Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 11 JULY 2007
Ms Dorothy Byrne and Mr Jim Gray
Q80 Bishop of Manchester:
I have been watching it for several years now. You talk about
fizz and you have got energy about what you want to do. I think
it is probably much the same as it always has been, and I noticed
in the recent Ofcom report that there is a point made there that
actually Channel 4 News has not changed—the implication
being that probably it ought to. Can you comment, first of all,
on whether, over the last five to ten years, that is an accurate
observation and then what ideas you have, if it is an accurate
observation, for changing it in the future?
Mr Gray: I actually do not think it is accurate.
Some of the agenda areas will overlap but there will be new agenda
areas that we take on. I would say that if you look at the content
now, and do a content analysis, I think you would find that the
original journalism content, on which we put a high premium, is
higher now than it was before. We strive, even when we are covering
news stories which are the major news stories of the day, that
are on all the programmes, we absolutely go hell-bent: "What
new can we bring to this story? What more can we find out?"
I would say that has definitely changed—the urge, the drive
to bring revelation and new information to life is higher than
it was before.
Q81 Bishop of Manchester:
So the Ofcom analysis, in saying that there has been very little
change, is unfair?
Mr Gray: In terms of content, yes. I am not
quite sure if that is a perceptual view—
Ms Byrne: I think it has continued to be a very
serious programme and, perhaps, that was more what they meant—that
we have not, in any way, dumbed-down. In fact, I believe that
our foreign content has become higher. I have to say, as the person
that has contracted the news, I think Channel 4 News has
got better every year. I think it is a much more exciting programme
than it used to be. Every year I genuinely believe it has got
better. I would also say, specifically, that it is more diverse
and that that thing which Channel 4 News has always had
of seeing the world from the perspective of other people and of
people in other countries has become a much more important thing
to us. It is a few years ago now that we first did, for example,
news from India, where we took the whole news to India for a week—not
just to say what is happening in India but to say how does the
world seem if you are an Indian? News from Iran, which we made,
was an outstanding programme of immense importance in that week
of programmes because it enabled you to see what it felt like
to be an Iranian; the way that Iranians saw things. I think that
in terms of multicultural Britain there is a much greater diversity
of voice now on Channel 4 News than there used to be and
I think that the work done by the cultural diversity network shows
that that is appreciated. That is of incredible importance. All
news broadcasters must do more to make people from ethnic minorities
in Britain feel that the news is not just for a select group of
white, middle-class people who went to Oxford; that their interests
and concerns are represented on the news. I have to say that I
think, year-on-year, Channel 4 News has got better and
better and that you hear a wider variety of people. You sometimes
hear people who are quite shocking, but who you have to hear because
you have to know what they think.
Q82 Chairman:
Do you think it is impartially put? Where does impartiality come
in the values that you put on the news programme?
Ms Byrne: I would say that due impartiality
is probably number one because that is what makes the viewer understand
that they can trust the news and that it is true; that it is as
true as we can make it on that day. That is what we are aiming
to be. As we move from being one nightly news programme, which
is what we were five or ten years ago, to lunchtime, More4, news
on the web and radio, in each of these new territories what we
are taking is the name Channel 4 News and saying to people:
"You can switch this on, you can tap into it but you know
that it is impartial; you know that you can trust it". I
think impartiality is incredibly important.
Q83 Lord Maxton:
Leading from that, Ofcom have suggested in their review that it
should only be the public service broadcasters, of which you are
one, who should have that impartiality requirement and that, presumably,
therefore, although you would have it on your television channel
there is not that same requirement, presumably, on your radio
or on your online services. But you would choose to do it.
Ms Byrne: Although it is not required of us
we have chosen that our online presence should also be duly impartial
because we believe that whatever territory we enter that is what
people expect of us. I personally think that all news should be
duly impartial and that it would be a retrograde step in a multicultural
society, in particular, to say that we would have news programmes
or channels which pandered to prejudices of particular groups.
I do not think it helps anybody in society to start having news
which is not duly impartial. I think that would be going backwards.
There are many countries where you turn on the news and you have
no idea whether or not it is really true. I would say, for example,
that we know that significant percentages of Muslims believe that
9/11 was a conspiracy of the American and Israeli Governments—or
7/7. Channel 4 News did a survey of Muslim opinions about
who was to blame for 7/7. Do we want a channel where that view
could be stated as being an absolute fact? Jim, what do you think?
Mr Gray: I probably disagree slightly with you
here, Dorothy, in that I cannot see a news channel working as
a commercial proposition—you are probably talking about
foxification of news channels, but as long as it was transparent
about it it might work as a commercial proposition. However, at
heart, an authentic news service as opposed to an opinion-based
news service should be duly impartial.
Q84 Lord Maxton:
In a sense that minor disagreement between you leads me to my
next question, which is what is the relationship between Channel
4 and ITN, basically? ITN are the providers of the news. Who decides
on the issues like the editorial, who is coming first; what has
been the main story and whether or not you are being impartial?
Is it ITN or is it Channel 4?
Mr Gray: It is us, ITN. It is all clearly set
out because we have a contractual relationship as a supplier to
our customer—our dearly beloved customer—but day-to-day
control rests with us at ITN. The running orders are set by us,
the agendas are set by us. Obviously, there is close consultation
with Channel 4 about things like the look and feel—
Q85 Lord Maxton:
On a daily basis?
Mr Gray: We are in contact, probably, several
times every day but actually not in the sense of Dorothy requesting,
encouraging or instructing—that does not happen. We make
up our running orders and I will probably tell Dorothy what we
are doing that night. There are certain specific instances in
which I am required to notify the channel—and it is notification,
it is not asking for permission. It would be if there were extremely
controversial items. For instance, when we had the leak of the
Attorney General's legal advice on the Iraq War the channel were
taken into confidence on that some time before when it was getting
likely, because of the consequences; the legality, the issues
around even broadcasting that. That is the most extreme but there
are other areas to do with taste and decency where I would call
a pre-transmission referral protocol, where I will just tip the
channel off that we are doing it. Frankly, it is a lack of courtesy
if Channel 4 gets a lot of calls following a news programme because
something has been in that news programme and they did not even
know. So their viewers call; the department is besieged by calls
and we did not even have the courtesy to tell them. However, it
is different from deciding content; that is decided by us.
Ms Byrne: There is a very detailed editorial
specification for each programme which lays down contractually
what that programme's aims are. For example, one of the aims of
Channel 4 News is that it should have its own independent agenda
and should not follow slavishly the agenda of other news programmes.
That is its point of difference. The format of the programme is
all laid down but on a day-to-day basis the decision on the news
running order has to lie with the people who are making the news
programme. As Jim says, we obviously talk regularly and the relationship
is such that we both know what we are aiming at. We might have
a discussion after the programme: do we both now think that was
the best lead item of that day, but if you start to have a broadcaster
tell the news journalists precisely what to put in the news every
day it would be a mess, would it not?
Q86 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Dorothy, in your role as a Channel 4 person you have to make sure
that the news is true Channel 4 news. Jim was suggesting that
it was rather a one-way discourse between you two, ie, him telling
you. I find that slightly hard to believe.
Ms Byrne: It is laid down in the contract and
we have been doing it for years; in fact, both of us have been
doing it for years, so instinctively we both know what our important
Channel 4 News stories are and it is rare that I would look at
the news and think, "Blimey! What was that about?",
because we are having these day-to-day conversations and then
we meet once a week at Channel 4 News to discuss the forward strategy
for the following weeks.
Q87 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
You clearly have a very good personal relationship and, as you
say, it has evolved over the years.
Mr Gray: There is also a format. As well as
weekly meetings there is a quarterly review of all aspects of
the programme from commercial through to editorial and we will
agree targets, so we will sit down and think what is important
to the programme in the coming year, and it may be something like
China or global climate change or the business of reproduction.
Whatever we might agree the news team will then go off and look
for stories in those areas. They will only do them if they are
newsworthy or generally meet our own criteria, not just to do
them because we have set a target to do them.
Ms Byrne: Our targets are really quite precise
about which areas of the world we think are insufficiently covered.
Q88 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Moving on to the question of the funding for the news, due to
competing with Sky the ITN budget has been considerably reduced
over the last six years for news, has it not?
Mr Gray: For Channel 4 News?
Q89 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
For the ITN news contract for ITV.
Mr Gray: For ITV, the previous one, yes.
Q90 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
How has that affected your ability to provide the kind of news
that you want to provide?
Mr Gray: Actually, minimally. It is quite a
complex relationship because the money that comes to ITN for Channel
4 to meet the general news services funds our independent autonomous
activities but part of it also goes to what we may call shared
resources. For instance, I collaborate with ITV News on the cost
of things which I really would not want to pay for on my own,
satellite tracks and things like that. You do not use them all
the time but you want them there when you need them, and, frankly,
on that news-gathering aspect of it, the shared facilities around
the news, I am getting as good a service as I ever did. In fact,
in some things I can guarantee it is better under this new contract
that we signed last year because I also have access to the facilities
of the ITV regional company news teams in a better way than I
did before, and that was something that came through, and we discussed
it with the channel and with the ITV network around the time of
the last contract, so frankly my news-gathering is better. There
is a good reason why that should be so, because you were talking
about the squeeze on budgets. Actually, the view of Channel 4
and our own view on this is not to squeeze it over our money.
I am getting similar-ish money but I have to do more for it; that
is true, so we have to become much more effective. What I said
at the beginning about those aspects of news which have shrunk
has allowed me to do more journalism because, if you look at the
budgets, more money goes on the screen than it did before. There
is less money now to spend on behind-the-scenes things, like shared
infrastructure and computers and so on. That has been squeezed
in order to preserve the journalistic content.
Q91 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Can I pick up on something you said earlier? You were talking
about the fact that with modern technology one person can do more
things, what I called multi-skilling. Of course, there does come
a point where, if you have too few people involved in a project,
that does endanger the quality of the journalism. Is there a pressure
for you to drive multi-skilling to such a point that you do not
have enough people on a story?
Mr Gray: That is a danger because there is commercial
pressure. I cannot stand aside and watch the industry as a whole
go a certain way and then become uncompetitive. However, you cannot
buy into it so deeply that you cannot provide the right product,
so you are right: for me this is an everyday balance between multi-skilling
and making sure that what is on the screen is the right stuff.
As I said at the beginning, we could give Channel 4 a programme
at half the price and it probably would be quite good, but we
would not find many things out.
Ms Byrne: There are longer pieces that we do
that I do not think they could be done with that level of multi-skilling
because we are a news/current affairs cross-over programme, so
we have agreed the limits on multi-skilling in our new newsroom
that we are constructing at the moment. I should also say with
regard to your last question that our contract with ITN runs to
great lengths and one reason for that is to ensure that Channel
4 gets value for money at every moment and that if there are any
reductions in ITV's service we are protected.
Q92 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Would Channel 4 be happy if ITV were to gain complete ownership
of ITN?
Ms Byrne: One of the points in our contract
is obviously that we could review the situation were that to happen,
and were that to happen that is what we would do. I think it would
depend but we have got a number of clauses in the contract. One,
obviously, relates to the ownership of ITN but also to the ownership
of ITV and to any reduction in ITV's service. We have tried to
imagine every potential scenario and to protect our interests
should that happen.
Q93 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Can I go back to a point that you touched on earlier, which was
about the audience share for your programmes? I think you said
that for the evening programme it was about a million and that
that was relatively stable.
Mr Gray: Yes.
Q94 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Can you tell us a bit about ratings overall for all your news
output and how it compares with the way that ratings for your
overall programme have gone over the past decade?
Ms Byrne: Roughly speaking, the percentage for
the news is 5% and the percentage for Channel 4 as a whole is
10%, so roughly speaking it is half. Our lunchtime news programme
is about 200,000. That has been pretty stable since we started
lunchtime news, which I should say we decided to start; it was
not any requirement that we should start it. We come straight
off the back of schools programmes and so we are in the slightly
strange position that we have no audience inheritance because
schoolchildren are not allowed to watch the news. It would be
nice if that was a bit higher but I think it is roughly similar
to some other programmes at around that time. More 4 News began
only last year and, as I say, it has gone up by about 40% within
that year and has currently the highest news rating of any news
programme at that time. However, that means that it is only about
50,000, but the fact is that it has increased so much in a year,
and I think we are really improving the programme as well on a
daily basis. I have got quite high hopes for that programme and,
again, from the research we have done, the audience really like
it. They think it is a bit of a younger version of Channel 4 News
and it is a bit more global, they say. They spot it has got a
really interesting international agenda. We have just re-launched
our news website and it is a very different website from what
it was before, so we will not know for a few months what its usage
is going to be.
Q95 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Given that, obviously, there is quite a lot of concern at the
moment, and the Ofcom report pointed this out, about the overall
take-up of news and that the audience is volatile, to say the
least, do you feel content that your particular brand of news
is holding its own? I get the sense that you do.
Ms Byrne: Yes. We are really pleased that it
is holding its own, but our next step is to go out there and find
audiences in other ways. The take-up of news by young people is,
obviously, a great concern when you look at those Ofcom figures
and that is one reason why we have put more money into the website,
because if you look at some of the information there it looks
like some young people are just getting their news on the internet
and the BBC has got this enormous website. We cannot compete with
it, it is so huge and they have got so much money. What we have
got going for us is that young people really like Channel 4.
Q96 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Can I stop you there because it would be very helpful if you could
just tell us as briefly as you can how you know that, in other
words, what mechanisms do you have for surveying audiences, who
does it, does Channel 4 do it, does ITN do it, do you do it together,
and what does it show?
Ms Byrne: We have got a whole department which
does research into our audiences and I know that they will be
giving you at some point really detailed information. What we
do know is that our main Channel 4 News is the youngest news on
TV and I think 21% of the audience is 16-34, but more particularly
we know that Channel 4 has a higher percentage of that 16-34 audience
in general for its programmes. We feel that we have this good
reputation among young people. They like us, they do not think
we are patronising, so how can we take that reputation to where
they are, and if they are on the internet or they are listening
they want to listen to our new E4 radio station, so how can we
take the brand, so to speak, and create with the same ethos a
different version of Channel 4 News that would be right for the
internet or right for the E4 radio station?
Q97 Baroness Thornton:
It is quite clear that you have a younger audience than the other
public service broadcasters and you have said that you have got
quite a large proportion of young people watching the news. Can
you tell us a little bit more about how you fulfil a special role
in providing news to engage that younger audience? What are you
going to do, or are you going to do that, and how? You were starting
to say that.
Ms Byrne: I think Jim described it, because
we have agreed that this is really important to us and he can
describe the strategy.
Mr Gray: As Dorothy said, that is the right
figure. Currently the evening news programme has about a fifth
or a quarter, sometimes 21%, sometimes 23% of 16-34-year olds.
That compares with about 8% for other providers, so that is happening
itself but you cannot sit back and be complacent. One temptation,
of course, would be to stuff the programme full of youth-orientated
things, but then you would degrade it. What we have done under
the new contract which has released the funds is that we have
employed some further specialists who will look for stories and
pitch stories to me to get on the air which still satisfy all
the journalistic credentials that we want but take our journalism
in other areas, so we have technology correspondents looking at
that field of new technology from broadband through to mobiles
with a business slant, a consumer slant, a political slant, and
finding out good stories there. We are doing more work in popular
culture, so again that will have to satisfy our criteria of what
makes a story on Channel 4 News. That is not "it". What
I said at the very beginning is also "it"—the
feel of the programme. It does not feel like an old man's programme.
It feels very vital. There is a lot of vitality and a lot of energy,
so the way we construct the programmes and the running orders
and the shooting style are all part of what it is that goes to
make Channel 4 News feel right for the audience as well as the
content.
Ms Byrne: It feels independent and it feels
that it challenges the set agenda that a lot of other people have
and I think that that may be what young people like about it.
Q98 Lord Maxton:
Given that young people use the net perhaps more than older people—and
I am what is called a silver surfer but there are not many of
us—whatever do you do, particularly with your new website,
to get yourself on the front page, so to speak? When I go into
Yahoo there are people there who are beaming their programmes
straight in and basically showing me that this is where I should
go. How do you do that?
Mr Gray: That is part of the strategy currently
being put through now in order to get linkages through to the
Channel 4 website from key other drivers. There are ways you can
go round that, but there are also journalistic ways you can go
round that, by making sure that the top stories crop up, so this
is how it feeds back into the programme. In order to keep your
head above the noise on the net you have to have something different
to say. One way of doing it is to just shout louder but if you
have something different to say it means that you will be a more
attractive proposition.
Q99 Lord Maxton:
Do you think you will get the younger viewers by that strategy
to your news?
Mr Gray: Yes. We are out there. As Dorothy said,
the biggest challenge, frankly, is to come up with something that
people can see because it is news driven. If people just want
the news then BBC is the option, it is so vast, it is so comprehensive
and it is high quality, but if you want to find out what it is
that Channel 4 has got to say about that news story or if they
have got anything extra to say, you need to get that message forward
and that is why we are trying to find means of drawing in younger
viewers and net users from other sources.
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