Examination of Witnesses (Questions 658-659)
MR SHAUN
WOODWARD MP AND
MR JON
ZEFF
14 JUNE 2007
Q658 Chairman: Good morning. This is
the final session of the Committee's inquiry into public service
media content and we have giving evidence this morning the Minister
for Creative Industries and Tourism, Shaun Woodward, and the Director
of Broadcasting Policy at the DCMS, Jon Zeff. Minister, we currently
invest directly over £3 billion into public service broadcasting
through the BBC and, on top of that, the commercial broadcasters
get indirect support through access to spectrum, et cetera.
Do you believe that that is a good investment and that we are
getting value for money from the money that is going in and how
do you measure the extent of the benefit?
Mr Woodward: First of all, good
morning to the Committee. Broadly, I have to give you a pretty
much unequivocal yes to the fact that I think we are getting very
good value for money from the broadcasting system, and I think
the best way to measure that really is to look at the state and
the health of our broadcasting industry here in the UK with other
parts of Europe, looking at Canada, for example, and looking at
the United States. We have a vibrant broadcasting industry, we
have a new broadcasting industry which is around 1% GVA of the
economy, we employ 110,000 people, we have about 300 channels,
we are on track for digital switchover, we have increasing outputs,
although I think outputs are not the only way you want to measure
the strength of public service broadcasting in the country, and
we have been through a negotiation for the BBC licence fee and
the new Charter which, I think, leaves the public service broadcasting
apparatus in this country in a healthy place for the next ten
years. Now, that does not mean to say, whether inside the BBC
or ITV, Channel 4 or Channel 5, that there are not significant
pressures and challenges, but I believe that, with the background
of the Communications Act, Ofcom and the apparatus that we have
put in place to deal with those challenges, we are best placed
to deal with them and we are better placed than any other broadcasting
system anywhere else to deal with them. However, that does not
mean to say that we are not going to encounter periods of difficulty,
but I believe that that period of transition as we fully engage
in the digital revolution and what that means for media and new
media leaves the entire broadcasting sphere in good shape and
the public sector dimensions of that in very good shape indeed,
robust and ready to meet those challenges.
Q659 Chairman: You said specifically
then that one of the indicators of good health was the outputs
of public service broadcasting. There has been some debate in
the course of our inquiry between those who argue that actually
that is the appropriate way to examine the extent of public service
programming by the outputs, and there are now a large number of
channels that provide at least some public service content, but
others have said that actually we should not just focus on that,
but we still need to look at inputs, Ofcom specifically. What
is your view?
Mr Woodward: I think you need
to look at both. I think if you go back to the kind of culture
of box-ticking, you do not actually get a good picture and you
certainly do not get a picture which looks at whether or not you
are in a robust position to survive the vicissitudes of the market
and the changes that are taking place globally. If you look at
any of the various measures, if you look at the health of the
BBC and what the BBC is able to produce, the way it is commissioning
new programming, the vibrancy of the commercial sector, the growth
of independent programme-making, I think all of those indicators
are useful and they provide part of a picture, but the picture
also needs to look at the institutions as well and I think those
institutions are in good shape.
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