Examination of Witnesses (Questions 66
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 11 JULY 2007
Ms Dorothy Byrne and Mr Jim Gray
Chairman: Good morning, welcome very
much to this session. I am sorry to have kept you waiting a few
minutes. Are there any declarations of interest that Members of
the Committee want to make?
Baroness Eccles: I would like to make
a declaration for the record, which is that I am an independent
national director of Times Newspapers Holdings Limited, which
is a wholly owned subsidiary of News International. We have extremely
specific and limited responsibilities which do not include any
matters concerned with finance or policy regarding the newspapers.
Q66 Lord King of Bridgwater:
I am doing a thing called The Iraq Commission, at the moment,
which is being done by Channel 4, for which they are paying me.
Ms Byrne: Watch it on Saturday night at 7.30!
Q67 Chairman:
Thank you very much. Having got that over, let us start. Welcome.
I think you know what we are doing; we are looking at media ownership
and the news, but what we are also doing, in coming up to that,
is looking at how the agendas of news have changed; the way that
people access the news is changing, the process of news gathering—how
that has changed—and the impact of ownership, and concentration
of media ownership, on the balance and diversity of opinion seen
in the news. So it is, at this stage, very wide in its reach.
Could I begin, then, as far as Channel 4 is concerned, by asking
you this: has the production of news become more or less expensive
over the past ten years, as far as Channel 4 is concerned? How
do you view that?
Ms Byrne: I think it would be good if Jim answered
about the costs of news production because he is doing it every
day and can explain that perhaps better than me. As far as we
are concerned, paying a substantial sum of money for our news
is something that we are absolutely committed to. So if some costs
have gone down because of technological progress then we have
aimed to switch that money into paying more for original journalism.
Q68 Chairman:
Let me cut through that. The real point is this: we have been
told, both in this Committee and outside, that news channels are
inherently unprofitable in this country; there is no way you can
actually make a profit out of running a news channel. Is that
something you would agree with?
Ms Byrne: I am proud to say that Channel
4 News loses more money for Channel 4 than any other programme
that we make!
Q69 Chairman:
You are proud to say that?
Ms Byrne: Yes.
Mr Gray: I do my best!
Ms Byrne: I am not sure what the current funding
gap is but I think it is about £10 million. I always say
to the news: "That shows how much we love you".
Q70 Chairman:
Excuse me interrupting, but that is a pretty flip answer, is it
not, really? Surely, you would like to have a news programme that
was washing its face; that was profitable. People do not normally,
in the media industry, like actually running things which are
being subsidised by other parts of the business.
Mr Gray: Good morning, my Lord Chairman. I should
explain who I am. I am the editor of Channel 4 News but,
also, the head of the department at ITN which makes all of the
news services—that is News at Noon, More4 News, the
evening programme at 7 and all the online. It is true, as Dorothy
says, it is about £20 million we get to make all those programmes,
and I think the ad revenue around those slots is about ten-ish.
It could be I could offer to give Channel 4 a programme more in
line with the revenue—it could be done; a decent little
news programme could be done for half the price. However, it would
not be able to do what is set out in the remit, and primarily
that is the journalistic parts of the remit. The technology has
made the cost of news processing and news gathering cheaper over
the last ten years, so in the field we can deploy fewer people
to do what we used to do years ago: satellite links are coming
down, you can take portable satellites where you used to have
to book through foreign broadcasters, and back at the newsroom
processing of news, the picture, the graphics and the scripts,
are all converging; the technology that does that is becoming
very much similar so that an individual can actually do more than
one role these days. However, if you just went down that route
into a highly effective news processing operation it would look
quite good; it would look quite sharp on air, but you would very
rarely find out new and serious information, because it spends
its money on the processing side rather than the journalism side.
So that is the remit we are set—it is very strong on original,
revelatory journalism—and the cost of that has not come
down; that is people; that is not technology.
Q71 Chairman:
How many people do you employ?
Mr Gray: Overall it has gone up. About five
years ago it was about 110 and right now it is coming on 140 because
its services have expanded with the More4 News service
and online.
Q72 Chairman:
You are really saying, for the foreseeable future and in the past
as well, that with a news programme like what you do with your
7 o'clock news programme and all that, there is no way you are
ever going to make money out of that.
Mr Gray: I think it is pretty difficult, actually,
to say in terms that you would actually make money. You asked
Dorothy that you are hearing the received view there is no future
for news channels. I think by that you did actually mean news
channels not a news programme. That is true; I do not think you
can because of the existence of News 24—they do it
for free. ITV used to have a news channel but they got out of
the game because I do not think there is the advertising revenue
for two news channels, commercial ones, up against the BBC, but
when it comes to our form of news, which is a shaped news programme,
the premium paid on journalism, talent and expertise—specialists
journalists, foreign viewers—it is difficult for me to see
that that would make the channel money, frankly..
Q73 Chairman:
What that means as far as policy for Channel 4 is concerned is
that the money has got to come from elsewhere, either in the Channel
4 budget or extraneously. I suppose there is an implied subsidy
from analogue, and once you go from analogue to digital, that
implied subsidy disappears. What happens next?
Ms Byrne: Our view would be that whatever happens
Channel 4 News as it is must continue, so a means must
be found to ensure that we have the funding to continue. Overall,
at the moment, Channel 4's average percentage audience is 10%
and for the news it is 5%. If we continue, as we must, with our
one-hour, serious news programme in which 40-50% of its content
is foreign, that programme is not going to make money. But we
should not cut back on its seriousness, its quality or its length—I
am absolutely sure of that. I am sure that that is right, not
just for Channel 4 but, also, for British democracy. I think the
existence of Channel 4 News is vital as a very serious
competitor to the BBC.
Q74 Chairman:
We will come on to some of the figures, but tell us, generally,
how many people watch the 7 o'clock news?
Ms Byrne: About a million. That, since 2001,
has held at a time when other programmes have gone down in other
broadcasters. We are pleased with that.
Mr Gray: What we take from that is—and
some people might call it a niche, but a million is still a good
number—that there is still a market for serious, in-depth
news. Perhaps that is where we should place even more of a premium:
the trust, the accuracy and the depth which you do not get in
other outlets, even though they are multiplying exponentially.
So this is bucking the trend, frankly, for our audience has gone
up beyond 6%. It is around about one million and that is stable,
whereas other news programmes are running down.
Q75 Chairman:
Basically, what you are saying is that in the foreseeable future,
over the next few years, unless there is some public subsidy,
public support—however you want to put it—the kind
of news programmes that you are running at the moment, it is not
going to be possible to run.
Ms Byrne: Channel 4, as I said, has a funding
gap. I would always come back to saying that whatever happens
the most important part of Channel 4 is its news and current affairs,
and means must be found to maintain them at length in prime time.
Q76 Lord Maxton:
That is exactly the point I wanted to make. Is one of your problems
the timing of that hour? That 7 to 8 time is competing almost
every day with the two most popular broadcasting events each day,
which is Coronation Street and Eastenders—at
least part of your programme is. If you were at a different time
do you think you would get a better viewing?
Ms Byrne: I think it is a good time. We are
satisfied with that time. It is just at the beginning of prime
time. I am not sure that people want to sit down at 8 o'clock
at night and watch a one-hour programme, although of course on
More4 we have started a half-hour programme, and that is doing
very well and has increased its viewers by about 40% in the last
year.
Q77 Lord Maxton:
You are moving into radio. Are you using news on that? Are you
using the same staff to provide that news? If so, are you getting
extra revenue for it?
Ms Byrne: We will set up a radio team but our
proposal is that they work alongside the team that we have got
so that we can have economies of scale. I think that we will obviously
have to have a proper dedicated news team, particularly that programme
in the morning. I think it is an incredibly important programme.
Again and again you hear people say that the Today programme
sets the political agenda of the day. Now, that may well be true,
but in a democracy is it right that one programme sets the agenda
of the day? So for that programme we need proper, separate staffing.
That is the most important programme because it is in the morning
that there really is that democratic deficit, although we will
have programmes at lunchtime and in the evening and on the other
services. The E4 Channel is one where we will aim particularly
to find imaginative ways to reach out to young people, who, obviously,
it is very important that we try to engage in the news.
Q78 Bishop of Manchester:
If I am at home at around 7 o'clock I will invariably look at
Channel 4 News before switching over later on to see what
is happening in my diocese in Coronation Street. I wonder
if you could articulate what it is that, for me, is attractive
and informative and, really, quite valuable about Channel 4
News? In other words, can you—and you touched on this
a little earlier in an answer—define more sharply exactly
what it is you are after in the Channel 4 News programme,
and then perhaps analyse a bit what you see to be the chief differences
between what you are after in Channel 4 News and what the
other channels are doing in theirs?
Mr Gray: Let us start with the obvious point
of difference. Lord Maxton was asking about the slot, the 7 to
8 pm, one hour. That is a very obvious difference between Channel
4 News and other news programmes—twice the length. However,
it is not just a point of difference, it is the
point of difference that makes quite a lot of the other points
of difference possible: in depth, the range, the surprise, the
forum for debate, taking things further and taking the viewer
into places where they had not expected to go. That would be much
less possible if it was a half-hour programme. Remember, we are
the news supplier to Channel 4; there is no other news programme,
so we have to choose venues as well, so it has to be around that
main news event. If you had only half-an-hour you would find your
flexibility to move into the other revelatory, surprising elements
and charging and provocative elements much less possible and much
more constrained. So I would say the slot is not just one item
amongst many; it is a very important point of difference. When
you define the programme what we try to do is have the viewer
leave the programme having a sense of the most important and interesting
things that have happened that day, but, also, the sense that
they have not just heard about them in the same way as they could
have somewhere else. So we try to package the news events and
take them further with a lot more energy. That is one thing I
really stress often to the presenter, Jon Snow; we try to bring
energy and fizz to the studio and a real burning sense of curiosity
that the programme is absolutely trying to find things out, so
that you can feel the programme straining to go further and find
out the challenge to uncover. It is that aspect, that the programme
is very active; it is not a passive purveyor of stuff that has
happened that day; it is out there finding it out.
Q79 Bishop of Manchester:
It is a kind of news magazine programme.
Mr Gray: Yes, I would think it is a kind of
hybrid; it is news/current affairs. I suppose the nearest to it
would be Newsnight, although Newsnight is probably
more at the current affairs end whereas Channel 4 News
is more at the news end of that spectrum.
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