Examination of Witnesses (Questions 693
- 699)
TUESDAY 7 DECEMBER 1999
SIR CHRISTOPHER
BLAND, SIR
JOHN BIRT,
MR GREG
DYKE, MR
JOHN SMITH
AND MR
DOMINIC MORRIS
Chairman: Sir Christopher, I would like
to welcome you and your colleagues back. I am sorry for the slight
delay, but I think you would agree it was worth giving those extra
minutes to the Secretary of State—you would be ill-advised
not to but I am sure you agree. Sir Christopher, you kindly sent
us some additional material dealing with questions we put to you
at the earlier session, and we will launch straight into the questions.
Ms Ward
693. I would like to come back to the issue
I raised with you last time, which was News 24, now you have provided
the figures. What you are saying is that there are six million
people who watch News 24 each week (from the figures I have here)
but three-quarters of them are watching on BBC 1 and BBC 2. That
is the late night service, is that right? When you turn on at
12.30 or 1 o'clock in the morning on BBC 1 you get BBC News 24.
Does that not destroy your arguments that people are keen to see
News 24 on an equivalent service of digital, which is the pay-per-view
of cable or satellite, because they are not watching it in large
numbers on those services—only a quarter of the figures
you are talking about?
(Sir John Birt) This is a service funded by the licence
fee payer so the critical issue is: at the moment how many licence
fee payers each week are consuming it? The fact that six million
are is the salient fact. In the cable universe, as I explained
last time, News 24 in October in terms of total viewing for the
first time went ahead of Sky News. We have very crude figures
in the digital universe based on a very, very modest panel size;
and, frankly, it is simply too early to draw any conclusions from
it.
694. You say they go ahead, but in the figures
you have provided to the Committee, which are the BARB figures
for the week ending 7 November Sky News has 0.7 per cent of the
share on cable and satellite compared with BBC News 24 which has
0.2 per cent.
(Sir Christopher Bland) It is point-something in both
cases.
695. It is lower. My maths is not great, but
I can understand that 0.7 is higher than 0.2.
(Sir Christopher Bland) But not with cable and satellite.
696. On SkyDigital Sky News is 0.4 compared
with 0.1 for News 24.
(Sir Christopher Bland) That is not the total satellite
universe.
697. You have just mentioned these figures.
(Sir John Birt) We are talking about different universes.
The figures you have just quoted, if I follow the argument, are
in the digital universe, and the figures we previously discussed
are in the cable universe; and there is a third universe which
is terrestrial broadcasting.
698. Sky News is not on terrestrial broadcasting
so you cannot make that comparison.
(Sir John Birt) The issue is News 24 is funded by
the licence fee payers. Do the licence fee payers consume it?
Answer: six million a week.
(Sir Christopher Bland) I think, Chairman, there is
a more significant question. You can phrase, and indeed you did,
a question which produces a very small number for News 24. If
you design it carefully enough you can get an answer of 6,000
[sic], and you framed that question. The key question is: why
is the BBC doing News 24? Does it make sense for it to do it?
It is not doing it in order to do down Sky. We wish Sky News well.
We think it gives a good but very different service. That is not
our reason for being in 24-hour news. Why are we in it? For two
reasons: one, in the reasonable medium term, not the long-term,
licence fee payers and viewers will choose to consume news in
different ways than they do at present; less and less will they,
in ten or 20 years' time, switch on to the one, the six and the
nine; quite a lot still will, but increasingly people will seek
news where they want it; and they will seek it not only through
television but also via the Internet. In order to deliver that
form of service and to make available to the licence fee payer
and to the United Kingdom the unparalleled news resources of the
BBC, the BBC should be in 24-hour news. That is exactly why ITN
behind us—and we admit we are late in the game here; we
will catch up with Sky News, but it will take a while—are
moving into 24-hour news. It is the correct strategic decision
for them; it is the correct strategic decision for us, if you
believe the BBC is a good news-gathering organisation and should
be in news; if you do not, then that is a separate issue. That
is the strategic importance of News 24 to the BBC and to the licence
fee payer.
Chairman
699. Could I follow up before returning the
questioning to Claire Ward. The statistic you gave us for the
cost of the most recent bid you had for BBC News 24 was £53.9
million. The figures, whichever way you put them, of viewing the
BBC News 24 are small. On the other hand, you have the most popular
website in Europe and one of the most popular in the world—BBC
Online. My friend Mr Maxton, as far as I can gather, consumes
all the news he ingests over the BBC Online, certainly a very
large amount. Yet, as I understand it, your limited expenditure
on BBC News 24 is 1 per cent of the licence fee, which is something
like £20 million. So far as I can gather, you are ready to
spend nearly three times as much money on a service that very
few watch compared with what you spend on a service that huge
numbers of people use. Some people will say that is not very logical.
(Sir Christopher Bland) Chairman, some people do not
have a long-term view and the vision of what the BBC can and should
be doing. All we can do is to point out, as I just pointed out
to you, why we are doing this. Does it make sense in the short-term?
No, it does not. Do the figures stack up? No, they do not. Would
they have for the early days of colour transmission? Certainly
not. You would have produced even more risible answers and a very,
very high cost per viewer. This will rapidly and is already rapidly
changing. In five years' time the situation will be quite different
and the wisdom of this will be seen. Just as the wisdom of the
BBC's investment in Online, which was way ahead of our commercial
competition and would have been questioned I think with appropriate
scepticism by this Committee when we first launched it, is now
seen as not only trail-blazing but absolutely essential to the
development not only of the BBC but of this new broadcasting and
delivery mechanism.
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