Beyond plurality

Related to this evolution in plurality is the fact that, contrary to much received wisdom, the public’s capacity to engage with and digest a rich diet of content has being going up, not down.

And so you get Five making best-in-class documentaries like Paul Merton in China or Children’s output like Milkshake; or Sky’s arts output or Ross Kemp in Afghanistan – not because they must, but because they’re responding to a genuine demand for a richer mix of high quality content. The BBC does, and will continue to, play a powerful role in helping stimulate this development.

When we do our job properly and produce high-quality and original UK content ourselves, we are setting the benchmark, conditioning the market – that is, feeding audience expectations for this class of content and thereby incentivising others to provide it as well.

Clearly we’re not the only ones driving this trend, for so too are the deeper drivers I’ve described, like globalisation and the public’s growing appetite for thought-provoking content.

Of course, there will be areas of public service output that remain uneconomic for anyone but the BBC to provide. But one can’t rush to the easy conclusion that these areas – absent competition – will want for quality.

An open, creative culture at the BBC has been able to maintain high quality in areas that lack much direct competition – whether Radio 4, Radio 3, natural history, or whole areas of older Children’s content.

I certainly do not take from this that plurality isn’t important. Just that it is one consideration amongst many and ought not, therefore, to crowd out other important considerations like efficiency, quality, range, reach, impact, and making the most of new technology and new media. <…>

Way forward

<…> We must take account of some ineluctable forces that need to be worked with, rather than against, if a new and sustainable approach is to be achieved.

I would suggest that there are two particular areas around which a strong, secure future for public service broadcasting can be achieved.

The first is a refocused BBC, resourced to condition the market around high-quality and original UK content; the second a sustainable and strategic regulatory settlement.

As for my fist point, the BBC’s role, we certainly cannot be complacent and unchanging. Rather we need a more efficient, re-focused BBC. A BBC that takes important and sometimes painful changes to meet its purposes. And a BBC that shares some of its advantages in a new spirit of partnership and collaboration.

The BBC’s current efforts to re-focus and respond to changing audience expectations include:

· Investing and focusing on quality and distinctiveness – and not quantity and replication

· Embracing new media to transform how content is made and made available, and also to change the nature of that content itself and how audiences interact with it

· Developing new relationships with audiences – creating more space for participation, feedback and involvement to produce a more open BBC

· Creating new relationships with other content and service providers – finding new ways of leading audiences not just to BBC content but also to interesting and stimulating material from others. <…>

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14