it from advertising
to sponsorship and uplifts it a bit. As Mr Fabricant pointed out
earlier, you would change the ecology of advertiser-funded broadcasting
if the BBC became a significantly sponsorship-funded organisation.
That would have an impact on ITV. More importantly, you would
have to consider what the BBC is for and whether, as we believe,
our Online services are now an integral part of our public service
offering and whether News 24 is an integral part of our public
service offering. If it is, and if it should be universal, then
we—and I am anticipating; we should not make policy on the
hoof—might then think that those should be funded by the
licence fee, because once you decide any one part of your public
service offering can be funded by a form of advertising, which
is what sponsorship is, there seems no philosophical reason why
the other parts could not too. I have just come back from meeting
our fellow public service broadcasters in Europe and elsewhere
throughout the world. There is no doubt that those who have a
mixed economy and who rely on advertising and a licence fee—and
there are many of them; we are almost the only solely licence
fee-funded organisation—do suffer because understandably
the political response to pressure on the licence fee is to let
advertising and the amount of sponsorship take the strain. What
starts small inevitably, in my view, would become very substantial.
It is those sorts of considerations that have to be taken into
account when deciding whether you let the thin end of the wedge
into the funding of our public services.
(Sir John Birt) I think the over-arching question
is how do you look at Online. The way we see it is that it is
rather like the decision the BBC faced in the late thirties when
it was a radio broadcaster and had to decide whether or not to
go into television. I am not saying we saw it clearly two years
ago; few people saw it very clearly two years ago because the
technology Online has developed with such extraordinary rapidity,
but we now see Online very much as a third medium. As Mr Maxton's
question made clear, we should not even think about Online in
terms of where it is now; it is where it is going to be. As the
Chairman has often reminded us over the last few years, there
is little doubt that, in a world where telecom infrastructure
is going to improve, the Online will develop into possibly the
main means in future by which all services are delivered. It will
not only be the provider of the new services but it will start
to develop into an on demand medium. In short, it may be in ten
years' time or maybe 15 years' time a highly significant—perhaps
even the most significant—way by which the BBC then delivers
its public service proposition. What follows from that is that
our approach to Online should be primarily a publicly-funded approach.
What we have increasingly been asking ourselves, as we did in
the late thirties, is what can we do with our unique creative
and journalistic resources Online which the market will not. We
are proud of much of what we have done. Some of what we have done
on the educational sites is absolutely at the cutting edge in
world terms. We think our news Online site is unequivocally the
best in the world. It has more stories than anybody else. It has
the riches and depths of the BBC World Service to expose anything
you want to know about what happened today. There is no better
way Online of finding out what is happening around the world than
on the BBC. We think that is an appropriate use of public funds,
recognising, as we do, that even over the next two or three years
it is going to change just as rapidly as it has done over the
last two or three years.
36. The BBC's adventure into television in 1936
is a good analogy, but now we are talking about such an explosion
in new technologies that I just wonder whether the BBC can keep
pace. It is not just one incremental step; it is many incremental
steps. There is another difference with 1936. The BBC is perhaps
less "pure" than it used to be in 1936 in that you already
have BBC Worldwide. You have, albeit a separate organisation,
a commercial BBC Online, although you call it Beeb@the BBC, so
you are already going into these areas. Have you, for example,
considered subscription or pay per view with some of your new
digital services? Sky News feel that they are facing unfair competition
by the fact that News 24 is available free to cable channels.
(Sir John Birt) I think there were a number of points
made there. Firstly, I strongly agree with you that there is an
absolute explosion going on at the moment and that is a big challenge
for the BBC. We have to be highly alert to what is going on, right
across the world, and in particular we have to be alert to how
the new technologies are developing with dizzying rapidity to
understand the significance of that for us, how we can deliver
services to our licence fee payers and how we make our programmes.
There is no doubt that we have to be an ever more alert and ever
more agile organisation. We have not had to be very agile over
the first 75 years of our history. I think we are going to have
to learn agility. I do not think the BBC is less pure in your
words. I think that what has happened over recent years is that
we have got better at doing what we have always done, which is
to exploit the assets created with public funds with ever greater
vigour commercially. That is not only just because we have been
more vigorous but because the existing generation of new technologies
has allowed us to do that. In the year in question, we introduced
with our partners, Flextech, three new commercially funded channels
in the UK: UK Horizons, UK Style and UK Arena. This was the year
when we signed our deal with Discovery. What will that deal mean?
It will mean that we stand a jolly good chance, in partnership
with Discovery, of introducing factual programme channels right
across the world and probably being the world's leading provider,
with Discovery, of factual programme channels in five or ten years'
time. That will undoubtedly, as Mr Gavin made clear earlier, greatly
increase our commercial revenues. I do not think we are doing
anything that is in principle any different from what happened
in the twenties when the Radio Times was started. We have new
opportunities and we just exploit them more vigorously.
(Ms Hodgson) The market is clearly polarising as we
see all these new services developing and it is possible for our
commercial competitors to charge not only general subscription
packages but pay per view. What we will see happening on the commercial
side is that numbers of channels will suck in a lot of acquired
material from overseas because those channels will need to be
filled at low cost and the higher value material will become increasingly
expensive for the viewers. We will see it being concentrated in
premium subscription channels and in pay per view. By contrast,
the BBC's commitment on the basis of the universal funding mechanism
is to make high value programming of the kind that we have been
mentioning earlier available to everybody, to have an inclusive
and therefore I think increasingly different vision of what we
bring to the market, in terms of the range of services that we
are able to fund, on the back of the licence fee. We have the
capability to be a major investment machine in particularly valuable
genres of programming, with £300 million or so into news
gathering, the best news gathering operation for broadcasters
anywhere in the world; £300 million in drama, arts, performance,
the biggest cultural patron in the UK. That investment feeds our
main services, BBC1 and BBC2, and enables us to have very high
investment core networks but because there are critical masses
of investment in programming we can, at a marginal extra cost,
deliver the fruit of that investment across new services now that
digital gives us the capacity to do so, so I think there will
be a higher value pay-back to the licence fee payer for their
investment.
37. Finally, is not the flaw in that argument
that, without sponsorship, without subscription or some other
mechanism, you will continue to lose sporting and other major
events to the highest bidder? I do not think there is an answer.
(Sir John Birt) I am happy to try to give an answer.
Firstly, in terms of the broad funding, the funding question is
at the heart of the Government's licence fee review next year,
but we certainly can go a very, very long way to funding the vision
that we have outlined because we will achieve further major improvements
in efficiency and I am sure we will, over the medium term, improve
our commercial revenues. Just how far we can go obviously depends
on the broad level of the licence fee. As Mr Wyatt made clear,
losing the test matches has been an extremely disappointing experience
for the BBC. We plainly started in the world when we had the overwhelming
majority of sporting events. It cannot surprise anybody that as
we have new channels—Channel 5, Channel 4 now in the market,
Sky, a major investment machine for investing in live sport—we
face competition and people have been able to take away events
from us by spending very large sums of money. We have not taken
it lying down. As Mr Wyatt has made clear, we have invested more
in sport in terms of yearly inflation than in any other programme
area, but I think we have to accept the underlying reality that
the broadcasting environment has changed in a fundamental way
and some of the sport which we hold dear and that we think we
have done well by—we have provided coverage of real excellence
and insight and set standards around the world over many decades—we
are very sorry to see go, but some of it is bound to go. It is
a matter of simple economics. We will hold on to as much as we
can as long as we can.
Chairman: Mr Maxton was asking whether
you would buy a football team and suggested that you could only
afford to buy Burnley. I said that Alastair Campbell might well
approve of that.
Mr Faber
38. I come from a generation of sports fans
that, with the possible exception of Brian Moore on a Sunday and
a bit of wrestling, was weaned almost entirely on BBC sport. To
be honest, I find your last answer desperately sad because I think
it shows that you really have completely thrown in the towel at
the BBC as far as sports coverage. I wonder, Sir John, if you
can just tell me where you personally see BBC sport going and
what you consider its importance to be in the overall scheme of
things at the BBC nowadays?
(Sir John Birt) It is hugely important. I am sure
Mr Wyatt will be happy to remind us of the extraordinary amount
of sport the BBC still has. If you list the sporting events that
we still hold rights to, it is an enormously long list and we
will do all we can to maintain our level of sports coverage for
as long as we possibly can. We have been greatly helped by government
policy this year in settling the issue of listed events and in
making it much more likely that recorded coverage will be available
to terrestrial broadcasters. In recent years, we have done other-
things too to increase and improve the range of kinds of programmes
that cover sport on the BBC, Fantasy Football League and so on.
39. When you lost the rights to the FA Cup Final
earlier in the year, your anchor man, Des Lynam, said, "Losing
the Cup Final is the biggest loss to the BBC. In my view, the
BBC should have and could have found the money." He then
carried on: "People who run the BBC rarely take any notice
of what I call the performing seals, those of us with a ball on
the end of our hooters. They never have." Given those quotes,
could you tell me why you chose to put him on the front of your
"Our Commitment to You" leaflet?
(Sir Christopher Bland) As a direct response to his
comments. He is an extremely important part of the BBC. It is
simply not fair to say that the BBC does not pay adequate attention
to sport. If you are, like me, passionately interested in sport
of every kind—I am a Southampton season ticket holder, which
will demonstrate the lengths to which I will go—to become
chairman of the BBC in the year in which we lose the Cup Final
and then shortly after lose Twickenham is deeply disappointing,
but you have to remember that for every sports passionate aficionado
there is an equal and opposite part of the audience that cannot
stand them and I am married to such a one. We have to think of
the overall interests of the licence fee payer when planning our
expenditure on sport. The figures demonstrate that in the year
in which our overall income increased by about the rate of inflation
we upped our total expenditure I think by 18 per cent. I think
that is a measure of our commitment. It is hard to keep pace,
even with an 18 per cent hike, with the speed at which the costs
of sports rights are rising. As the Director General has said,
over time, if you start with all of them, you are bound to lose
quite a lot, but I do not think it is fair to say that, within
the BBC, we do not give sport its proper priority or take it seriously.
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