Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
180-199)
MR RICHARD
WILLIAMS, MR
RICK HILL,
MR TREVOR
BIRNEY AND
MR PAUL
CONNOLLY
18 NOVEMBER 2009
Q180 Chairman: This is one of the
reasons this Committee travels around a lot in Northern Ireland
because it is very Belfastcentric. Belfast is an important and
very fine city. It is one to which we wish unlimited prosperity
but nevertheless it is not Northern Ireland.
Mr Connolly: I am from a small
village in the Glens of Antrim and you would not see a television
camera there from one end of the year to the other. Another benefit
of it would be we would have multi-skilled journalists who would
be video journalists as well as print journalists and possibly
also audio journalists, so you would have these trained reporters
living, working, breathing and sleeping in communities and not
stuck in offices in Belfast and that to me is a very important
innovation which would help us.
Mr Birney: When you look back
to PSB2 and what Ofcom were trying to achieve with PSB2, and then
what Lord Carter was trying to achieve with Digital Britain,
basically it was not as much about the here and now but about
the future. It is going to back to where we are going to be and
how we access our news and current affairs in five or ten years'
time. What we do know about that is our habits are highly likely
to be very different than they are now. It is very unlikely that
we are going to have to sit down in front of a TV at six o'clock
in the evening to see our news. It is highly likely that we will
be getting our news from all sorts of sources, whether it be the
internet, mobile phones or whatever other technology appears.
What Lord Carter in Digital Britain was trying to do was
to ring-fence and future-proof that provision of news so that
we are always going to get a source of public purpose news from
somewhere; news that is going to have integrity; news that is
going to have sustainability; news that is going to have reach.
Chairman, you talked earlier about image and talked about how
Northern Ireland is portrayed in the rest of the UK, whereas where
I come from in Fermanagh, if you go down there, the issue is how
Fermanagh is portrayed by the Belfast-based broadcasters. The
issue there is that the BBC has 700 staff based mainly in Belfast
and one, or two maybe at tops, in Fermanagh. What Lord Carter
was trying to do was recalibrate all of that so that news was
not simply about the BBC but also ensuring that we always had
plurality of provision and that wherever that provision came from,
that second source, that it had proper sustainability.
Q181 Chairman: Is not the problem
that, yes, you want plurality of provision but you also want centrality
of provision within Northern Ireland? You talked about the internet
and all the rest of it. If you have too much fragmentation, then
you lose the opportunity, surely, of having central news that
is applicable to the province of Northern Ireland as an integral
part of both the United Kingdom and the island of Ireland, and
have you not got to get the balance right there?
Mr Birney: Absolutely and we would
agree with what Digital Britain set out on how to ensure
that, whether that is in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and
the English regions. We agree with the infrastructure and that
at the moment what needs to be serviced is television news output
for news. That is where the vast majority of people are coming
together at six o'clock in the evening to access news. Yet in
Northern Ireland, according to the BBC figures, something like
350,000 people visit their Northern Ireland News Online
website. That is maybe three or four times as many people as watching
UTV News at six o'clock in the evening so you can see how things
are changing.
Q182 Stephen Pound: Is that a daily
figure? Is that a total figure?
Mr Birney: It is a total figure
per day.
Q183 Stephen Pound: Per day?
Mr Birney: So that people are
now coming to the internet to watch the news. What we are saying
is the Belfast Telegraph or the Irish News or the
The News Letter simply cannot cope with an organisation
sitting very dominantly in Northern Ireland and being able to
update its website minute-by-minute hour-by-hour. Paul would be
very lucky if he could update it once a day because he simply
does not have the resources to do that. Digital Britain
and IFNC were meant to be the silver bullet solution that brought
in newspapers and broadcasters whose business models were being
challenged. The ITV business model, as we know, is under severe
challenge. UTV's figures today would attest to that; again advertising
has been dropping horrendously in the last few months and the
outlook is not that bright. What PSB and IFNC was about was to
ensure that, whatever happens, that in the next five or ten years
there will always be a second service of news, whatever the reach
of that, whether the majority of people reached it through mobile
phones or still by watching television at six o'clock in the evening.
What it is about is saying give the money, put it in the middle,
and let Ofcom or others (we would say others) decide how best
to reach the audience, whether or not in five years' time they
realise that television is not the best way to provide plurality
of service. We say that it could be on-line and maybe a pilot
in Northern Ireland should focus on-line. We believe it should.
We believe the money that should be spent in Northern Ireland
coming from INFC should be there to be spent on challenging that
dominant position that the BBC has so that, yes, you can look
up a story on the BBC website but you can get an alternative view
by turning to a website that has the same sort of level and equity
of funding as the BBC. UTV, the Belfast Telegraph or any
other newspaper or media organisation in Northern Ireland simply
cannot compete with the BBC at the moment so we have something
of an Orwellian society where there is only one major source of
news. How do we change that?
Q184 Chairman: Do you agree with
this?
Mr Hill: We have already given
you a written submission on some of our thinking.
Q185 Chairman: You are now giving
evidence in public; do you agree?
Mr Hill: I will give the evidence
in public. We believe that there ought to be a broadly based public
service broadcasting fund for Northern Ireland. That would include
news and it would include other things as well that would be captured
within public service broadcasting. That broadly based fund would
support all those who are creating content for distribution, by
whatever means, whether it is on-line or on television in the
more traditional linear models that currently exist. We believe
that this is important. If you look at the demographics in Northern
Ireland, the only other area of the UK with such a young population
is London, so they are consuming media in different ways, they
are watching less and less television, so you are going to need
to support the change in the medium to longer term and to support
public service broadcasting across the range of distribution platforms.
Q186 Chairman: The diversity of distribution
must not compromise, surely, the quality of production? So in
other words what is being produced and distributed must be of
a high quality if it is going to serve the interests of Northern
Ireland both within and without Northern Ireland?
Mr Birney: Absolutely and that
is what Lord Carter set out to achieve. As former editor of current
affairs at UTV I won two Royal Television Society awards for indepth
investigations that were broadcast in their current affairs series
Insight. UTV does not broadcast Insight any more.
It does not do any more current affairs investigations. It has
jettisoned that so that means we have only one platform that produces
investigative current affairs now and that is on the BBC at half
past ten on a Tuesday night. UTV does not do that type of current
affairs investigation.
Q187 Chairman: UTV does provide something
which is of enormous value within Northern Ireland in its news
broadcasts.
Mr Birney: In its news, absolutely.
Its audiences come two-fold as opposed to the BBC.
Q188 Chairman: As one who watches
that when I am in Northern Ireland I am always impressed by both
the diversity and the quality.
Mr Birney: Absolutely. You only
have to turn to the Minister, your DUP colleague Nelson McCausland,
in his call for a pilot for Northern Ireland. He said he wanted
it broadened for current affairs. You have to ask him why he wanted
it broadened to current affairs if he felt that the supply of
current affairs in Northern Ireland was sufficient.
Q189 Chairman: Are all of you united
in wanting a pilot for Northern Ireland?
Mr Williams: Absolutely we are
united in wanting a pilot for Northern Ireland. I think it would
be true to say that there would be different emphases amongst
us as to what that pilot should be, but the first point where
we are all absolutely in agreement is—and maybe it was colourful
language—the notion that Northern Ireland was robbed in
the context of the only financially backed Government intervention
coming out of Digital Britain; we would collectively agree.
Northern Ireland Screen is already on record, and I am happy to
reaffirm it to you, that we would not have prioritised news provision
as the most immediate need for further public intervention. We
would emphasise, as I have already said, production and portrayal.
We would certainly endorse what has been said about the digital
future, about the fact that the landscape is very much changing,
that the models of distribution are changing and that Northern
Ireland from every way—an economic way, a cultural way,
a representational way, a constitutional way—needs to be
at the forefront of that, not lagging at the tail of it. Northern
Ireland Screen's view is that we would not have prioritised news
but it does not therefore follow that Northern Ireland should
not have a pilot. There can easily be a pilot that includes current
affairs, that has a strong focus on digital distribution, and
includes production and portrayal.
Q190 Chairman: Do you gentlemen go
along with that?
Mr Birney: Absolutely.
Q191 Chairman: So there is a unity
among you on this pilot issue?
Mr Birney: Yes.
Chairman: This is something we
are anxious to be able to deliberate on and reflect upon. We may
well come to recommend it. I want to ask you in a few minutes
about the sort of recommendations you would hope we might make,
but before that I know that both Mr Grogan and Mrs Robinson want
briefly to ask some questions. We have about ten minutes left.
Q192 Mr Grogan: I will be very brief
and my apologies for going in and out but I am hosting a reception
on behalf of the university in my constituency, York. That would
be my first point. Do you protest too much really? There are going
to be three pilots. There is a Digital Britain Bill, which
I agree is misnamed, to be published later in the week. Those
pilots are going to be largely to plug the gap in regional television
where I wish in Yorkshire we had half your provision. Given that
one is going to be in Wales and one is going to be in Scotland,
are you being a bit unfair to the English regions? Can you not
wait like most of the English regions will have to wait until
2012/2013, particularly when you have such a good UTV.
Mr Connolly: UTV's position is
quite precarious. ITV is a big institution sitting there and UTV
maybe represents 2% of output. If ITV wants to do something it
is very hard to see how UTV can stop it or respond. If ITV were
to hand back its public service obligation, it is not unforeseeable
that Northern Ireland could be left without a significant news
provider. It is not just speaking as a representative of a commercial
company but also as a news consumer in Northern Ireland. It is
absolutely vital for our democracy that news continues and that
we have certainty about news continuing. That is a big concern.
Q193 Mr Grogan: I know we are pushed
for time so perhaps I will just ask one more question, if that
is all right, Chairman. You said you worked for UTV and so on.
Part of Digital Britain is that the existing companies
will not be allowed to compete for the contract. You may have
one view of UTV's efficiency and so on, but they have got radio
interests, they talked a little bit about their on-line presence
and so on. If there was an independently funded news consortium
would you be prepared to take them on head-to-head and do you
not think they should be allowed to compete with you?
Mr Birney: Just to correct you,
UTV would be allowed to tender.
Q194 Mr Grogan: Not alone though,
they would have to find a partner.
Mr Birney: That is not a decision
or something that we put into it.
Q195 Mr Grogan: Why should they not
be able to compete?
Mr Birney: I am completely competitive,
absolutely: leave it open and let us work it out. This is a Bill
that will pass through the House of Commons in the next few months—
Q196 Mr Grogan: It should allow them
to compete effectively with you?
Mr Birney: Absolutely.
Mr Connolly: No-one minds losing
a tender but we want the option of getting into the tender.
Q197 Chairman: You make your point
very well, yes.
Mr Williams: May I quickly respond
to the first point. No, I do not think we protest too much. I
would take you back to the wider context of Digital Britain,
of the Ofcom reports and prior to that I would take you back to
what I was saying that Northern Ireland is anonymous—genuinely
anonymous—and has been for my lifetime anyway on the UK
networks, so we do not protest too much.
Mr Hill: Can I put some figures
on that anonymity. It has gone from 0% to 0.03% of network production
as measured by Ofcom.
Q198 Mrs Robinson: If you have nothing
how do you get anything?
Mr Hill: 0.03% is where it is
at the minute. It is going to reach 2% by 2012. It cannot come
soon enough so if we are protesting, it is because there is a
long history of feeling a little colder in relation to fair funding.
Chairman: You feel out in the cold. Mrs
Robinson?
Q199 Mrs Robinson: Rick has highlighted
the issue very well that yet again Northern Ireland is treated
as a backwater and not recognised as very able with people like
this here coming and being able to sell our wares. Can I be devil's
advocate and just put two points to you? Do you think that broadcasting
should be devolved to Northern Ireland, either in the short term
or the long term? What would be the advantages or the disadvantages
of that? Just something simple!
Mr Hill: Can I push that back
and say that that is a matter for you and for the politicians
to decide.
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