Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-167)
MR NIGEL
CHAPMAN AND
MS ALISON
WOODHAMS
9 NOVEMBER 2005
Q160 Mr Hamilton: Is there any other
form of income that you receive? You do not get any advertising?
Ms Woodhams: No. We get a small
amount of external income. Some of our rebroadcasters actually
pay us for our programmes, but that is in the minority. We get
about three-quarters of a million pounds a year from rebroadcasters.
With the majority of rebroadcasters we have to pay them to take
our programmes, or there is some kind of bartering arrangement
sometimes, but, aside of that, we do not have any substantial
external income.
Q161 Chairman: We have talked about the
Pakistan's Urdu service and you have talked about various other
services. Can you tell us what you are doing in Russia and what
you are doing to increase your audience share there? I understand
from what you have told us that you only reach 0.8% of the Russian
adult population at the moment, which is very low.
Mr Chapman: It is low, and it
is a cause of concern to me. One of the reasons why it has been
low is because Russia is now a very competitive market place in
terms of radio. There are plenty of FM stations established there
now and the World Service has struggled to get distribution on
FM in any of the major cities in Russia, most notably St Petersburg
and Moscow. Since last year we have made progress. We are finding
suitable partners in St Petersburg, and to some extent in Moscow,
which will enable us to be heard on FM for the first time in those
two cities. Obviously we will measure our audience performance
in the next six months and I will get a better idea of whether
that strategy is working. We are also trying to strengthen our
medium wave distribution, but that figure of 0.8% is not that
dissimilar from the performance of other international radio services
in Russia. It seems to me that one of the issues here is that
the Russian audience is not at this moment demonstrating a great
appetite for international radio from external sources. My feeling,
having been there and talked to people, is that it is a society
that in a way in media terms is turning in on itself to some extent.
It has got more national television and radio services than it
used to have, it is consuming them in a greater way and its appetite
for services like the BBC is not as great as it used to be when
you compare with the Cold War years and a very different sort
of political climate. I think one of the ironies about this you
could argue now about the way media has been restricted in Russia
increasingly under Putin is that the case for having the BBC there
is greater than it was perhaps five years ago and, therefore,
we do want to make sure that we get an audience for our services.
Q162 Chairman: You are not going to use
the same argument as you have done in Poland and the Czech services
and elsewhere, "The audience so is small that therefore we
might as well close it down and concentrate on somewhere else"?
Mr Chapman: I do not think they
are comparable cases, Chairman. I think one of the issues that
does arise is what is the appropriate medium to reach out to people
in Russia? If at the end of the day you persevere with radio but
you do not get an audience for radio, would you be better off
having another sort of service? That gets us into a whole new
territory, but I see a distinction between the case of closing
a Polish service or a Hungarian service on the one hand and a
very strong case to maintain a strong BBC presence in Russia,
and I just think they are not comparable situations.
Q163 Ms Stuart: What are you doing in
Belarus?
Mr Chapman: We do not have any
specific special services for Belarus. The Russian service is
audible in Belarus through short wave. There is no means of distribution
inside Belarus other than through old short wave.
Q164 Ms Stuart: Do you have any idea
whether that has been picked up at all? I tell you why I am asking.
I have just come back from a security conference in Moscow and
I was struck by the Russian colleagues telling us that Belarus
is not as bad as you think it is. It has got higher GDP than the
Ukraine. I thought, "Hold on, what is going on here?"
Mr Chapman: In broadcasting terms
one of the difficulties we would have (and we have considered
whether we should do special services for Belarus) is that the
only way we could get those services into Belarus would be on
short wave, and what people are telling us about the radio market
in Belarus is that, because of the economic indicators you have
just talked about, that is not the right way to deliver a radio
service to Belarus. You would have to be able to he heard on FM,
and, there is no way the authorities there are going to give the
World Service access to an FM frequency or partnership in a country
like Belarus at the moment. In a way we would be wasting our money,
if you think about it, by putting out a service that nobody can
actually hear.
Q165 Chairman: One final question. Could
you give us an update on your plan to join BBC news and radio
at Broadcasting House? When is that going to happen and what does
it mean for your staff? Are you going to lose jobs as a result
and how much is it going to cost?
Ms Woodhams: It is three questions
really. The current plan is to move there by the end of 2010,
which is slightly later than we had previously said because of
some slight delays on the project and the building of what is
called "phase one", which is the rebuilding of Egdon
House and the refurbishment of the old grade one listed part of
Broadcasting House. We should be in by the end of 2010. The only
honest answer is we do not know how much it is going to cost at
the moment. It is still five years until we go. We do not know
what kind of technology we are going to put in there, and that
is one of the big debates at the moment. We do not know how much
floor space we are going to occupy. We are looking at plans to
see how much floor space we would need and how that would affect
our costs. I think it would be fair to say it will cost us more
than what we are currently having to pay in Bush, but you have
to bear in mind that if we stayed in Bush House we would have
to pay more, because Bush House, if we stayed there, would be
in need of some serious refurbishment, and you have to take that
as a comparator. We are obviously working on the cost, and that
will be part of our discussion in the 2007 Spending Review, because
we will start to incur costs towards the end of that spending
review period. In terms of people, we are expecting to give them
a better working environment, more flexible, more designed for
the kind of multi-media environment that we are working in now,
but we are not expecting to say we are going to move less people
there. Our current plans are to move everybody who will be in
Bush House over to Broadcasting House.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Mr Hamilton
wants to come in very briefly.
Q166 Mr Hamilton: Do you do any digital
audio broadcasting (DAB) outside the UK?
Mr Chapman: We do digital radio
Mondial (ie digital short wave) to parts of Europe at the moment
as an experiment. That is the equivalent of DAB. We do not have
the equivalent of DAB; we have DRM. The issue there will be, rather
like it was here until recently, to what extent are people going
to buy sets that have access to those sorts of frequencies? At
the moment they are expensive, they are not widespread. We would
need to have a break-through in terms of customer take-up, audience
take-up, to make it worthwhile investing any more funds in that.
We have got our bets on various horses here. DRM is one of them,
but the bet is modest, and we have to wait and see what happens.
Q167 Chairman: Mr Chapman, Ms Woodhams,
thank you very much for coming. We look forward to seeing you
at Bush House at least for the next five years or wherever else
in future. I think we have covered a very wide area. We may have
to write to you on a couple of areas to get further information.
We are very grateful to you.
Mr Chapman: You are always welcome
to come for a visit to Bush House. We will be happy to entertain
you.
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