Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
SIR MICHAEL
LYONS, MR
MARK THOMPSON
AND MS
ZARIN PATEL
8 JULY 2008
Chairman: Good morning everybody. This
is the Committee's annual session at which we examine the BBC
Annual Report and Accounts. I should like to welcome Sir Michael
Lyons, the Chairman of the BBC Trust; Mark Thompson, the Director-General
and Zarin Patel, the Director of Finance at the BBC. I understand
that you have already had a press conference and you are having
an open house with MPs later so we are jam in the sandwich. Adrian
Sanders will begin.
Q1 Mr Sanders: Good morning. In the
Report you describe performance in television reach as "particularly
strong" but there was only an increase of 0.6%, so how do
you define particularly strong?
Sir Michael Lyons: I think the
main reason for using that terminology is that there is no doubt
that this is quite an achievement in a world in which viewers,
listeners and users of on-line services have so much choice available
to them. Indeed, the BBC has been clear that just maintaining
reach would be a very considerable achievement so to show even
a modest improvement in this year seems something to acknowledge
and celebrate. Do you want to say more, Mark?
Mr Thompson: Just to say that
across BBC services we are seeing a picture in both reach and
share which, given the level of structural change in media, feels
strong and also, although it is a picture which varies across
the BBC, with some of our harder to reach groups, in particular
younger audiences on many services, we have seen a slowing, arresting
or in some case even a reversal of decline amongst some of our
audiences. As you know, the core of what we try and do is to deliver
value to every household which pays a licence, and 95% of households
do, and to see monthly reach go back up to 95% of those UK households
and to see a spread of the usage in some of those harder-to-reach
groups is a good result.
Sir Michael Lyons: It is probably
worth me just underlining the point that Mark has touched on about
why this is so important to the BBC. The Trust is very clear about
the importance of reach, not only that everybody who pays the
licence fee therefore has a right to get something in return for
it but also it is inconceivable that the BBC can deliver its important
public purposes unless it is connected with the whole population.
Q2 Mr Sanders: Your television reach
is 85% which obviously means 15% are not seeing any BBC television
at all. You have targets for minimum reach. What are the targets
that you have set for each of the television channels BBC One,
Two, Three and Four?
Sir Michael Lyons: Again let me
just acknowledge that that 15%, and particularly the fact that
its composition reflects disproportionately young people, people
with lower incomes and minority ethnic communities, is a matter
of concern for the Trust, and we have focused the BBC on the need
to strive even further to meet that under that heading of the
BBC needs to serve all audiences.
Q3 Mr Sanders: But how can the Trust
judge BBC Three for example to be performing well in terms of
reach when it is watched by barely one in four of its own target
audience?
Sir Michael Lyons: BBC Three is
still in its early days. What these figures show is a considerable
increase in the reach of BBC Three, or a notable increase, let
me be more cautious. Again I think that is somewhere for us to
acknowledge progress. If I took us back to the discussions that
we had with you and your colleagues a year ago, there was very
considerable scepticism about BBC Three and whether it should
be retained in the BBC portfolio. The Trust took the decision
in October, following advice from the Director-General, that it
was important both as one of the instruments of getting to a younger
audience but also in terms of providing a choice and therefore
to encourage people to move more actively to digital take-up.
Q4 Mr Sanders: With respect, Sir
Michael, this is after nearly five and a half years' operation
and licence fee expenditure of more than half a billion pounds.
I do not think it is good enough to just say, "Oh, it is
early days."
Sir Michael Lyons: Let me instead
say I think this year shows very real progress and we have confidence
that this channel is going to do even better in the future.
Mr Thompson: The BBC does not
set reach targets for individual BBC services but a 15 million
weekly reach for BBC Three is strongly up this year (14% across
all audiences a year ago up to 17.3%) so this is a service that
is growing strongly both in share and reach. Stepping back, if
I may say so, the point about the BBC is that we provide a portfolio
of services to the British public and the aim is not to get every
single member of the public to watch or listen to or to use every
single service, but to offer them a choice across which they get
value, and the overall story is that reach of BBC services across
the UK population has been growing. It stands at 95% of households
using BBC services. I think 95% of UK households are paying the
licence fee. I would say that the story of universal delivery
of BBC services is a strong one. Obviously individual services
such as BBC Parliament do not appeal to every single household
in the land, astonishingly enough. There are people who love Radio
One who do not listen to Radio Four. There are people who love
Radio Four who do not listen to Radio One. The nature of what
we are doing is to try to offer a portfolio of services each of
which is a distinctive high-quality service in its own right—and
that is absolutely what we are trying to do with BBC Three and
programmes like our comedy Gavin and Stacey or the rather
wonderful series we did Honour Kills around arranged marriages
and some of the issues amongst the communities in which arranged
marriages are typical. I think we have seen real progress in BBC
Three's public service objectives and its public value over the
past year. You will recall when BBC Two launched and indeed when
Channel Four launched, there were many years when people said,
"What is going on?" It takes time to build new services
up until they are really creatively strong, but I believe that
we are making real progress with BBC Three.
Q5 Mr Sanders: Can I just come back
to the question, Mark, the BBC Trust might not set a target but
does the BBC set a reach target for each of its television channels?
Mr Thompson: We do and we can
lay them out for you. I think we have met or exceeded our reach
targets this year for pretty much every channel across BBC television.
Sir Michael Lyons: Can I come
back with a postscript on the Trust oversight of this just to
underline that of course we have now started the programme of
service licence reviews that we were charged to undertake. I am
sure we will get on to the subject of the BBC.co.uk review, which
is the first of those, but we will turn to BBC Three as part of
our examination of services for younger people in this coming
year, so in next year's Report.
Q6 Mr Sanders: Mark, if you have
that information it may be possible to write to us, but I think
it is an important point; if you do not have a target for reach
and nobody watches a channel what is the point of that channel
actually being in existence? I think it is fairly obvious.
Mr Thompson: You will be comforted
to know that we do not have any channel where there is nobody
watching!
Q7 Mr Sanders: Yet.
Mr Thompson: On the contrary,
what is happening is in many, many of our channels our reach is
growing; in other words more people are watching, and particularly
with our digital television and radio channels audiences for these
services are growing. What we have got, and indeed it is in the
document, are our statements of programme policy commitments,
which include reach targets for many services, and you will see
from that that the overwhelming majority of these programme policy
commitments were met over the year. I think there are three examples
across the entire BBC portfolio where for a variety of reasons
we have slightly missed them. For example, the pattern of the
elections in Wales meant that one of or commitments around the
coverage of hours we cover on BBC Parliament of proceedings of
the Welsh Assembly were slightly lower than they otherwise would
have been but that was more to do with the time when the Assembly
was sitting. There are about three examples where for various,
I would say, technical reasons we have missed our statement of
programme policy commitments but the overwhelming majority have
been met over the course of the year.
Q8 Chairman: Before we leave the
subject of BBC Three, you talked about its contribution to public
service broadcasting and say that it is making good progress.
If I could just give one example: on the day when Patricia Hodgson,
who is a member of the Trust, wrote an article on how to safeguard
public service media, BBC Three that evening showed two episodes
of an American import, Family Guy, alongside Dog Borstal,
Most Annoying Pop Songs we Love to Hate and Bizarre
ER on which the BBC listings synopsis read "a circus
dwarf who has superglued his penis to a Hoover arrives in the
emergency ward". Can you tell me how that contributes to
public service broadcasting?
Mr Thompson: We recommend by the
way that the public do not try that at home!
Q9 Chairman: This is a channel which
costs £125 million a year at a time when you are saying that
the BBC is under significant financial pressure; do you really
think that is worth £125 million a year?
Mr Thompson: It is possible with
any service or any newspaper or any other media product which
broadcasts year round to come up with individual examples of programmes
which do not on the face of it sound as if they pursue public
service objectives, but I have to say in my view firstly, the
volume of programmes on BBC Three, its news and current affairs
output, its consumer journalism, its documentary making, the programmes
it is doing about religion and about values, some of the new comedy
it is doing (I have mentioned Gavin and Stacey and Honour
Kills; I could have mentioned The Mighty Boosh) the
way this channel is bringing factual and other topics to life
for a younger audience is something which is growing in strength
and I would say with many of the examples --- and I missed the
man with the penis and the glue.
Q10 Chairman: Bizarre ER.
Mr Thompson: Did you see it yourself
by the way?
Q11 Chairman: I am afraid I missed
it too. You can send us all a DVD in due course.
Mr Thompson: I will slip you a
copy, Chairman. My view is that we have tried to be careful over
the past year about the titling and about the presentation and
about the publicity around some of these programmes. I have to
say I have seen some programmes often with quite strong titles.
There is a really great documentary called Kizzy: Mum at 14
about the reality of teenage pregnancy, and you will not get young
people, who might actually find a programme like that useful and
valuable to see, to watch such a thing unless it is in a context
where they feel comfortable and they feel the channel is for them.
I do not know how well you know Family Guy but Family
Guy is an example of the kind of acquisition which in the
mix of what BBC3 is is an interesting and in many ways thoughtful
piece of comedy. I think again it feels appropriate in this channel.
You will understand for the BBC that making outstanding documentaries
for Radio Four or for BBC Two very much goes easily with the grain
of, if you like, heartland expectations of the BBC. It is quite
important that the BBC is not just trying to reach those audiences
but trying to find ways of reaching other audiences, particularly
with programmes like Kizzy: Mum at 14 which are of value.
Of course as this new service grows we should obviously monitor
it and adapt it and develop and learn from our mistakes.
Q12 Chairman: The serious proposition
here is that you might have seen Anthony Jay recently has suggested
that the BBC should have one television channel and one radio
station. Jeff Randall, who worked for you for a long time, has
suggested that in his view the BBC should have two high-quality
television channels and two high-quality radio stations. At a
time when you say that money is tight and you are spreading yourself
thinly, do you really need all the channels that you have and
have you considered actually reducing the number of channels and
perhaps spending more on the programmes on them?
Sir Michael Lyons: Let me take
you back to the discussion which I referred to earlier on of last
October in the context of the licence fee settlement and the six-year
strategy and the Director-General's vision of the future of the
BBC. There was an energetic debate there. The Trust did not begin
with a proposition that it should defend all of the services of
the BBC, and there was both in the public arena and certainly
in private discussions a lot of questioning about the role of
Three and Four and we were satisfied then—and indeed that
was very much the Director-General's proposition to us—that
in terms of the BBC meeting its public purposes, in terms of it
continuing to offer choice and to get to the whole audience or
the range of audiences in the United Kingdom, there was a continued
role for both Three and Four, and the very reason for setting
them up, which was to pave the way for the digital future, still
remained a live issue. This is not set in concrete for ever and
a day but I would not want to leave you with the impression that
the Trust would be enthusiastic about the idea of distilling the
richness of the BBC down to just one channel.
Mr Thompson: Anthony Jay, if I
have understood his argument, his belief is that services should
consist of BBC One and Radio Four. I take it that implies therefore
the closure of the World Service, the closure of local radio,
the abandonment of the Proms and the orchestras, the closure of
BBC Wales, BBC Scotland and BBC Northern Ireland. I put it to
you that this is a fairly extreme perspective on the BBC. We talked
about 95% of the British public using the BBC, a number which
is growing, and I think the idea that the public want fewer services
from the BBC is flawed. I cannot emphasise the extent to which
the interactions with the public are understandably for more,
for better local services, for more investment in programming
from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and so forth. When we
talk to the licence payers, the people who pay for the BBC, the
main impression they offer to us is to improve, strengthen where
we can, and broaden our services. However, it is very important
also to recognise that we have not for the past few years launched
new linear services and we do not intend to launch any new linear
services. The investments we are making now are much more about
trying to find ways like the BBC iPlayer of getting content we
have already made to the public in new ways to try and get more
value out of it. We do not believe the BBC should expand its services.
I do believe that BBC Three, especially in its role of innovation
and finding opportunities for new talent, is a very important
part of the mix and I would say if you want outstanding comedy
on BBC One, and Gavin and Stacey will come to BBC One,
we need nursery slopes. We need places in our schedules where
you can try new things out.
Q13 Chairman: You used to have outstanding
comedy before BBC Three and Four were invented.
Mr Thompson: What I would say
is that it has become progressively harder across British television
to find new comedy and I would say one of the reasons that BBC
comedy is so good because we have the opportunity of digital television
and radio channels to launch new talent. We need to use BBC One,
BBC Two and Radio Four as well but I have to say I very strongly
believe that BBC Three, particularly under it new controller Danny
Cohen is doing a really good job in finding new talent. That is
important not just for the BBC but for the whole of the broadcast
sector.
Q14 Philip Davies: Following on about
reach and Anthony Jay's article, I have noticed in your Report
that you have got a triumphant section on diversity where you
proudly announce that the number of ethnic minority staff has
gone up from 9.9% to 10.9% in the last two years and the number
of disabled staff has gone up from 2.8% to 4.7%. Is this a conscious
policy of the BBC?
Sir Michael Lyons: It has to be,
does it not? Can I take us back to the need to serve all audiences
and some of the discussion about those communities which we are
not yet serving adequately. Certainly the view of the Trust is
that we will make faster progress in responding to the needs of
different communities if those communities are appropriately reflected
amongst the workforce of the BBC, so it is an aspiration and this
is something to celebrate.
Q15 Philip Davies: What is the aspiration
then? What percentage is the aspiration for the BBC? At what point
will the BBC say we now have got a sufficient amount of people
from ethnic minorities and disability on our books?
Sir Michael Lyons: Of course this
is not a static target, although Mark and Zarin might want to
talk more about the targets that are set here, it is a dynamic
situation, not only in terms of the changing complexion of the
UK population but of course it will also be shaped by the BBC's
intention to have more of its activity based outside London.
Mr Thompson: I think it is also
worth saying that what diversity is about is trying to draw on
the talents from every part of the society that the BBC serves
and to try to reflect the lives and concerns of people from all
sections of the community we serve, and ethnicity is important
but it is only one part of that story, so in other words different
parts of the United Kingdom, different groups in terms of age,
ethnicity, faith, and so on, and how we employ people and the
balance of people we employ is one lever. It is something that
people pay a lot of attention to, I understand that, but it is
only part of the story of trying to make sure that the BBC is
reflecting the modern UK, modern Britain. I would be the first
person to say we are not there yet and I think the BBC has to
ask itself constantly whether or not it is really reflecting the
people to whom it is broadcasting. For example, one of the things
we are doing is moving a significant proportion of the BBC out
of London. We are trying to boost investment in network television
production and other forms of production in Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland. We are building a big new broadcast centre in
Salford, in the north of England. This is all part of trying to
get closer to the whole UK and also to try and draw on all of
the talents in a way which I think will leave the BBC with better
programmes. What it must not be about is a politically correct
determination to hit any one target against one measure.
Q16 Philip Davies: That is clearly
what it is because you just said how important that it was a focus
of the BBC to increase numbers. In your section on diversity it
only mentions about black and minority ethnic proportion and disabled;
it does not mention any of the other stuff that you have been
banging on about in this section on diversity. It seems to me
that the proportions are above the population as a whole already
before you have even started to increase them. Dr Samir Shah,
one of your directors, said recently that "the Corporation's
new arrangements about diversity means that there are now disproportionate
numbers of ethnic minorities on our BBC screens", so is this
not really all about political correctness rather than reflecting
the country as a whole?
Sir Michael Lyons: I would want
to say that Samir Shah's views are his own and he would be best
interrogated on those on another occasion. In terms of the work
the BBC Trust has been doing, there are still concerns in the
different minority communities about the extent to which they
are appropriately reflected in the BBC's output, as indeed there
are for the wider communities outside of London and the South
East.
Mr Thompson: Although it is true
we have mentioned people from different experiences, backgrounds
and opinions—it mentions women and gender therefore as well
as ethnicity and disability—when we develop our plans in
this we try and focus on diversity of every kind. Just to reassure
you when we are casting and when we are thinking about on-screen
talent, the quality and talent of the people we employ is the
most important thing and we do not go for artificial targets.
Although it is an important debate, and I welcome Samir's contribution
to the debate, I do not agree with Samir that there is a political
correctness bias in the way we cast nor, I have to say, are we
getting complaints from the public there is such a bias.
Q17 Philip Davies: Are all jobs given
on merit irrespective of people's race, sex, religion or background?
Can you give that categorical assurance?
Mr Thompson: Yes.
Q18 Helen Southworth: Can I ask you
about children's television and reach. The BBC is becoming increasingly
influential in terms of the commissioning of children's television
and there is a body of opinion which says it is going to be the
sole saviour of future children's television. How effective are
you in terms of your reach across the population? I am particularly
thinking in terms of your comment earlier about reach for people
on lower incomes as a general issue. How does this apply to children's
television and what are you doing to reach everywhere?
Sir Michael Lyons: Can I take
the headline issue of the importance of children's television;
that is very strong in terms of all of the work that we have done
with audiences across the UK and this is valued both by those
who are parents and use the service but equally strongly by those
who do not have small children to use the BBC's services, so it
is given a proper priority amongst the list of other priorities
that the Trust has to consider. Indeed, I think it is an area
where the BBC has excelled and I think it is worth underlining
that it has excelled despite the slackening off of competition
from other UK-produced material coming out of the other PSBs,
so you are right that this is a responsibility the BBC needs to
take seriously because it is so prominent. I will hand over to
Mark to say a little more about the commissioning side.[1]
Mr Thompson: Firstly, there are
poorer households where CBeebies in particular, the pre-school
television channel and website, are amongst the most important
services BBC services that these households use. Children's channels
are very important from the BBC's point of view in terms of the
marginal reach because they are used by households who perhaps
are light users of other BBC services and the reach both of the
TV channel CBeebies and CBBC has been growing and is growing.
The paradox, as I am sure you know, is that although the BBC is
very important in terms of UK children's television production,
we represent a very large amount of the investment, and our investment
is much greater than it was five or ten years ago. In terms of
children's consumption it is a very crowded market place with
many, many channels available to most children. Digital penetration
is much higher in households with children than it is in some
other categories and most children have a choice of many, many
different children's services, though the majority of those services
are dominated by typically American cartoons. It is a very competitive
context for the BBC still in terms of winning viewership from
children and from their parents but nonetheless our services are
performing well. Two more things briefly, the Internet and the
children's sites are very, very important, but the other thing
is we are trying more in our mainstream programmes—and I
guess Doctor Who springs to mind here—to try to go
back to rather more programming which works for children watching
in a family context with their parents. I think one of the things
the BBC in recent years has rather got back to—and I think
of Doctor Who and programmes like Strictly Come Dancing
and I'd Do Anything are examples of it as well—is
produce content which does work very well for children, and children
get very excited about, but actually works for their parents and
other members of the household as well. Although I do not want
to overstate it, I think one of the things licence payers expect
from the BBC is strong family entertainment. We got more than
10 million people watching the denouement of this series of Doctor
Who this Saturday and that is an example really that that
kind of programming still has enormous value to the public.
Q19 Helen Southworth: That is very
good news to strike that balance with family viewing but in terms
of the specific, in terms of outreach, the BBC has always had
this issue about whether it is there for middle-class families
and whether it is the general population that pays for it. In
terms of outreach for children's television, how effective are
you at targeting your entire audience?
Mr Thompson: As I have said, I
have not got the exact demographic breakdown of the performance
of these channels and we have limited information about the demographics
of children, particularly children below the age of four in our
data anyway. Anecdotally however, we know that in households which
do not listen to Radio Four, which perhaps only watch BBC One
amongst our adult television channels principally for Eastenders
and so forth, that CBeebies and access to children's channels
without advertising is something which appeals enormously to all
parents with children including those in lower income groups.
These groups tell us that these channels are particularly important
to them in terms of the services they get from the BBC.
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