Written evidence from Voice of the Listener
& Viewer
Voice of the Listener & Viewer
(VLV) is an independent, non-profit-making association, free from
political, commercial and sectarian affiliations, working for
quality and diversity in broadcasting. VLV represents the interests
of listeners and viewers as citizens and consumers across the
full range of broadcasting issues. VLV is concerned with the structures,
regulation, funding and institutions that underpin the British
Broadcasting system. The
World Service is central to
the BBC's mission and ethos and has therefore been a key interest
and concern of VLV.
1. Introduction
VLV is ALARMED at
the scale of the cuts government proposes to make in the BBC World
Service. VLV members have always regarded the World Service as
a core part of the BBC, standing for the best of BBC, and British,
values - almost universally applauded at home as well as abroad
even when other aspects of BBC activity have come under severe
and widespread criticism. The loss of nearly a quarter of the
workforce will inflict inevitable damage on the English World
Service and leave the BBC with a portfolio of language services
barely half that of the Voice of America - and that leaves out
of account the 37 services in the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Radio
Free Asia 'stable' also at the disposal of the USA.
2. SUMMARY
VLV makes the following points to the Committee,
substantiating our opposition to the proposed cuts.
It is illogical and inconsistent in terms of stated
government priorities in the area of foreign policy, international
development and the UK's global 'soft power' influence - diplomatically,
culturally and in the provision of credible information and analysis.
The 25% cut in jobs will damage the output and quality
of the service well beyond the specific areas to be reduced or
removed. VLV accepts, of course, the need for cost reductions,
efficiency savings and internal re-prioritization. We question
strongly, however, spending cuts on a scale which seem to represent
a de-prioritization of the UK's international broadcasting effort
generally and which send out to the world a 'downgrade' signal
- contrary to our real and long-term national interest.
Language services, which do a distinct and different
job from the English World Service, have been cut or weakened
to several target countries where we consider they are still needed.
It is difficult to make secure medium/long term judgments
about different countries' and societies' information and communications
shortages and needs. Services once abandoned are difficult to
restart quickly. New communications technology can be more quickly
and comprehensively blocked than more traditional transmission
methods.
The long term implications of the new funding agreement
between the government and the BBC raise some problematic issues
as to precisely how and by whom output and funding decisions will
be taken for the World Service, in a dispensation when World Service
costs will be met by BBC's licence-payers themselves.
3. IT IS
ILLOGICAL IN
POLICY TERMS
The Coalition Government gave an early and welcome
signal of its commitment to global citizenship obligations when
it ring-fenced the budget of the Department for International
Development. Maintaining this stance on that Department whilst
cutting the World Service budget by at least 16%, involving a
25% staff cut, is hard to understand when the World Service itself
has proved over many decades to be perhaps the most respected
and cost- effective method of fulfilling the UK's international
obligations. In many people's opinion it has been more penetrating,
credit-accruing and economical than many of the aid programmes
assembled by government, IGOs and NGOs to help countries in the
developing world. Testimonies from the great and good, and from
ordinary listeners, tell how the World Service exemplifies universal
principles and cultural values flowing out from Britain.
VLV asks the Committee to review the present proposals
against the government's stated policy priorities and BBC World
Service's record over many years.
4. THE OUTPUT
REDUCTIONS AND
JOB LOSSES
VLV accepts, as the Foreign Secretary and others
have said - the BBC World Service cannot be immune from the general
financial environment. Immunity or ring-fencing is one thing,
disproportionate cuts are another. Rarely has a vital area of
expenditure been as un-ring-fenced or un-immune
as this; rarely has there been so glaring a contradiction inside
a single area of policy. VLV does not have detailed statistical
knowledge of Bush House operations. We have, though, been given
to understand that language service closures and reductions account
for only a small proportion (around one hundred) of the
six hundred and fifty staff cuts, from the current workforce of
two thousand four hundred. We wonder therefore what is the rationale
behind the several hundred other job losses and what the implications
will be for the quality and range of programming in the English
schedules as well as in those retained foreign languages where
investment is being reduced. The cuts also raise major issues
around programme transmission and reception quality- not only
its clarity and reach, but also its reliability, security and
its immunity to government interference in target countries.
We hope that the Committee's enquiries will provide
answers to these questions; and that the Committee's recommendations
will reflect those answers and seek to mitigate or modify what
is now proposed. We would like the Committee to examine the BBC's
prediction of a thirty million, out of one hundred and eighty
million, audience loss; and whether this might be an underestimate
of the damage. We think the Committee needs to take account, where
relevant, of the role played by BBC World Service Television.
We think the Committee should probe what the BBC World Service
Director has in mind when he says: "BBC World Service English
schedules will become simpler and some programmes will be decommissioned".
5. CRITICAL MASS
IS CRUCIAL
IF THE
SERVICE IS
TO BE
ABLE TO
CONTINUE TO
MAKE A
MAJOR CONTRIBUTION
TO INTERNATIONAL
BROADCASTING
The Foreign Secretary has stated that the BBC World
Service will still be able to make a major contribution. Maybe
it will, but VLV questions what looks like a blithely optimistic
assumption that BBC professionalism and the BBC brand will 'see
us through' in a global media environment which grows ever more
competitive on all platforms (radio, television, internet and
mobile).
The current position which, in VLV's view, needs
to be maintained and sustained is not one where the UK merely
does well. It is one where the BBC is at the top - achieving through
a combination of quality and scale a position of global influence
through soft power which (unlike the USA) it could never attain
in military hardware.
The critical mass underpinning the World Service's
pre-eminence in international broadcasting rests on its integration
into the BBC as national broadcaster (an asset almost unique among
the major international broadcasters). It rests also on the World
Service programming schedules in English in combination with a
substantial portfolio of language services reflecting a concern
for, and commitment to, a diverse range of countries and cultures.
The English-literate middle-class professionals and cosmopolitans
who can tune into the English World Service are crucial - along
with expatriate communities and business travellers. But the language
services which go out to meet people in their own tongues are
equally important because they can reach where English programming
cannot and they send a different, distinct and complementary message
out from Britain to the world. So language service disinvestment
- whether in the form of total closures, output reductions or
transmission limitations - inevitably reduces raw audience numbers
and, additionally, sends a downbeat mood message to the world
at large. The portfolio of 23 language services, planned for retention,
is more than most international broadcasters but it must be set
against the for 45 deployed by the Voice of America and the 30
at the disposal of Deutsche Welle.
VLV hopes the Committee will take a view on whether
this is a satisfactory state of affairs from the standpoint of
international broadcasting and British influence internationally.
6. Which Language Services? - Why it Matters to the
BBC and to Britain
VLV acknowledges the need for prioritization: and
that, if cuts must BE made, they
should fall on services to countries which are becoming more democratic:
benefiting from diversity and independence in the fields of information
and culture: assisted by membership actual, or aspired to, in
institutions like the European Union and the Council of Europe.
There has been a reasonable compatibility - if not identity -
of view between UK government priorities around governance, security
and development and the BBC's own judgements of broadcasting need
and effectiveness. During the Cold War , in a bi-polar world,
wise heads - and not only inside the BBC - warned against the
damage to the BBC's reputation for impartiality and independence
if we were perceived as broadcasting only or mainly to the country's
enemies. In the new world enemies are less easily definable; but
there are identifiable problem areas and problem issues, predominantly
focused in the Muslim world. The planned government cuts will
hit Russia and China where high cost-per-listener broadcasting
was sustained at government insistence; they will hit large portions
of the Indian Sub-Continent (but not Pakistan) and of Africa whose
mass audiences have traditionally provided the bulk of the BBC's
global total. The Muslim world will meanwhile, from the East Mediterranean,
though the Gulf, Iraq and Iran to Afghanistan and Pakistan will
be the recipient of substantially more resources (although the
costs of BBC Arabic Television are to be reduced). The overall
message signals a broadcasting presence that seeks to be worldwide
in English but which focuses its language investment on countries
and regions rated as politically and culturally problematic for
Britain and the West. The retention of life-line broadcasting
in Burmese and Somali (and this latter is on the edge of the Islamic
zone) does not really address the issues of over-concentration
and narrow focus.
VLV considers it would be instructive for the
Committee to ascertain what percentage of BBC World Service total
resources is being devoted to an area holding less than five percent
of global population, and to make a judgment about whether this
represents a balanced investment of resources, judged against
broadcasting need and the national interest.
7. RISK AND
REVERSIBILITY
A key element of the traditional World Service mission
is the assurance to audiences that it will be there when needed:
BBC content prevailing over all attempts at obstruction. This
Imperative has always been thought central to the
choice of transmission and distribution methods. Whilst short-wave
broadcasting has been vulnerable to jamming (but at great cost
to the jammer, and with less than total success), recent experience
shows that new media platforms can be quickly and easily blocked.
What could be done by the authorities in Cairo could, in some
respects at least, be replicated in Moscow, Beijing, or another
local power centre, if certain circumstances arose.
The military takeover in Thailand, quite soon after
the closure of the Thai Service, illustrated the difficulty of
predicting events and reversing resource decisions.
Against this background we are concerned at the long
list of services, covering huge swathes of highly populated territory,
where direct radio broadcasting will cease completely or be diminished,
and distribution confined to online. The list includes Russian
and Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian, Swahili and Spanish for Latin
America.
VLV considers that the Committee should probe
the potential implications and consequences of such disinvestment
decisions.
8. BBC WORLD SERVICE
AND THE
NEW FUNDING
DISPENSATION
VLV were surprised - in view of the centrality of
World Service to the BBC's mission and ethos - by the apparent
meekness of BBC senior management when such severe cuts were under
discussion. We heard reports (not denied by the BBC) that the
BBC itself was contemplating variant proposals whose impact in
some respects (including on the language services) would have
been even harsher; but that the BBC did not in the end submit
them, having been told that they would not be acceptable to the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
On a more positive note the BBC Director-General
has since said he wishes to see increased investment in the World
Service. VLV feels, however, that it is difficult to be confident
about this knowing that World Service will in three years or so
be integrated into the BBC's comprehensive budgeting framework
which will be subject to the cumulative impact of the cuts imposed
by the Government in October 2010.
11 February 2011
| 
