Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-379)
24 APRIL 2007
MS IONA
JONES, MR
BOBBY HAIN
AND MR
DAVE RUSHTON
Q360 Rosemary McKenna: You will know
that there has been some concern earlier on this year when the
political broadcasting, as the rumour mill had it, was all going
and, I have to say, I am delighted that the coverage of the Scottish
elections and the local elections just now has been very, very
good and much more than you have ever done in the past, so that
is a real plus and I think people are looking forward to the further
development of SMG's Scottish Television side. ITV have already
given us their view and they represent most of the Channel 3 providers,
but where does your submission differ from theirs? Where do your
views on public service broadcasting differ from ITV's?
Mr Hain: Well, our starting point
is that, having not been consolidated into the 11 licences of
ITV plc, we need to always stand up and say, "Actually the
ITV network, as it was, is not mapped directly on to what we now
call ITV1 in large parts of the country", because in Scotland
STV is still the ITV network and we deliver the network properties
to people insofar as the drama properties, like the new drama
on Sunday night, alongside material that we will make, whether
it is Taggart or Rebus, we have the X Factor,
we have all those properties, but actually it is our sovereign
schedule and it is our responsibility to take that network material
and to enhance it and to make it relevant for the people of Scotland
by introducing our own regional programmes, and you mentioned
the current affairs offering, the regional news offering which
has actually been a very big success since we invested quite heavily
behind it last year. Only last week we got to a position where
STV's news was actually head and shoulders above the BBC's news
at six o'clock and at six-thirty in terms of ratings and that
is a steady growth that we have seen since we revamped our news
product and also introduced a more localised service. Now, those
enhancements in public service broadcasting, I think, give us
quite a different perspective from ITV. I can understand the business
rationale behind trying to reduce the regional commitments of
ITV, even though that is where its roots have come from, but actually
in Scotland I think we absolutely need to have a reflection of
the national difference, if you like, a reflection of the differences,
the sense of nation that we have, and that we need to have a regulatory
framework within the ITV network which allows us to do that.
Q361 Rosemary McKenna: In your submission,
you are a bit bleak about maintaining an appropriate level of
public service broadcasting, but Scottish Screen, for example,
do not see that problem.
Mr Hain: I have not seen the Scottish
Screen proposal. I think if you look at the economics of the ITV
network as a whole, which includes ITV1 and STV, UTV Channel and
so on, then when you consider the effect that CRR has had, for
example, in depressing revenues, not just for us, but I think
for television as a whole because the money which has come out
of the ITV system is difficult to reintroduce into other broadcasters
and there simply is not the audience real estate to be able to
handle that kind of money, so I think that that is a challenge
for us, the fragmenting audiences are a challenge for us and maintaining
a level of investment in public service broadcasting. We spend,
for example, just on news, between what we contribute to ITN for
national and international news and what we spend on regional
news, the best part of £10 million a year. That is a considerable
investment to make when your revenues are reducing through CRR
and declining audiences are at the rate that they are, so I am
not sure of the economics of the Scottish Screen proposal, but
I do know our own business and it certainly underlines what we
said in writing to you in January.
Q362 Paul Farrelly: This is to Dave
and, as I read from the biography, you have long been struggling
to bring ultra-local television to our screens in England. You
were one of the few people who managed to get a seat that was
not filled by the mass ranks of the BBC earlier, so you heard
my comments about Staffordshire TV just completely passing me
by and maybe that was good editorial judgment on their part, but
it did not really make much of an impact, so what evidence have
you got, given that sort of perception of what the BBC was doing,
that this local TV service or content is actually wanted by people
and actually provides such wider benefits that it justifies giving
voluntary organisations of the sort you might want to encourage
free spectrum?
Mr Rushton: I think it goes back
to 1974-75, the period when the IBA was looking at what viewers
wanted from regional television and the Crawford Report came out
in 1974 actually suggesting that a new ITV might be divided into
smaller, localised areas. The effect was that this was to some
extent put to one side largely because the expectations of cable
would be that this would cover a city-based service across up
to 180-200 cities and communities across the country. If you recall,
the 1984 Cable and Broadcasting Act made local provision for services
provided other than by the owner of the cable operation as well
as by citizens and by community and voluntary organisations. But,
because cable was unsuccessful largely until the late 1980s/early
1990s, many of the, shall we say, community obligations that were
placed on the companies in their applications, all of them made
these obligations, were rescinded by the Cable Authority and they
were let off the requirement to deliver these. We had other opportunities
in 1988 with MVDS with Channel Six as an additional service to
Channel Five. The Channel Six frequency spectrum got rolled into
Channel Five. The ITC described Channel Five as being essentially
a national service, even though we contested that legally, and
only two months before the applications had to be in did they
realise that they should not have said that it had to be essentially
national, it could have been local. Therefore, we have had a series
of stumbling and halting moves in the direction of regulation
and in the same period, when you look at the analysis of regional
provision as far as viewers are concerned, there is always an
echo of them describing their local area as being something smaller
than regional television's area. We got choosy with Channel Five
and you had an opportunity to deliver services to what we call
the "second city" of each region and we developed proposals
around that, Edinburgh to Glasgow, Sheffield to Leeds, Liverpool
to Manchester, Nottingham to Birmingham, so you would actually
give that second large community an opportunity to have its say,
and there was work done around that period where, it is suggested,
there was a very strong interest in services that would provide
a sense of location and a sense of dynamic to that. More recently,
we have had Pride of Place research by the ITC in 2003
which also explored the introduction of the RSLs, the only piece
of work that has been done by the ITC or Ofcom on that which actually
was specific. Looking at the North West, the suggestion was that,
if the regional ITV companies were to withdraw progressively from
regional programming, the viewers felt that local television should
come in, step in, and replace that. Similarly, on a general basis,
the recent Ofcom research of 2006 also found that the top priority
as far as viewers are concerned from new services from the digital
dividend are essentially local news delivered on TV and local
services providing information and a greater sense of enhancement
of the community. When you look back at that 2006 mirror, you
can almost see a reflection of the 1970s/1980s requirement that
there is too little programming that enhances a sense of where
you live, and the ramifications of that of course fall into culture,
to the representation in political terms as well as into a sense
of engagement and participation, so the fundamental thing that
local television will offer is an opportunity to see faces like
your own, to hear voices like your own and be encouraged to participate.
Because these are not strangers, these are people down the street,
these are people around the corner and, therefore, to enable people
to become more engaged with broadcasting and the delivery of news,
information and cultural activity.
Q363 Paul Farrelly: So we have long
politically shunted Nottingham off into the East Midlands, so
let us take Stoke, Birmingham, shall we, which is my local city.
What is the biggest impediment to having Stoke TV, in your view?
Mr Rushton: Well, the biggest
impediment at the moment is that the option offered by Ofcom for
the use of interleaved spectrum falls fairly haphazardly across
the country and it will not necessarily provide the piece of spectrum
that would coincide with either Stoke, Birmingham or with other
large parts of the country. Twenty-nine areas have been identified
and that is far too few. The problem with television, which is
very often not realised, is that it is really dependent upon the
way in which viewers receive the signal. You have got to get the
new television signals so that they go into people's aerials on
their houses. You do not expect to go out and buy a new TV receiver
to pick up a local service, it is one additional service amongst
40 or 50, so we have to go with the grain of the distribution
system which means you have got to insert local television into
the digital multiplexes in such a way as to arrive at as many
homes as possible. Also, one of the fundamental problems for some
parts of the community is the reliance on relays and not on the
main transmitter sites, so any service which does not send a signal
down to the relays is going to find that those in the more remote
geographic parts of the community, virtually all of those north
of Cardiff, in the valleys, for example, receive their signal
from relays and it is the same kind of situation across the rest
of the country. You really need to have a service that is delivered
for everybody, so I would underwrite Mark Thompson's view of public
service broadcasting, that fundamentally what underwrites this
is universal availability, and the same applies for a local television
service, that it has to be universally available in the local
area which it is addressing to be able to say, "We offer
a public service, we have a public purpose and we are reflecting
the overall balance of views within our community and everyone
has an opportunity to take part in this to receive it and to participate
in that area". This cannot be delivered on anything other
than a platform or a multiple of platforms that will arrive in
every home without any additional expense.
Q364 Paul Farrelly: So now let us
assume that Ofcom sees the light, you are the guru that they follow
and offers these opportunities. Presumably you would want to see,
for reasons of quality and diversity, a competition between different
groups to get this bit of free spectrum and provide a local service.
If we can keep the BBC out of it for one moment, are there any
restrictions you would like to see Ofcom putting on who can compete
for these things? My concern is that my local newspaper, which
is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust which does not have
the political complexion that is mine, has long since gobbled
up all the free sheets and the local newspapers and might see
this as an opportunity, as well as a threat, and might put in
a bid which, on quality grounds alone, might, drawing on its resources,
knock everybody else out of the water.
Mr Rushton: Yes, I think there
are two criteria which should be applied. One is that the licence
itself should direct, shall we say, the advertising and also the
reception issues in terms of delivery of public service programming
to the community that the licensee wishes to address and not to
a much bigger community, so that is the fundamental one. Secondly,
I think that in terms of preserving plurality, there might well
be a criterion, a necessity to say that you cannot own all three
local media, that you cannot own the radio station, you cannot
own the local TV and you cannot own the local press. Whether one
says that you can only own one of those three is up for debate,
but certainly perhaps you should not own more than two, so there
has to be some degree of plurality. Whether the BBC becomes involved
obviously will add another equation to that, so you might be able
to relax slightly on the criterion as to whether the newspaper
could own the radio, the commercial telly and the newspaper if
the BBC were involved, so that partly depends, I think, and it
needs to be reasonably flexible as to how you resolve that. The
other issue is that the point at which the cost should come in
as a fee, I suspect, is at the point of issuing the licence and
not to gain the spectrum because, if the spectrum were packaged
in such a way, the fear would be that one or more, maybe a few,
large existing media players would opt to look for large areas
across the country and acquire spectrum for those and be less
interested in the spectrum that would reach the rural communities
which, I suggest, would be delivered probably best by municipal
services or community services. Therefore, our view has been to
say that we have to take a balanced view between commercial and
municipal, and councils now have the possibility of licences and
what else would they use them for if not local radio or community
television in some form, and also the community itself. There
are two good, strong community television services, one running
in Belfast and one running on the Isle of Wight, funded on a non-commercial
basis, so those models also should have a right of access to the
spectrum.
Q365 Paul Farrelly: So, given your
particular engagement in this topic, this is a no-brainer question
really, not least because ITV has been reducing its local news
coverage, do you think there is a valid market in which people
will be interested for Stoke TV, a sort of Stoke Today
sitting alongside Midlands Today?
Mr Rushton: Yes. The thing about
the ITV regions was that they were an accident of commercial scale,
as anticipated in the early 1950s, and geography. We are still
stuck with the geography, so we have to make the best of that
because that is the way television is distributed, but I think
we can focus now much more on to the smaller community than the
West Midlands. People do not think they live necessarily, or they
certainly do not live in Granadaland; they live in Liverpool or
Manchester, Lancashire, Preston or wherever. Your association,
in spite of television, has remained very strongly with the community,
by and large, in which you have a relationship with the hospital,
with the school, with the communities that are involved with going
to the theatre, going to the cinema, and reflecting that pool
of cultural and political interest and involvement is fundamentally
important, I think, to reengage people with the political process
at the local level, which is why I think there is a political
dimension to this, which is why I think this House should take
an interest in local television as a contribution to public service
broadcasting and its renewal. It should not be seen as a monopoly,
nationally or regionally; this should be something that public
service broadcasting is allowed to develop at a local level where
the localness is identified with relatively well-known civic and
accepted areas of activity that people can become better involved
with.
Q366 Paul Farrelly: Iona, can I turn
to you. I am one of the 200,000 who deliberately turns his aerial
across the Cheshire Plain to Wales and north Staffordshire to
pick up the rugby, so thank you very much. You would consider
yourselves as being a local broadcaster in Wales and you might
have a different perspective about the impact of your business
and the sorts of ultra-local TV that we have been talking about
in England where ITV and the BBC have lodged national creations,
but what sort of impact do you think it would have on your business?
Would it be a threat or an opportunity?
Ms Jones: From our perspective,
we are kind of working the other way, we are going Wales, UK,
global, and obviously what Dave is doing is kind of coming the
other way. We are actually quite excited about the prospects of
getting more platforms, new services which could make use of the
content which originates from S4C's commissioning process, and
that is why we have taken a very different view to rights management
from other broadcasters in that not only have we given back the
rights since the 2003 Communications Act where it was a requirement,
but we have also offered the rights in all programmes commissioned
by S4C since 1982 to the producers with a view actually to giving
them the opportunity to exploit the kinds of opportunities which
Dave and others in the area of local TV might want to promote.
Therefore, the role of S4C as a broadcaster is very much about
developing audiences within and outside Wales and globally, but
at the same time ensuring that all of the opportunities which
may come through different services can be exploited primarily
by our producers who will now have the rights in order to make
those opportunities realistic for them.
Q367 Paul Farrelly: Bobby, your group
has not given up the ghost and sold out to national ITV and you
have made it quite clear that you see that your job is to bring
that different flavour to different parts of Scotland, so again
the same question to you: would this gifting of spectrum to ultra-local
TV operations be a disadvantage to you? Would it be more of a
threat than an opportunity?
Mr Hain: I think you need to contextualise
how this is being done because it would seem to me slightly eccentric
to abandon the existing forms of public service broadcasting,
particularly within Scotland where there is a very strong connection
from STV to viewers and we have regionalised that and actually
localised it to a degree in the past year or so and it has been
very successful with our news offering which, as you say, has
travelled in the opposite direction from other ITV regions where
there has been consolidation. It would seem to me to be slightly
eccentric to abandon that and move straight towards a system of
trying to deliver public service broadcasting and news and community
information at a local level because I suspect that you could
see a case where you reduce reliance on one established method
and it is a long time before you have any traction and scale and
penetration universality and some the real common themes of public
service broadcasting, it may never happen. I think that it is
a very interesting concept and I think that the local nature that
Dave has been talking about in terms of its touchstones of the
hospital and the area where you live and go to work and so on,
that has very identifiable resonance with people. However, I am
not sure what the business model is behind it, but I have not
been convinced that there is a business model that would make
it work, so I think in that sense it is a significant risk and
our focus is much more on trying to maintain, and enhance, what
is already in existence.
Q368 Chairman: Can we just examine
the general question of funding which obviously applies in different
ways to each of you. Starting with Iona, you actually benefit
from a pretty significant direct subsidy from the Government.
Now, others, who when that possibility has been raised have expressed
huge concern that this will lead to all sorts of political interference,
lack of editorial independence, et cetera. Has that been
your experience at all or have you any concerns about that?
Ms Jones: No, I think you quite
rightly say that it is a direct subsidy, but, because it is actually
set in primary legislation, it is not subject to a kind of annual
discussion which others may or may not face or even a slightly
longer time period, so we have the visibility and the stability
of funding, but I think the fact that it is in primary legislation
actually means that there is a distance between the annual scrutiny
which we may be subjected to, so we are quite happy with that
position. We have of course got commercial freedoms and the airtime
sales and sponsorship obviously costs too, it is a very important
part of our mixed funding model which, I think, gives us a kind
of commercial edge and a slightly different view of the way in
which we schedule and commission. I should also add that, since
we last appeared before this Committee, there is a new strategic
partnership with the BBC which is another very important part
of S4C's funding model going forward in that, for the first time,
we have an allocation from the licence fee of £72 million
over the next three years which, in the first instance, supports
S4C's Welsh language commitment, but is also a way of the BBC
delivering on its obligations to the indigenous languages of the
UK, so those are the kind of three areas of funding that we now
enjoy.
Q369 Chairman: But you also receive
programming from the BBC, do you not?
Ms Jones: Yes, the Act states
that they have to provide us with a minimum of 10 hours. What
the strategic partnership has done is to translate those hours
into financial terms and the agreement of how that money is spent
is done in partnership with S4C with a view to delivering on S4C's
programme strategy as opposed to any particular BBC programming
objectives on their other channels.
Q370 Chairman: Clearly the general
thrust of our inquiry is to look at ways in which we can support
public service content outside the BBC. Do you see this as potentially
a model which could be applied elsewhere?
Ms Jones: It may well be, but
obviously it is a partnership which means it is working for S4C
and it is working for the BBC, and that may prove to be slightly
more complicated for others, but I think the secret of the success
of this partnership is that it does indeed support, as Professor
Roger Laughton and others have said, Welsh language broadcasting
going forward into digital, but it does not in any way diminish
the BBC's accountability to its licence fee payers and it does
not contradict any of the public purpose values that the Charter
has adopted, so there is a synergy which we have identified between
the partnership which is, I think, a blueprint, as far as we are
concerned and there are probably some very interesting principles
which may be worth exploring elsewhere, but it is not top-slicing
and I think that is the key.
Q371 Mr Evans: You say it is not
top-slicing, so do you mean that the BBC do not actually write
you a cheque even though you have had a negotiation, let us say?
Ms Jones: They do not hand over
licence fee money to S4C, but all the other components of the
partnership mean that the way in which that is spent is very much
in line with S4C's programme strategy.
Q372 Mr Evans: Of the 10 hours, after
Pobol y Cwm and the news services, how much have you got
left then to be creative with that?
Ms Jones: There is some factual
programming which actually meets our landmark programming test
and they are still a contributor in sport. The other element which
may best illustrate the changing nature of this relationship is
that the BBC will become an increasingly important player in the
field of children's programming and we very much hope that, if
the Secretary of State allows us to set up a children's channel,
the BBC will be a very important part of that provision, so that
is the way in which we have been able to discuss with the BBC
things which are of importance to S4C and to amend the contribution
and the investment accordingly, so it works very well for us.
Q373 Chairman: Turning to Bobby Hain,
SMG have indicated that you think there is a "strong case"
for some kind of public funding for Scottish content. Would you
see that as being taken from the licence fee?
Mr Hain: I would not rule it out.
I think that the example of S4C is interesting where there is
a BBC apportionment of resources which goes to S4C. Now, actually
that, to my mind, is an indirect top-slicing of the licence fee.
I think that it may be that we would prefer a more direct version
of that, going forward. I do not think it is the only way that
we could look at additional funding and I think that the public
service publisher is also aware that we should be looking to play
actually a key role because I think in our position, being so
far out of London and being very established as a broadcaster,
this is an area where we could work with other related parties
within Scotland. We could use our building, for example, as a
centre for incubating ideas and getting other ideas for content
to a position where they could be more readily pitched to whoever
was making a decision. I think one of the key factors behind any
additional funding that we would be making a claim for would be
actually that this drives value for viewers and that this enhances
our offering and it takes us into the online world, I think, where
the commercial barrier to entry, because of the dominance of the
BBC, is actually quite high. I know that public service content,
as opposed to public service broadcasting, features very high
on the agenda and that the digitised and online world is a place
where people are spending more time and there is a real sense
that they want to find the kind of content that they have seen
on their televisions delivered through broadband and other areas.
I think that that, is a key pivotal area into which to introduce
funding for getting material to a new audience.
Q374 Chairman: David, you are principally
asking for gifted spectrum rather than direct subsidy. Is that
correct?
Mr Rushton: Yes. I think we are
also not looking at the digital dividend. At the moment, the preference
would be for some of the benefit of the changeover from 16-64
QAM, which is taking place on the public service muxes, that some
of that benefit is released spectrum to provide two or three extra
channels on those public service broadcasting networks allocated
to local television, the reason being that those are the only
muxes that at the moment are going to reach the 1,152 transmitter
sites across the country. We are very concerned that, in terms
of taking a historical overview, there could well be pressure
on the ITV companies at some point in the future to come back
to the 81 transmitter sites and not to support the continuation
of those 1,152. I think our concern is to maintain universality
in the delivery of services and it is particularly important in
different local communities, where relay is very, very predominant,
to ensure signals arrive in the homes of those people who are
further out of the main cities, so those are the people who are
also not at the end of a switch, so they do not get broadband
or they do not get broadband at high capacity. Therefore, our
concern at the moment is to deliver television on DTT and to then
use that as a barker channel for flagging web access for those
who have access to the Internet for local city councils, for health
service information and so on and, in the same way that the BBC
and Channel 4 particularly have provided a portal, if you like,
and a reason to go up to your bedroom and have a look at your
computer, this is what local television can do; it has to be in
that framework, available for everybody. Our argument with the
PSP is that, in between the PSB reviews when local television
was identified as a possible candidate for receiving funding,
it shifted across to being defined as a broadband media service.
We have put our foot down on that, as far as we have a foot to
put down at the moment, and said quite straightforwardly, "No,
something like £70 million of the identified £300 million
across the UK as a whole was really in the expected reduction
of regional programme content over that period, and that money
should go straight back in to support the introduction of local
television to replace effectively face-to-face public service
debate and participation in a television form which people recognise
and through which they still wish to receive their local content".
Q375 Chairman: But you would not
accept that local TV might actually be more appropriately delivered
via broadband than via—
Mr Rushton: Not at this stage,
no. Because the roll-out of the digital switchover is actually
taking place across the rural areas where broadband is not so
readily available to those communities and because those communities
tend to be older, Lord McIntosh has identified local digital terrestrial
television as being the fundamental form that he thought television
should move forward in at the local level, and it is something
that we have agreed with for the last two or three years. At some
point in the future when broadband has caught up so that IPTV
is available across the country, we think it would be a fantastic
opportunity for what we call `neighbourhood television' on a smaller
scale, community or local, where you actually are having debates
on the hustings in your local area on a very, very small footprint,
but IPTV at this stage is, I think, estimated to be available
for three million households across the country out of whatever,
21 million, so it is not something at this stage we could deliver
local television on because it is unevenly available.
Q376 Rosemary McKenna: Can I ask
that question of Bobby Hain. You have said in your submission
that there are difficulties involved in trying to provide content
specific to Scotland via traditional broadcast media. Would broadband
not be a really good answer in an area like Scotland?
Mr Hain: I think the point that
Dave has made actually similarly applies to our network because,
when you consider that the universality and the scale and reach
of public service broadcasting has some of the prime characteristics
it needs to have, at this moment where you have STV, for example,
reaching about four million out of five million people in Scotland
every single week, then yes, you can make content available and
it is a convenient place to park it and to get extra distribution
channels. It may be a long time before you get anything approaching
the kind of impact, scale and reach that you already have, and
our point on broadband is that there is no universality compulsion.
In the build-out of transmitters that we are currently undertaking
to provide DTT across Scotland, we will get to a UK figure which
is the same as the analogue services now, 98.5%. That is absolutely
fixed as something that we need to do and there will be universality,
there will be freely available material via STV and I think that
really is our primary focus. That is not to say it is not important
to have additional content which can be made available via broadband
and via mobile and via other means—
Q377 Rosemary McKenna: But it is
an add-on?
Mr Hain: —but it is absolutely
an add-on. Our experience with broadband is that we launched an
online service last year which is very well used and we also started
a Scotland on TV service which is really for expats which takes
our Scottish programming around the world. Now, there is a lot
of interest in that, but we are really running it as a trial.
I think you are a long way off being able to support anything
like the production values of STV as it exists now in terms of
high-quality news and current affairs with a commercial model
that you could derive from the Internet because I think people's
expectation is content on the Internet is free and, until you
can get a subscription or some kind of pay per view or some kind
of advertiser-funded model which really gives you some scale to
commission programmes, you are going to see a very different kind
of content on the Internet. The other thing to bear in mind is
that it is in our interests in having a brand as STV to make sure
that our Internet content fits the brand values of our regulated
service, that it has editorial independence, that it is impartial,
but it is high quality, and that actually for other operators
where there is no regulatory compulsion to do so, it is much more
difficult to achieve that objective just by leaving it to the
market.
Q378 Chairman: Can I quickly touch
on the PSP which has featured already, but just to clarify. Iona,
S4C's attitude to the proposal of the public service publisher,
although you have made a return to Ofcom, it was not absolutely
clear to us whether or not you did support its creation, so can
you just clarify a little?
Ms Jones: I think that was the
impression we were trying to convey! Obviously there is a need
to address the deficiencies of the PSP going forward as far as
commercially funded operators are concerned. The reason why we
probably lacked some clarity was that we are not sure that this
actually addresses the question in hand, and as to the focus on
developing something in new media, I think this is an opportunity
to use, in our case, the public investment in TV content primarily
to be developing new services. We readily acknowledge that, even
though ITV have been quite innovative in online terms, innovation
at the kind of levels proposed by Ofcom are not being delivered
at present, so there is quite a lot of discussion to be had around
that, but it may be there needs to be more focus on the way in
which they are training the sector, that skills should become
more transferable as far as different platforms are concerned,
so we are interested.
Q379 Chairman: Whereas SMG are positively
enthusiastic about it.
Mr Hain: We are, and I think that
the caveat is only that we do not see it as an either/or situation.
I do not think you can take the existing public service broadcasting
certainly within Scotland that STV delivers and say, "Right,
instead of that, we are going to have this public service publisher",
which, judging by the kinds of examples I have seen, pushes at
the fringes of innovation and really takes to the limit what you
can do in new media. I think that is very commendable and it is
very interesting, but I do not think that is in any way a replacement
for high-quality news and current affairs. I think they are different
flavours and I think there is a place for both of them. My interest
and, I think, STV's interest is: where is the crossover and could
you actually use the public service publisher if it is trying
to extract some value and reinvest it from the digital dividend
into our existing audiences for the benefit of our existing audiences,
and then there comes a point when public service publisher money
may be used to subsidise existing forms of public service content?
I am not sure that is all you would want them to do. You would
want them to be made available in new forms and on new platforms,
but I think there is a bit of a crossover here, and I go back
to my earlier answer where one of the dangers in only having as
the preserve of public service publisher content an online destination
is that you do not have any regulatory levers to pull to make
sure that that is absolutely high quality and that it has scale
and impact and reach and it is available to a vast majority of
the audience. Therefore, I think there are some caveats and I
think, on balance, we are very enthusiastic about it because we
do see that it has a role to play in extending public service
content, but I think it could also be argued that it also has
a role to play in maintaining, and enhancing, existing forms of
PSB.
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