TELEVISION, REFORM AND THE BIG LIE
The media: Paul Johnson advises Tory MPs not to be conned by the duopoly
ACTS of Parliament, especially big and complicated ones, rarely have exactly the effects intended by their sponsors, or justify the predictions of calamity made by their opponents. The Act which introduced ITV in 1955 was bitterly fought not only by the broadcasting establishment, and of course by the Labour Party, which always favours monopolies, but by large numbers of Tories, all of whom swore that it meant `lower standards' and the end of civilisation as they knew it. It owed its existence largely to the pertinacity of Selwyn Lloyd, once condescendingly dismissed by Harold Macmillan (another opponent of ITV) as 'a little provincial attorney'. Anyone who recalls the kind of product put out by the BBC television monopoly — stiff, humour- less, pre-war and totally unimaginative and the use the BBC made of its power to blacklist, will admit that the coming of ITV, by introducing some competition, led rapidly to a huge rise in standards and for two decades gave us fine viewing. But a duopoly is only one stage better than a monopoly, and the BBC-ITV system is now tired, worked-out, demoralised and discredited. The last time I switched on to examine its offerings, I found — would you believe it? — exactly the same programme appearing on BBC 1 and ITV, that is, some Italian rubbish featuring a busty film-star, with BBC 2 and Channel Four both show- ing old movies. How's that for 'the Best Television Service in the World'?
The Government's proposed Bill to end the duopoly has many grievous faults. I particularly resent the ban on channels `whose aims are wholly or mainly of a religious nature', which might have come straight from the regulations of an old-style People's Democracy. In fact that clause was inserted not by militant atheists, as you might suppose, but to appease the existing church establishment — Anglicans, Papists and mainstream Nonconformists — who under the existing system have an absolute monopoly of access to religious television and are terrified of grassroots Christianity. In a world of 50 or more broadcast television channels and hundreds of cable and satellite ones, why should not religious people have some, just as they run reli- gious newspapers and publishing houses? Violence, four-letter words and homosex- uality have an assured place on our screens. Why shouldn't religion have one too?
Despite its faults, however, the Bill undoubtedly will have the effect of sub- stantially increasing competition. That in itself will raise standards, whatever its opponents say. After all, we get higher standards by having competing publishing houses, newspapers, symphony orchestras and theatres, do we not? Opposition is already concentrating, as expected, on the provision for competitive tendering for television licences. I think there is wide- spread misunderstandding about how the new system is likely to work. Under the old ITV 'licence to print money' system, what happened was that a committee of the great and the good assembled to bestow blessings on the deserving. A consortium got itself together, appeared before the committee and said: 'May we have a licence to print money, please?' If it made the right cultural and liberal-political noises, the goodies, in the shape of a television advertising monopoly, were handed over. But those days are going. In the highly competitive world which will emerge in the 1990s, no one will get a licence to print money. They may get one, like Sky TV, to lose it. Television stations ought to be, broadly, profitable — and it is right that the Treasury, that is the public, should get what is judged to be a proper share of any coming profits. But some will lose money, at any rate for a time. What the new system is designed to do, essentially, is to attract substantial investment, ideally from all over the world, into the British television industry. It will try to ensure that the companies bidding have efficient manage- ments, first-class commercial and profes- sional expertise,. the right notions about programming — including new ideas — but not least adequate financial resources. The last is essential precisely because the pro- duction of quality (as well as popular) programming in highly competitive multi- channel broadcasting is going to be very expensive.
As a member of the Cable Authority, which has been awarding scores of franch- ises over the past year or so, I have become aware how impossible it is to separate sound financing from sound programming. No one has yet made a penny from cable television in Britain. The rewards will be considerable when they come, but no one knows exactly when that will be. In the meantime, the Authority has to satisfy itself that the bidder has the cash, the credit-lines and the ability to raise more equity to carry him through the long haul. The new ITC, which will absorb the Cable Authority and adopt many of its methods, will in practice, I suspect, award licences in a similar manner, with the additional guarantee of financial solidity provided by certified bidding. The new tendering sys- tem, despite duopoly propaganda, is more likely to maintain standards than one based merely on compromise.
This complex Bill will have a difficult passage through both Houses but it is vital to get the thing working quickly. British broadcasting is now very old-fashioned indeed, thanks to the dead hand of the grotesquely inefficient duopoly, and at a time when the physical facts of com- munications technology are changing with alarming speed. Commercially viable equipment is being replaced not on a year-to-year or even a month-to-month basis but almost by the week. The conser- vativism of British television has had a disastrous effect on the British component- supply industry, which ought to be one of the biggest and best in the world, and the position is rapidly worsening. I hope gov- ernment backbenchers will stick to the realities of the issues and stand firm in the face of the torrent of misinformation which is pouring out of the duopoly and much of the press. No one lies more deeply or sincerely than the man whose assured, easily acquired income is threatened by progress.
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