Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
WEDNESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2008
NIGEL CHAPMAN
AND RICHARD
THOMAS
Q120 Sir John Stanley: You are
ahead of it now?
Nigel Chapman: Yes.
Q121 Chairman: Perhaps you could
send us a note, when you have this comprehensive information,
and update us as soon as you are able to.
Nigel Chapman: When we have launched
the 24-hour service and done the new surveys, we will give you
a comprehensive picture.
Chairman: That would be very helpful.
Q122 Mr Horam: What is the state
of play on the Iranian television project?
Nigel Chapman: Persian TV?
Mr Horam: Yes.
Nigel Chapman: It is going well.
Again, I would not like to sign in blood a date for launch, but
we are on target to launch before the end of this calendar year.
Q123 Mr Horam: Before the end
of this calendar year?
Nigel Chapman: Yes. We are doing
pilots now, and we have equipped the studios in the new part of
Broadcasting House. Pretty well the whole team has arrived, although
a small number have not. They are piloting the news programmes
and feature programmes, so I think we are making very good progress.
Q124 Mr Horam: Have you had difficulty
in recruiting the right quality of people? You mentioned this
in relation to the Arabic TV station. Have you had the same problems
with the Iranian one?
Nigel Chapman: No, because we
are on a different phase, you see. I think that working for Persian
television from the BBC in London is a very attractive proposition
to many people who want to do journalism and speak Farsi. Quite
a lot of them have come from Iran, without hindrance. Quite a
lot of them have come from the Middle East, from Dubai and places
of that kind. There are a fair number from America and Europe.
So far, in terms of getting the people in to train, we have done
well. The issue with Persian TV, as against Arabic, is that with
Persian TV, this is a team of people who have never made this
sort of television before, with the odd honourable exception.
With Arabic, you had an initial staffing take-up of 140 people,
most of whom had worked in television already, and had worked
for other people or had worked for the BBC in the past or whatever.
We are starting from a lower base of technical knowledge and understanding,
but I have been pleased with progress so far. For a group of people
who are not used to making continuous television news and feature
programmes, there is a fair amount of style and elegance about
their work and smartness, and that augurs very well because the
other point is that the market for Persian TV is less crowded
than Arabic, so if you can put on a half-decent show for eight
hours a night with a good range of programming, you will become
the market leader, and we want to become the market leader.
Q125 Mr Horam: What about the
target audience? You talked about 8 million people in a memorandum
that you sent to us, but now your target seems to have been reduced
to 3 million.
Nigel Chapman: There seems to
have been a slight misunderstanding about that. The formal target
with the Foreign Office is 3 million new Persian television viewers
in this financial year.
Q126 Mr Horam: In this financial
year?
Nigel Chapman: Yes, in this financial
year, because if we go on air in December, we shall have four
months and we shall be measuring the audience straightaway, so
we shall have some indication of how we are doing. We are looking
for 10 million people to use the Persian service as a whole—radio,
television and new media. The 7 million figure is aspirational
and a longer-term issue.
Q127 Mr Horam: With no date attached
to it.
Nigel Chapman: We set the figures
with the Foreign Office annually, so we are doing the first year
first. I hope that, over time, we shall have more than 3 million
people using Persian TV, because you must remember that it can
be seen in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, so there is not just the
Iranian audience to think about. There is a long-term figure and
a short-term one.
Q128 Chairman: You talked about
the market. Is your main rival Voice of America's Persian language
television?
Nigel Chapman: Indeed, yes.
Q129 Chairman: Presumably, the
Iranians run their own services.
Nigel Chapman: Of course. They
run extensive television channels, but the issue is that, when
you look at and compare them, the range of views and stories from
the BBC and international broadcasters generally will be more
pluralistic and wide-ranging, with a wider range of views and
opinions, than those on Iranian TV, which has a narrower range
of view and opinions.
Q130 Chairman: May I ask you about
other languages? The memorandum referred to taking a first step
into Turkish, with a current affairs programme broadcast on Turkey's
24-hour news channel. Do you have any thoughts about moving further
in that direction and whether you might develop into other languages
that have previously been mentioned, such Urdu for Pakistan or
some African languages?
Nigel Chapman: The Turkish programme—it
is a series of small programmes that are aggregated together at
weekends to make one big one—is being done on the margins
of our resources. We did not specifically ask for money for that
in the spending review, but the Turkish service has been very
inventive. We have good facilities in Bush House, and they are
used very efficiently. I would not anticipate coming to the Foreign
Office and asking for a major extension of that activity. I think
that the mix of radio and television that we provide for Turkey
is about right now. On the other hand, I think that there is a
very strong case for looking again at, and putting forward as
part of a bid, both the propositions to which you alluded: the
Urdu TV issue and some bespoke programming for Africa in English.
If the Urdu issue is looked at objectively, where in the world
would you like to see a service from the BBC that would introduce
a range of opinions, ideas and story treatments that would be
dispassionate, thoughtful and carefully considered? I cannot think
of a place that would be much higher on the list than Pakistan.
When it comes to African matters, obviously the World Service
has a very large audience for radio in Africa, but the African
media scene is changing. If you go to Africa and to capital cities,
you see the impact of TV and particularly satellite television.
If the BBC—and, through the BBC, Britain—wants to
reach out to African opinion formers in the Nairobis of this world,
without a television arm as part of that attack on the audience's
affections, it runs a risk of fighting a battle that it will not
win in the long run. So I think that there is a case for a limited
African television enterprise. It is something that we shall talk
about with the Government when the spending review comes up next
year. I realise, of course, that it will be a very difficult spending
review—the climate will be very difficult—so I cannot
say that we will win it, but it was in our last bid, and we still
believe that it has strong reasons to be pursued again.
Q131 Chairman: Given the way that
technology is changing so rapidly with regard to mobile phones
and more sophisticated devices, one can get television on a mobile
through a WAP connection.
Nigel Chapman: Indeed. You can
get video.
Q132 Chairman: That is all over
Africa now, is it not?
Nigel Chapman: It is. Therefore,
the video content created for television would have multiple applications
and multiple uses, but we do not have any video content on our
African website at the moment—neither very much in English,
nor anything in Swahili, Hausa or any of those languages—that
we could use as the core building blocks for that.
Q133 Chairman: Can we move on
to related financial matters? I do not know whether Mr Thomas
wants to come in. The annual report says that you went into an
operating deficit during the last financial year. Can you explain
why that happened? It says that you incurred £5.6 million
in restructuring costs. That was not the only reason for the deficit,
though, was it?
Richard Thomas: The operating
deficit was £2.8 million.[2]
When you put in that level of restructuring costs, that is by
far the biggest driver. Obviously, there are other things that
go up and down, but the main driver for that is looking forward.
We have a large savings target to hit over the three years, so
the earlier we make the savings, or at least announce them and
get on with them, the more impact they have over the three years
that we need to achieve the target. We announced some of the things
that we were going to do. As soon as we make those announcements,
to comply with UK accounting standards, we have to put in the
provisions. If you look at the cash balance, it is actually quite
high, because we stockpiled the money to pay that out. That money
will be paid out over this year and next year.
Q134 Chairman: You referred, Mr
Chapman, to closing down the Romanian service because it was not
having the impact or getting the audience that you had thought.
That service, of course, could also have been listened to in Moldova—a
country with a frozen conflict. Do you have any idea whether the
service had any impact there?
Nigel Chapman: The last time that
we measured the audience in Moldova, which was quite a long time
ago, it had an audience of about 150,000 listeners a week, which
is about 4% of the population. That was slightly better than the
percentage listenership that we got inside Romania. Some people,
not least those of Moldova, have made representations to me, to
ask why we cannot keep the service going from Moldova and not
Bucharest. Actually, the truth is that the vast bulk of the content
created to attract those 150,000 listeners in Moldova was made
in Bucharest and London, not Chisinau. It is just not practical;
they were making about 15 minutes of material a day from Moldova,
for Moldova, which is really not a sustainable service by any
stretch of the imagination. With the staff there, we are looking
into ways for them to establish their own radio service, using
funds from non-governmental organisations and other parties, which
would take some of the spirit of the BBC's journalistic activity
and continue it— admittedly, under another name. If they
were able to do so, I am sure that we would be helpful with the
equipment and so on that we have in that country at the moment.
That is the best that I can do to help in that particular situation.
It is really not cost-effective to keep a £1.2 million service
open for 150,000 people in Moldova.
Q135 Chairman: Can I switch focus
to the south Asia services? The memorandum refers to the discussions
that you have been having with your staff about those matters.
I must declare an interest as a constituency MP. As you know,
I have been contacted by constituents who work for the World Service
in the south Asian services and who are unhappy with the changes
that you are making, principally because they involve reducing
staff here and shifting to more staff in the subcontinent. Where
are you with those negotiations with your staff?
Nigel Chapman: The negotiations
are going slowly, but they are going on, and I think that we are
making progress. I know that we are making progress on it. About
this matter, I want to say that we consider the balance of staffing
between London-based staff and those who work outside the UK very
carefully. Some 25% of the World Service staff for the language
services work outside the UK. There are large numbers in the Americas,
Cairo, New Delhi, Jakarta and all over the world. One of the advantages
to that is that your staff are closer to the people that they
broadcast to and for. If you have all your services and staff
based in London, thousands of miles away from the audience, when
the audience's needs and the technology that they are using are
changing very rapidly, there is a risk of being out of touch.
I have a difference of opinion with my staff about that. I can
understand why they would like to have all the services and staff
based in London, but it is not in the audience's interest, and
it is not in the long-term interest of the service's future either.
If the service cannot adapt and bring relevant material to the
audience, it is not going to have the impact that it needs to
have in the long run and people will begin to ask questions about
why we have it. It is important that we get the balance right.
The position that they originally took was, "Frankly, we
don't want anybody to go and work in Islamabad or Delhi at all,"
which is untenable. We have made some progress since; they have
begun to see that it is part of bigger strategy.
Chairman: We look forward to receiving
an update in due course.
Q136 Ms Stuart: This is just a
small supplementary. What is the balance, as a percentage, of
staff not working in London who are overseas local staff and who
are UK staff who work abroad?
Nigel Chapman: The vast majority
of the 25% would be locally employed staff; they would not be
ex-pat staff going out from London.
Q137 Ms Stuart: So, 25% are locally
employed and 75% are ex-pats.
Nigel Chapman: No, 25% of language
service staff are working outside the UK, of which the vast majority
would be locally employed and recruited.
Q138 Ms Stuart: Does the vast
majority mean something like 80%?
Nigel Chapman: Yes, at least.
Q139 Mr Horam: You are the representative
of the World Service on the Public Diplomacy Board.
Nigel Chapman: Yes, I am.
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