Br oadcasting Cable TV: get cracking!
aul Johnson
The powerful monopolies who have a .t.resen TV set-up from the assault of cable Chave skilfully sought to present the thee-for-all commercialism. They hope by tatyse get let 'ar more restrictive provisions written eo° the actual legislation. In fact, the Hunt reellunittee has produced exactly the sort of ut Report as a disastrous victory for huge vested interest in preserving the and especially government opinion to means to work on public, parliamen- Zgutted its one might have expected, ited its composition and its debilitating pte2 Of reference, which obliged it to hterve the interests of 'public-service h, adeasting' — the establishment code- for or the right of the liberal-progressive ret. nans to control TV. 1.8.1s true that Lord Hunt and his two col- of7.11es have rejected demands for a system haegulation and limitation which would lernave killed cable TV stone dead. These lihh„,nds were variously put forward by an reo '1Y alliance of BBC-ITV monopolists, censors like Mrs Whitehouse and Part 'he political censors from the Labour ttstri and trade unions. The effect of such ititinctive provisions would have been, in- Uria„"lially, to make investment in cable 4fe`itractive and so keep the viewing public Q0itlY in the monopolists' corral. The Hunt
Inittee rejected this line, no doubt part-
reD,trt they knew it would render their totally a11Y ineffective with the Govern- wirs Thatcher and the responsible ister, Kenneth Baker, are determined to :e "kaalleact with cable and to do it they must ttecite an entrepreneurial climate of th(l'u. That means denying veto power r ktoe quangomongers, censors and public- OPtrr'culture monopolists — all those tt 14tors of the nanny-state who know a olet.,is best for the poor benighted Nevlat. Of anderti_heless, the Hunt Report does not t his Point needs to be emphasised — to le-ma free enterprise philosophy for larp:, • In Particular it specifically rejects , uerl'ent, advanced in this column and g! tlisire, that the true analogy is with $ the lug. We do not think', it says, 'that Present time cable television can be
regarded as just another branch of publishing, subject only to the law of the land, or that self-discipline would be accep- table'. In short it accepts the fundamental premise of the monopoly-nannies, even though it does not go anything like as far as they would wish in acting upon it. All the same, it does propose a number of regula- tions, some of which are highly objec- tionable.
By far the most serious, in my view, is the dictatorial regulation: 'New multichannel cable systems should be required to carry all existing and future free BBC and indepen- dent television and radio services serving the area concerned'. In addition, even the existing limited-capacity systems are excus- ed this requirement only for a five-year period and then 'only on condition that the operator can and does provide his customers with the means to receive satisfactory signals off-air at no extra cost to them'. Here we have a rule going against all the principles of natural justice, in which a commercial operator is obliged by law to provide free display of his rivals' wares. Of course it is not 'free' to the viewer, needless
'He couldn't stand the idea of cremation.'
to say. For the object of this rule is not so much to maintain standards as, firstly, to keep the BBC-ITV duopoly in being and, even more important, to justify the con- tinued imposition of the BBC's poll-tax which goes under the name of the licence fee.
The coming of cable should, in fact, allow the viewer to contract out of the licence-fee system altogether. This is already anomalous since a TV-owner has to pay it even if he never watches the BBC and stays glued to the commercial channel. It is unfair, since many viewers, probably a ma- jority these days, would prefer to settle for a free, commercial-only pattern. Cable may cost them about £30 a month; say £300 to £400 a year. That is as much as most people would want, or can afford, to spend on TV. The coming of cable allows them to en- joy TV while contracting out of the com- pulsory 'public-service' system completely, and using the £46 licence money they thereby save to help finance their own choice in the free market of cable. What Hunt proposes is to deny them that right, because if the cable companies are compell- ed to carry the BBC-ITV duopoly, the legal presumption will continue, as at present, that anyone with a TV set must pay the licence fee. Thus ordinary people will go on forking out for nanny's wages whether or not they want to avail themselves of her ser- vices. I can see no justification or rationale for this monstrous denial of democratic and market choice, diametrically opposed to everything the present Government says it stands for, other than the unspoken resolve to keep the BBC, unreformed and unrepen- tant, financially afloat.
The Government should exclude this re- quirement. Most of the other restrictions are not worth a major battle, provided Ministers reject the new line of defence now being prepared by the duopolists: delay. In the words of one of them, there should be 'a thorough winter of national debate'. In fact all the issues have already been discuss- ed to death and such a protracted debate would merely be used as an excuse for post- poning a verdict until after the election. The coming of cable is one of the few legitimate and efficient ways in which government can take positive action to reduce unemployment. Once the go-ahead is given, the economy would receive a boost of about £4 billion, not in taxpayers' boon- doggle money but in hard-headed private investment. It is interesting to note that the Labour Party and the unions, as well as the BBC-ITV duopolists, who are constantly showing programmes about the evil of unemployment and blaming government for failing to reduce it, are now united in seeking to delay the one major practical scheme which promises to provide jobs without inflation. Ministers have now got the Hunt report. They should make up their minds about it as quickly as possible, get the Bill through Parliament without delay, and then let the new cable-TV industry do the rest. With luck, the new cash could be flowing into the economy by next spring.
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