Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 306)
TUESDAY 6 JULY 2004
BBC SCOTLAND
Q300 Chris Bryant: But the BBC employs
7,000 more people than the European Commission and so it is quite
a big organisation. Is there a danger about being a monolith unless
you are able to increase that relationship with independent producers?
Sir Robert Smith: I do not think
we have been very clever about creating relationships with independent
producers. One defence we have used in the past is that it is
because they occasionally merge or move out of being independent
by definition it has been difficult for us to reach the quota.
I do not think the governors accept that as a reason and I think
some relationships mean that the quality varies. Some of the independents
feel a little bit bound by the relationship with the BBC. We are
going to improve that. It is great that I can speak from a position
of strength in Scotland because we do go round and buy in technically
the 25% that the government have given us. Incidentally, I cannot
argue with you about the 1950s because I have not delved into
that history, although I did go back to the golden age of BBC
in the 1960s where there seemed to be an awful lot of buying in
of programmes like Kojak to fill in evening schedules and
I can tell you that the home produced stuff was an awful lot less
percentage-wise in those days than it is now.
Q301 Chris Bryant: I was not around
in the 1950s at all so I am only taking it from your own document.
Sir Robert Smith: I was kind of
around. Seriously, in recent years the percentage from Nations
and Regions has been increasing. We have had particular successes.
This is how it should be. Rather than taking quotas in each genre
there should be centres of excellence developing. In Scotland
we have got children's television and I can give you a world exclusive
today which will be of interest to the Scottish constituency Members
who are here, that Still Game, which is our comedy show,
is going to go on the network this year. There has been a bit
of concern about a tartan ceiling or something because comedy
is the most difficult genre of all. We have got drama and we have
got children's television and various things which we are highly
successful in selling to the network, but Scottish comedy being
understood, or Irish comedy or Welsh comedy, or even Cockney comedy
being understood outside the M25, is a very difficult genre to
do. That is one success story now. We have had Rab C Nesbitt,
we have had Still Game, and that is tremendous for the
people who are working here because it is done on merit and not
against quotas.
Q302 Chris Bryant: Obviously, the
more you can get from the Nations and the Regions on to the national
network the more chance you have of showing a diverse Britain
and an exciting Britain, and indeed Welsh or Scottish people would
quite like to see their programmes doing well round the whole
of the country, but it just seems that Scotland has done rather
better at this over the last 10 years than Wales has. Northern
Ireland has done rather better too.
Mr Loughrey: I think in the year
ahead you will see a significant uplift in the Welsh representation
on the network.
Q303 Chris Bryant: One final question,
which is about broadcasting councils. Are they not a complete
waste of time?
Sir Robert Smith: Absolutely not.
If you had been here at the time of the news and current affairs
exercise in 1999 where there were resignations, had you been here
last year when we looked at news and current affairs and did a
very extensive survey, you would have placed great value on it.
It does not just stop with broadcasting councils. We have four
(five with Children in Need) advisory groups on religion,
rural affairs, Gaelic and education. These four are composed of
10 or 12 people in each case who are looking at religious affairs
in Scotland, and that is feeding up and we are feeding into it
a lot of information about what the licence fee payers are saying,
wanting and criticising.
Q304 Chris Bryant: Who chooses them?
Sir Robert Smith: Ultimately the
governors control the people who are running the different councils.
The DG in turn controls the people who are running the different
channels. The commissioning comes from the people who are running
the channels.
Q305 Chris Bryant: No; I mean who
appoints the people on the councils?
Sir Robert Smith: I am sorry;
I misunderstood the question. There is an independent group of
people again who are drawn from Scottish society, if you like,
who are nothing to do with the Broadcasting Council and they choose.
We openly advertise. They go through interviews and they are chosen
and they serve usually for three years initially and they can
be re-appointed for another two. We try to get a balance of area
geographically or interest group and so on.
Q306 Rosemary McKenna: I am delighted,
by the way, about Still Game because I think it will do
extremely well. I am going to offer to translate for the Chairman.
Yesterday, as part of another inquiry, we visited the Science
Museum and, of course, your building site is right next door.
Would you like to tell us something about the move to Pacific
Quay because I do think that people do not quite understand? First
of all, is it all BBC—production, management, everything
is going to be there, and people who regularly contribute to BBC
Radio Scotland will be delighted if they do not have that trek
to get to the studio? Could you give us an idea of the scale of
the project and when you expect it to be completed?
Sir Robert Smith: Apart from the
orchestras it is everybody and it should happen in about 2007.
You are the expert, Ken.
Mr MacQuarrie: We will open in
July 2007. The building itself will be a 100-week build and then
12 months to do the technical bit after that but we are starting
this month on site. The building already has had the exploration
works and we are delighted to have had planning permission for
it. We believe it will be a world-wide broadcasting centre for
Scotland. It is probable that we will take this building with
fully digital technology and it will also have high definition
within that centre as well. The idea is that there will be a caucus
of a media village in that area and other broadcasters are already
committed to moving onto the site. It will be a tremendously creative
place to be. As you know, at our own site where we are at the
moment we are locked in and bounded by both the river and also
with very difficult access and no room for expansion. The range
of creative possibilities on what will be the corporate headquarters,
it is important to stress, with the ongoing scheduling in Aberdeen,
will mean that Edinburgh will be able to come in and use the material
and the content as available within the Quay and that will be
available across the piece. We are changing completely the way
that we work with the emphasis on value for money and efficiency.
There will be work streams on changing that. The way we make programmes
will be unrecognisable from the way we currently operate. That
work is ongoing and that transition into the Quay is part of the
major work that is going on at the moment. It is essential that
it is a transformation in the way we operate as opposed to, in
the Scottish word, a "flit". The partnerships are working
very closely, for example, with the City Halls and the orchestra
go there and we are working with the Glasgow City Council to make
sure that they have good educational outreach as far as the partnership
is concerned. We will be working with the local communities and
a good example of the sorts of partnerships that we have at the
moment is with the "VIP on Air" radio station where
Radio Scotland is working on training the staff there. These are
the sorts of partnerships that it is absolutely essential we build
on in addition to having strong links with the local community.
Already we have been working with the schools in the area to make
sure that they have a sense of the scale of the project and can
reflect the history of the project as it develops over the three
years.
Chairman: We have run out of time, so
I am going to reserve questions I might have put to you on the
use of digital television for local and neighbourhood coverage,
which is something that we were told, not necessarily by the BBC,
would happen and has not yet happened. What I would like to do
is to place on record my appreciation of the indispensable and
immeasurable contribution in the cultural life of this country
of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic
Orchestra which are in a sense completely gratuitous these days.
If there is any reason whatsoever for the continuation of the
BBC charter and no doubt lots of other reasons will be advanced
as this inquiry continues, those two magnificent orchestras are
an endorsement of it. Thank you very much indeed, gentlemen. It
has been much appreciated.
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