Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100 - 102)

TUESDAY 8 JUNE 2004

ITV, SMG

  Q100  Alan Keen: I search around all the channels I have got available when I am sitting with nothing else to do and I am searching for stuff that is very difficult to find; I am looking maybe for arts programmes, and such like, and sometimes they are not easy to find. So I am a market. Why should we have to impose public service broadcasting on you when a lot of people are looking for interesting programmes which are not just entertainment? It is partly education, is it not, but it is still entertainment?

  Mr Allen: I think it is about us providing a range of services to different people. That is why it is not only across ITV1, it is across ITV2 and the new channel ITV3—it is a range of services. I think the big challenge, looking forward, which addresses some of this point, is that in the past public service broadcasting, or the relationship with ITV, has been an "in kind" payment and a licence fee, but as we move to the digital world that you have talked about then the idea that we, as ITV, are paying £475 million in licence costs and in-kind public service broadcasting is not a sustainable structure. So I think what we have got to do is sit down and say, "How do we fund and structure ITV, if you accept you do not only want the BBC to be a PSB broadcaster?" Our view on that is that there should be a series of contracts: the BBC should be contracted to provide a series of services—PSB and others; ITV should be contracted to provide PSB; Channel 4 and Channel 5, so there is absolutely clarity on what we are being asked to provide and how that is going to be funded. If you look at a digital world that is how we would preserve PSB broadcasting moving forward.

  Q101  Alan Keen: If you had complete freedom what would you drop? If all your funding just came from advertising and that gave you a completely free market, what would you drop?

  Mr Allen: What happens is that basically we put on traditional PSB and our competitors schedule against that. So they will go against when we have got our news on and they will go hard with very commercial offerings—The Simpsons, or whatever. What you would do is have much more flexibility on when you played your public service broadcasting and how you structured it. At the moment there is a very rigid structure, and I think what I am saying is that in a broader sense we need to look at how public service broadcasting is funded beyond the BBC, because at the moment we see basically the licence fee as a BBC funding model and I think we have got to look at a different funding model and a different set of structures in a digital world.

  Q102  Chairman: Thank you. You must admit the Committee has been very co-operative without knowing the extent to which it is needed to be co-operative, Mr Allen. It has been delightful to see you and your associates. Thank you very much.

  Mr Allen: Thank you very much.





 
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