Examination of Witnesses (Questions 593-599)
SATELLITE AND
CABLE BROADCASTERS'
GROUP AND
MR IRWIN
STELZER
12 JUNE 2007
Q593 Chairman: Good morning. Could I
welcome you to the penultimate session of the Committee into public
service media content, and particularly welcome our witnesses
this morning: Irwin Stelzer who is the Director of Economic Policy
Studies at the Hudson Institute and a regular contributor to The
Sunday Times; and Geoff Metzger who is Managing Director of
the History Channel but is also appearing on behalf of the Satellite
and Cable Broadcasters' Group. Can I start off by inviting you
to comment on how exactly we should define public service broadcasting,
and whether you agree with Ofcom's rather more general description
of the criteria which should be used to define, or whether you
think that we need to be more specific about what exactly we are
talking about in this area?
Mr Stelzer: I think the hunt for
definition is a feckless search. It is looking for something that
is as long as string. You can make it anything you want to be,
and I think that is a mistake. I think you can let the market
define public service broadcasting for you by seeing what it is
that the market is not producing, and then go from there. The
notion that you will be able to usefully have an organisation
that views its mission as public service broadcasting, and defines
it in a way that has any limits, seems to me a search for something
that is not there.
Mr Metzger: I largely agree. It
is certainly much too broad and it is probably as long as a piece
of string; it catches all things. I think in the old days, when
there was spectrum scarcity, all things were public service broadcasting
really—whether it was Kenneth Clark's Civilisation
or a good movie on a Saturday night, because the spectrum was
limited. We were all getting public service benefit from it. With
spectrum abundance I think it is very difficult to talk about
what is or what is not public service broadcasting. If you look
at the BBC schedule and you look at the Ofcom definitions of purposes
and characteristics it all fits; it all comes under that very
broad definition. Just as Mr Stelzer said, what we need to decide
is what we need, where the market has failed or, that is to say,
where public service broadcasting has failed, and then let the
democratic institutions decide how they want to fund it.
Mr Stelzer: Once you start with
the notion of a definition that includes informing ourselves and
increasing our understanding of the world that is an open ticket
to do anything you choose. There is no policy you can build around
that that makes any sense. What you are left with is what goes
on now, the push and pull with the BBC and others pushing to expand
it in terms of content and reach; and then politicians having
something to say when it comes to funding and trying to pull it
back a little without ever resolving what it is you should not
be doing. If I were asking somebody from the BBC a question I
would like to ask them, "What do you not think you should
not do?", and I suspect they would give a very short answer.
Chairman: I think we did ask them and
we also got a very short answer!
Q594 Adam Price: If public service
broadcasting, from what you are saying, is almost by definition
indefinable, is it nevertheless a necessary and useful concept?
Do we need the idea of public service broadcasting? Why do we
need it?
Mr Stelzer: Firstly, you need
it less and less, as you get the end of spectrum scarcity, as
you get the commercial service filling more and more gaps. It
ill-behooves an American to come to Britain and say, "You
shouldn't have public service broadcasting", because then
I am going to hear about the pornography and Fox News and everything
else on our televisions, and I do not want to start that discussion.
The answer is, yes, I would think given the preferences of British
society, given the notion of the BBC as a kind of integrating
social institution that is very important to Britain, there is
a role. I think the easiest way to get at it is through your feeling
for children's programming, for example, commercial-free and so
on, but you are picking a group that is, first of all, very well
served commercially but that arguably needs protection of some
sort that apparently the helpless parents cannot provide in the
supermarket. Yes, I think there is a role for public service broadcasting,
but I do think that role is shrinking as the commercial sector
provides more and more service. I think the real danger of the
expansive notion of public service broadcasting, which is essentially
"Let's do everything we can get enough money to do",
is that it stifles innovation and creativity in the private sector.
Q595 Mr Evans: Irwin, you mentioned
the United States' television and generally when anybody says,
"Oh, my God, let's get rid of the BBC, it's very expensive",
blah, blah, blah, they say, "Oh, you don't want to do that
or you're going to end up like they are in America, where it's
all drivel, it's all bland, it's the lowest common denominator.
We don't want American television in Britain, do we?" What
is your response to that?
Mr Stelzer: One of the things
you learn if you are an American living here is that if you put
the adjective "American-style" in front of anything
you are in a lot of trouble! That could be McDonalds, it could
be American-style airline deregulation, anything. That is why
I did not want to come here actually, but the Chairman is so persuasive!
That is just wrong. American television has a whole bunch of junk
on it. So do you. Michael Gove has a wonderful piece in The
Times today about your problems and mine. The main thing is
choice. The fact is that when you can control access by vulnerable
groups, and when you have something called a "remote",
and when you have multi-channel television, you can get any quality
you want. I have a wife who, unfortunately, can sit and watch
opera on American television and has warned me not to attack BBC
Three when I come here! I think there is junk on American television;
there is great stuff on American television. I think what the
BBC tries to do in terms of news, what people usually say is,
"You've got all that biased news in America and we've got
this unbiased news here". Unbiased is not an achievable goal.
I think conflicting biases is an achievable goal, and we have
that in America. We have Fox News which comes at things from the
conservative point of view; we have CNN, the Clinton News Network,
which comes from a left point of view and that is fine. I just
do not watch the junk, as I assume you do not watch a lot of the
bad stuff that is on your television. You are going to get that
if you have multi-channell television. If you are going to have
choice some people are going to make really appalling choices.
That is the price of democracy. You can eliminate choice and then
have you people deciding what they ought to see, and I do not
think that is such a hot idea.
Q596 Mr Evans: I think where we are
coming from as well is that people have been used to getting public
service broadcasting free. In the United States with the PSB channels
a lot of the stuff they get is from the BBC shows that they have
sold onto the public service broadcasting channel.
Mr Metzger: There really is not
any public service broadcasting in the United States any more
to speak of.
Mr Stelzer: Everybody thinks of
what we see on some of the PBS channels as the equivalent of your
public service broadcasting. You used a funny word there "free".
You get the BBC free?
Q597 Mr Evans: Once it is paid for
it is free. It is there.
Mr Stelzer: That is true of almost
anything!
Q598 Mr Evans: Once you have paid
your tax you have got access to £3.5 billion worth of public
service broadcasting.
Mr Stelzer: The marginal cost
of what is added on is then zero, which is the problem that commercial
broadcasters have. In other words, it is free to the user to get
still another BBC offering. Someone has to compete with that,
and it is very hard to compete with that.
Q599 Mr Evans: It begs the question,
although you have broached it and then backed off from it: do
you think the BBC does a good job of providing public service
broadcasting?
Mr Stelzer: I think some of the
things it does are really quite good. I do not think there is
any question about that; but why a lot of what it does is some
sort of public service broadcasting, in the sense that was originally
understood, I am not at all clear. That is why I would like to
see government get out of the business of trying to decide, "Gee,
this movie really elevates people; and that movie really degrades
them", and instead say, "What will the market produce?
Do we feel that what the market is not producing as a political
matter, a political decision, has a high social value? It is not
being produced and we think taxpayers should pay for that".
First, clear away the notion that you need this all-encompassing
definition of anything that is good for you; see what the commercial
sector is producing; and then start to address the gaps.
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