Examination of Witnesses (Questions 65-79)
MR NIGEL
CHAPMAN AND
MS ALISON
WOODHAMS
9 NOVEMBER 2005
Q65 Chairman: Can I welcome our guests
from the BBC World Service, Mr Chapman and Miss Woodhams. Thank
you for coming today. We are delighted to have you with us. Obviously
you are coming after a number of very important announcements
about the future operation of the World Service. I would like
to begin by asking you about the decisions that you have taken
to change your services and to drop several central and eastern
European vernacular services. Could you tell us what impact you
think that will have, particularly with regard to balanced reporting
and diversity of views within the countries concerned?
Mr Chapman: Chairman, if I might
start by putting the context because obviously the savings that
are arising from the closure of those 10 language services are
being reinvested in new services by the World Service—Arabic
television, better distribution for radio, new media services,
so it is part of a rounded strategy, if you like, for the World
Service to take us to 2010. I am happy to focus on the "cuts"
issue.
Q66 Chairman: What I would like to do
is ask questions about the Arabic television service later so
if you could at this point address the services that you are giving
up.
Mr Chapman: We did a very thorough
review lasting about 12 months of all the 42 vernacular language
services in the World Service against three criteria really; first
of all, what you could broadly describe as geo-political importance;
secondly the extent to which there is a free and independent media
available already in those societies and how far that has changed
over the last 10 years; and thirdly the level of impact that those
services currently have. Those services at the moment in central
Europe have an audience of below four million. Five years ago
they had an audience of seven to eight million so they have declined
significantly in terms of impact.
Q67 Chairman: Four million in how many
countries in total?
Mr Chapman: In the eight central
European countries—and if we put Thai and Kazakh to one
side, I am just talking about the European language services here—obviously
the audience has declined significantly and the evidence about
the extent of alternative choices, which obviously has fuelled
that decline, is strong. If you look at independent assessments,
the Press Freedom Index, and other sorts of indices of that kind,
they show a very steady position in central Europe about press
freedom and choice. In fact, some of those countries have a press
freedom level which is as good as the United Kingdom if not better.
When you look at that overall context and you visit those places,
as I have done, you see a mushrooming of media there and a mushrooming
of choice. That must be one of the factors why in the end if you
have got to make a decision about the relative importance of investment
with a fixed budget you come to certain views that some parts
of the world need extra investment in order for you to be competitive
and continue to have your impact and other parts you can withdraw
from. That was the basic tenet and the philosophy behind the decisions
we took.
Q68 Chairman: If you had not had to shift
these resources into the Arabic television service would you have
cut these services?
Mr Chapman: Yes, I would have
spent the money on something else in addition, would be my answer
to that. The way the funding works is that in this £30 million
investment package by 2007-08, of which Arabic television is £19
million, there are ways we could have found for funding a lot
of that Arabic television through the Spending Review settlements
we had in 2002 and 2004, but what we could not fund was all the
other things we needed to do to make sure the World Service remains
competitive, like improve its distribution for radio, improve
its marketing, improve its new media services. If you came to
me and said, "Okay, here is £10 million which you are
going to save from those 10 language services. You can have that
money. Would you like to keep these services open or would you
like to spend it on something else?" my answer would be that
I would spend it on something else. There is a whole series of
proposals in the strategy paper which sets the scene, if you like,
for the Spending Review of 2007 which give an indication of where
we would like to spend it. For instance, we would close the gap
between 12 and 24 hours of Arabic television, we would look to
fund a Persian television service, we would look to fund new multi
media activities in Urdu and Hindi and Chinese. There are lots
of parts of the world, frankly, where the case for investment
is a lot stronger than retaining the services we had in central
Europe.
Q69 Chairman: But presumably one of the
consequences of these services being cut is that you lose a number
of journalists with particular language skills and particular
understanding of particular countries. Does that have a wider
impact in your general news gathering?
Mr Chapman: It will have a marginal
impact would be the way I would describe it. Clearly if you have
got a team of 10, 12 or 14 journalists in somewhere like Prague
that is a resource and they obviously understand the society extremely
well. If you do not have it there you are going to lose something,
so it would be wrong of me to say it has no impact, but you have
got to remember that the BBC also have correspondents and a news-gathering
capacity in a lot of these countries already. We have correspondents
in Prague, in Budapest, we have them in other parts of Central
Europe. It is not as if the BBC is not represented there when
the language services no longer exist. The BBC is well represented
there. We have got correspondents there and they will continue
to file stories and analysis about those countries.
Q70 Chairman: Are there any people who
are double-hatted and triple-hatted within the BBC who are doing
something for you and at the same time working for another part
of the organisation?
Mr Chapman: No, the language service
teams are pretty separate. They are focusing on their language
service output day-to-day, week-by-week so they are not filing
lots of material for English output. A lot them would find that
very difficult to do for linguistic reasons. Whilst there is a
news-gathering intelligence, if you like, going on here and an
understanding of the society (which is obviously shared with the
wider BBC) the people who are filing pieces for The World Tonight
or television or whatever, they will still be in place to do that.
They are not part of the language service teams, if you like.
Q71 Chairman: But in that case then there
are a number of individuals who will lose their jobs and will
not be employable very easily elsewhere within the BBC, from what
you have just said. What is going to happen to those people? What
are you doing to help them? How many actual individuals are we
talking about here?
Mr Chapman: Let's just distinguish
if we could between those people who are based in the UK and those
who are based overseas. Let us start with the people who are based
overseas, of which about 50% of the numbers affected by the language
service closures fall into that category. One of the things I
would say about that—and I have just been to Prague myself
and looked at the situation there and met the staff only last
week—is this burgeoning media scene I talked about is creating
lots of opportunities both in radio and in television and in new
media, so I think a lot of people who are based in country will
find other jobs as a result of those opportunities. The BBC will
compensate those people for loss of office in a way which is compatible
with local law in those societies, and we have said in addition
that in those cases we will honour the ACAS agreement which the
BBC struck as a whole with the trade unions some six months ago,
and that agreement guarantees that nobody can be made compulsorily
redundant by the BBC until December 2006, so they will stay on
the payroll until December 2006 and then receive the appropriate
redundancy sum which will flow from having worked a number of
years in the organisation. In terms of staying on the payroll,
we will treat staff in the United Kingdom and staff in an office
like Prague or Budapest or wherever in exactly the same way. We
cannot do that in terms of redundancy payments because the local
law precludes that. There are local redundancy laws in, say, the
Czech Republic which are completely different from the ones here
in London. In London if you are a member of, say, the Hungarian
service and you are working in Bush House you will receive all
the benefits from the ACAS agreement, which include staying on
the payroll until December 2006, unless you want to go earlier
and then there will be discussions about that. You may have other
job offers and you do not want to stay on the payroll until 2006.
Of course, you will get one month for every year you have been
on the staff of the BBC in terms of redundancy, which is the standard
BBC redundancy payment. In that sense I am doing everything I
can to be as generous as I can within the rules which compensate
people for loss of office. In addition, we are working very hard
to try and find people alternative employment, and that is difficult
because some of these skills are not easily transferable but some
of them are transferable and there are people with radio skills
and new media skills and we will be doing our best to find those
people alternative employment in the BBC and outside. I do not
underestimate the difficulty because you are talking about 125
people in the United Kingdom and it is not easy for them to find
jobs in some of the new investment areas that we have agreed to
do over the next five years.
Q72 Chairman: So 125 in the UK, how many
in the other countries?
Mr Chapman: It is over 90 so the
overall numbers we are talking about when you look at all the
language service changes as a whole, including those which relate
to Portuguese for Brazil and Hindi and so on, which are on the
margins, around 230 posts will close, made up of around 120 or
130 from memory in the United Kingdom and almost 100 overseas.
Q73 Chairman: Can we have a note from
you setting out in detail what the actual figures are because
that would be very helpful?
Mr Chapman: Absolutely.[1]
Chairman: Thank you very much. Can I
now move on to the Arabic television service and ask Fabian Hamilton
to start on this, but I suspect all my colleagues will want to
come in.
Q74 Mr Hamilton: Hello Mr Chapman, nice
to see you again. Can I ask you how you think that the new BBC
Arabic TV station would differ from existing stations like al-Jazeera
and al-Arabiya?
Mr Chapman: Again, it is quite
interesting, Mr Hamilton, that audiences already perceive a likely
difference between the BBC and stations like al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera.
Al-Jazeera is perceived to be (and is) a regionally based Arabic
news station concentrating pretty heavily upon Middle East news
and affairs. It is not, I would argue, a genuine international
station. It definitely does not bring an international perspective
to the world's news. The BBC Arabic service will not be a regionally
based station. It will be based here in London and it is going
to draw on all the strengths of the BBC, in terms of its news-gathering
capacity, so I would expect a wider range of stories, a more international
feel, and an absolute determination to observe the BBC's position
on impartiality and independence. And it is interesting, again,
that when you look at what the audience thinks they are going
to get from the BBC, that is what they want from the BBC; they
want an independent, impartial service which will sit within a
portfolio of services which people will consume. They will not
just consume the BBC, they will not just consume al-Jazeera, they
will consume a mixture, but it will be the high ground as they
perceive it and we perceive it of international television journalism
that we will be offering in this market.
Q75 Mr Hamilton: Which is very laudable
provided you can ensure that it is genuinely going to be balanced,
which I am sure you will because it will be along the lines of
the BBC's own very high standards. Can I ask you, though, in the
light of the general suspicion of Great Britain as one of the
allies that invaded Iraq, is that going to influence the way that
people see this new Arabic TV station? Are they going to think
that this is going to broadcast the western view of why Iraq was
invaded?
Mr Chapman: I am sure there will
be some people in the Middle East who take that view. It would
be naive of me to assume that everybody would follow the argument
I just put earlier on. However, I can take some succour from a
number of things. First of all, BBC services in Arabic are seen
as independent of government. If you look at all the audience
research about that, particularly in relation to radio, even in
a society like Iraq where you would expect people to be very concerned
about the point of view you have just expressed, they compartmentalise,
if you like, the BBC's services in radio and television and new
media from the World Service and other people in a different box
from British foreign policy. They see British foreign policy as
one thing and the BBC's activities as another. When we ask them
do you trust the BBC, do you think it is independent, do you think
it is independent of government, they give it very high marks
repeatedly throughout the Arab world for this. Even in a society
like Iraq, we get the highest ratings for independence and for
trustworthiness against any other international competitor, despite
the fact that British forces are involved in action every day
in Iraq. I think that says something about the subtle understanding
of Arab audiences, that they historically have been able to differentiate
between foreign policy on the one hand by the British Government
and an independent broadcasting force on the other. Long may they
continue to see it that way because I think one of the great strengths
the World Service has is independence of government and editorial
independence, and we have to keep that whether it is radio, new
media, and obviously increasingly now television.
Q76 Mr Hamilton: Can I ask you this about
the funding of it: you are going to save about £12 million
from the language services that you are ceasing to provide on
the World Service, but you reckon it is going to cost about £19
million in its first year to set up the Arab TV station. How are
you going to make up the shortfall and is that £12 million
going to be ring-fenced?
Mr Chapman: The £19 million
figure that we are talking about in relation to the costs of Arabic
television is an on-going revenue cost. There is then a start-up
cost in addition which I think will be between £5 million
and £6 million which will be largely capital expenditure
which we have the funds to do. You have to see these figures as
part of an overall package of a £30 million investment, so
£19 million to Arabic television, but that is only two-thirds
of the overall investment package. There is a further £11
million on other investments to do with new media, FM distribution
and marketing. That balance is being made up of some of the money
which was given to us in the Spending Review settlements of 2002
and 2004 where we carefully husbanded those reserves, if you like,
in the expectation that we would need to make an investment of
this kind. Clearly if we were relying purely on the savings from
the language services we would not be able to fund a £30
million investment plan, but we can do so because of the other
resources we got from the Spending Review settlements and general
efficiencies but particularly the Spending Review settlements
which were reasonably generous particularly in 2002, arguably
less so in 2004.
Q77 Mr Hamilton: Sorry, those £12
million savings are going to be ring-fenced so that you can use
them for this service; is that correct?
Mr Chapman: Absolutely, there
is no sense of any of the funds being saved here returning to
the Foreign Office or anybody else. They are staying fully squarely
inside the World Service budget, and I hope in perpetuity.
Q78 Mr Mackay: Mr Chapman, certainly
due to no fault of yours, is this not all too little too late?
Mr Chapman: No, I do not accept
that. Many people have put that point to me, but again we would
not have gone down this road if we had not done some very thorough
research about audience demand, and audience demand makes clear
a number of things. We did this research both in 2003 and then
we followed it up with the same research in 2005 because I was
concerned that time had gone on and if we had not done it again
in 2005 the story may have changed. The story was equally as emphatic
in 2005 as it was in 2003 that people who have access to satellite
television, or who are likely to get it, and who are interested
in international news would be very keen to use the BBC, so there
is clearly a demand there for the services. The second thing I
would say is that the attributes associated with those services
are fairly and squarely BBC attributes. People want to see an
independent and impartial service. They see that there is a gap
in the market. They do not see it as too little too late; they
welcome it. If you look at the Arab press in particular in the
last two weeks, and read the editorials, it has been almost universally
well accepted and acclaimed that the BBC is doing this. If it
was too little too late, a lot of people would be writing that,
they would be saying it and they would be criticising us for doing
it. We have hardly had any criticism whatsoever for doing it.
Q79 Mr Mackay: Have you not just conceded
in an earlier answer that it would have been much better for it
to have been sooner and before the controversial invasion of Iraq?
Mr Chapman: I do not think I did
concede anything to do with the invasion of Iraq. Obviously the
BBC did go down this road briefly in the 1990s and then withdrew.
It would have been better, I accept, to have started it earlier
but we have to live in the real world of what is practicable and
what is practicable is we can afford to do it now. I know there
is demand for it, I know people will value it, and I look at the
question from the other end of the telescope, if you like, what
will happen to the BBC's impact in the Arab world if we do not
have an Arabic television service? Imagine trying to have an audience
of any scale and size in the Middle East when the preferred medium
of consumption of news is increasingly television if we carry
on with a radio and an on-line service alone. Imagine in two or
three years' time what I would be being asked about why has the
BBC got such a poor performance in the Arab world. That is where
we would be heading. We would be struggling to maintain the levels
of impact we have now very seriously because in some markets radio,
however good the programmes are, cannot do the job. You cannot
do the job if you do not get the sort of distribution you need.
In many Arab societies the World Service cannot get the sort of
distribution it needs for FM partnerships and FM distribution.
It is very difficult. We have been knocking on the door many times,
we have had some successes but without free-to-air satellite television
in countries where 80 or 90% of the society have access to satellite
television, your chances of having an audience in 2010 are very
low indeed. So in that sense you do not have much choice, you
really need to do this in order to maintain an impact.
1 Please refer to the supplementary note provided
by the BBC World Service, Ev 70 Back
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