Speech: Andy Burnham 26 Sept '08

Andy Burnham's speech to the Royal Television Society, 26 September 2008, titled Quality, standards, innovation – the way forward.

Good morning everyone.

There have been a lot of speeches about the future of television in the 80-year history of the RTS.

The dawn of the electronic age, in 1947.

Non-entertainment aspects of television, in 1956.

Television at the end of its tether, in 1983.

Will the internet kill broadcasting, in 2001.

I can see from this that your gatherings have not always been a laugh-a-minute. And the trend in these titles suggests a move over time from optimism to pessimism.

This time last year, of course, you had a rising-star Arsenal supporter giving this speech. But even then, I'm told, the mood was one of gloom and introspection.

This year – an Evertonian … so, if you want to, feel free to leave now!

But don't feel too afraid. I'm feeling glass half-full today; I've had a good week and I think we can win tomorrow's Merseyside Derby.

When I first looked at my diary for this week, I didn't think that the Labour Party Conference and the RTS would make a good match. But, in fact, it's a perfect follow-on.

In Manchester, we've been debating the dangers of defeatism and fatalism. We left with our spirits raised, more confidence in what we have achieved and ready to fight for what we believe in. But we know that we all depend on each other; it will need a team effort, differences put aside, compromises made and people working together.

I hope you can see parallels.

British public service broadcasting, and the values that underpin it, are worth preserving and fighting for. That is not just an appeal to altruism or social conscience. British TV's reputation for quality and standards is the key to its commercial success in the future, here and overseas. What do I mean by this?

• Original British programmes, made in all parts of the UK reflecting all the voices and all the talents and life as it in all four corners of our great country.

• Impartial, accurate regional and national TV news that people can trust and which enhances our society and democracy.

• The unexpected that delights and surprises, that open up minds to new horizons.

• New ideas and new talent that contribute to and sustain the wider creative economy.

My central argument today is that it is by holding to these defining characteristics that we secure long-term commercial success and public support.

Whatever your reading of the OFCOM report published yesterday, the one thing that comes out of it is a real urgency to set a timetable for PSB as soon as possible.

I've also heard your calls for urgency, and I agree.

With that in mind, there are three things I'd like to do this morning.

First, I want to offer some clarity about the decision-making processes for and about PSB.

Last, I would also like to propose a timetable for those decisions.

In between, I am going to talk about the reasons, for me, why we should continue to treasure and value public service broadcasting. Quality, standards and services people can trust will matter more not less in the future.

After today I hope you will have a clear sense of the instincts I bring to the decisions that fall to government to make.

THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS

I'd like to begin by thanking Ed Richards and the team at Ofcom for the work they have done in helping bring us to this decision making point. I'd also like to thank everyone who has contributed to the Ofcom review process so far.

Let's not forget either the contribution of the Convergence Think Tank to the wider debate – I look forward to seeing some of you again in Liverpool next month, at the fifth CTT seminar at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

The work of Ofcom's review, and the wealth of evidence they have gathered, will be a vital input to the debate on the long-term shape and the future funding of public service broadcasting – decisions, of course, on these matters fall to Government and Parliament to take.

There are shorter-term decisions for Ofcom to take around some of the current regulatory obligations that apply to public service broadcasters.

The BBC Trust also has important responsibilities and a vital contribution to make, representing the interest of the licence fee payers.

All of you as well must continue to be part of the process – one where we should all be looking beyond our individual interests to the bigger picture with a collective belief in the future of television.

It's important that we have a thorough consultation process, but I am anxious to move promptly to a position where I can take the decisions necessary.

Today I would like to set out the reasons why I think we should continue to treasure and value public service broadcasting. For me this means ambition and risk, standards and values, fair representation of the UK, and community.

AMBITION AND RISK

So first, ambition and risk.

It's seven years since Philip Laven gave the 'Will the Internet Kill Broadcasting?' speech to the RTS. My reading of the last seven years is that the sense of fear implicit in this title has taken hold in some places. It would appear that TV has at times lost confidence.

Faced with the online challenge, I would argue that two dangerous tendencies have emerged.

First is a tendency to mimic the user-generated, it's-your-view, here's-my-blog feel of much of the internet, particularly in current affairs and news. The internet as a whole is an excellent source of casual opinion. TV is where people often look for expert or authoritative opinion.

Second – under pressure – I detect a tendency towards safety first and the tried-and-tested, and away from innovation, risk-taking and new talent. TV is in danger of ceding to the internet as the place where new talent is found.

Television at its best has traditionally operated as a showcase for new talent, catapulting the new names into the spotlight. I used to love the fact that Tony Wilson, God rest his soul, used to abuse his position and throw an unknown North West band on to play out the credits on Granada Reports on a Friday.

Where is the successor programme to Top of the Pops bringing the family together to discuss new music? Wasn't it a good thing to give people a mixed presentation of different music where the same bands couldn't appear two weeks running?

And isn't there too much of a tendency for safety first in sport? We rely heavily on traditional fare - football, Formula 1 – but have perhaps become less good at covering sport in depth and breadth. It disappoints me that there is so little women's sport on TV outside of Wimbledon and the Olympics. But, as we have seen, there is a huge public appetite for more coverage of sports outside the Big 5 and the public can develop an interest in almost any sport if it's given the exposure and are properly introduced to the personalities.

It's been widely predicted that multi-channel TV would be the death of serendipity – but the research shows people still want to be surprised, and they want and expect PSBs to do that.

PSB is actually as close as you can come to planned serendipity. An hour-long show about genealogy smacks of niche broadcasting. But Who do you think you are? pulls in over six million viewers in prime time on BBC1.

Success like that depends on mutual trust between the viewer and the commissioner of new programmes. It depends on people having the confidence and the freedom to innovate and take risks – characteristics essential to producing great art, as Brian McMaster spelled out in his report on supporting excellence in the arts. The same applies in television.

STANDARDS AND VALUES

Second, standards and values.

Last June, at a Convergence Think Tank seminar, I said I wanted to rehabilitate the word standards.

I come back to that, because – like risk and innovation – I believe standards and values are becoming more, not less important for PSB.

I spoke in June about the importance of re-evaluating guiding principles like impartiality and accuracy in news and the integrity of programme making –
carrying forward the best of the past in a way that's realistic about the future.

I said my starting point is to be cautious about interventions like product placement that chip away at the trust and confidence in TV which audiences retain.

The research backs up that approach.

People value the fact that they can trust PSBs and it's particularly interesting that a Convergence Think Tank Youth Panel with people aged 14 to 20 highlighted that they valued BBC news because of impartiality and because it focuses on facts above opinion, whether they watch it on TV or online.

REPRESENTATION OF THE UK AND ALL ITS VOICES

Third, representation of all voices.

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that one of the things I value most highly is television that isn't about London and isn't made in London.

We all want to watch programmes that reflect our lives and experiences.  But we also want a window on life elsewhere.

For me that means original programmes made in and about the UK – programmes made around the country. So I'm not surprised by the level of public support in Ofcom's research.

And I'm not surprised that news for the nations and regions was ranked as 'highly important' to the purposes of PSB particularly in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

So principles about national and regional news, and about how much TV is made outside London, continue to be very important for people who watch television however the economics of investing in news or original production stack up.

There is a related issue about fairness here, about the world the audience doesn't see behind the camera, as well as the world we show them with the camera.

I wouldn't question Jeremy Paxman's talent or his expertise. But you do have to question his judgement on the plight of the lesser spotted white, male, middle class broadcaster.

I find Lenny Henry's experience more convincing and Samir Shah's argument on diversity. And it's still the case that young people from constituencies like mine in Leigh don't even get the same chance to be an overworked, underpaid dogsbody as children from well-connected media families.

After years of talk, we're clearly still a long way off the goals set when the Cultural Diversity Network was set up in October 2000.

That was a positive step at the time, but we are not going far enough quickly enough. So today, I am inviting the CDN to set out proposals on how to move forward effectively.

Forget political correctness. This is cold business sense and economic necessity.

Let's take a look at the bigger picture here. The creative industries are and will continue to be the mainstream of the British economy and any broadcaster with an eye on the future has got to be looking at finding the talent and developing tomorrow's talent from the widest possible pool – behind the camera as well as in front of it.

COMMUNITY

The fourth and last of my personal values for PSB is probably the most difficult to define.

Sports broadcasting is clearly one of the most powerful areas where that sense of community through television is most profoundly felt. It's an elusive thing but we know it when we feel it – as we did in August with the success of our British team at the Olympic Games.

It is because I believe in television's social role – its power to include and involve –that I continue to believe resolutely in the principle of a protected list of sporting events set by the Government. But it is also important that this list moves with the times and people's tastes, ensuring that TV continues to bring the nation together and build community – particularly given our sports policy objectives of driving participation in this Olympic era.

It is ten years since the last review of Listed Sports Events and I think the time has come to look at it again.

So, today, I can announce that I will now be commissioning an independent review to weigh the public interest with the demands and discipline of the market and the implications for the funding and development of individual sports. We need to look again at whether the right sporting events are protected by the list for free-to-air broadcast.

I will be announcing the scope and chairmanship of the review shortly and will be expecting recommendations in the course of next year.

WORKING TOGETHER

So if that's the framework. How should we use it?

First, we all need a shared belief in quality and standards. For the public, TV equates trust, standards, quality. That is precious positioning – don't give your audience reasons to question whether TV still deserves the trust and those labels.

Second, we need a spirit of pragmatism all round. That means politicians not harking back to a so-called golden age and clinging to obligations that simply cannot be sustained. But it also means people in the TV industry not overstating the threat.

Third, I would like to argue that we need a new era of sensible collaboration between our PSBs rather than the total head-to-head competition that we have seen in the past. Of course, healthy competition will always be essential. But our four PSBs all have different roles. It's time to enhance that sense of distinctiveness and join forces where it is in the public interest.

Securing a workable consensus that sustains public service TV may need people to look beyond narrow interests and individual vantage points – or to change traditional default positions.

We have been presented with big decisions to make – decisions that will change forever the nature of British television. But it's not just politicians.

We're in this together. I've given you my vision of what we need to fight for together, and I appeal to enlist your support. Defining a sustainable future for PSB is a collective endeavour. This is not an issue for politicians acting alone. It's something we need to do together. You need to know that individual decisions that may affect the collective whole.

Fourth, I've argued the case for a new sense of clarity and confidence throughout the television industry about TV's role and place in the reshaped media landscape.

It's far too simplistic to equate the rise of the internet with the fall of PSB.

We may be watching in more interactive, enriching and convenient ways – but we are still watching a lot content provided by public service broadcasters.

And actually, we still spend more than three times as long watching a television set than a computer screen. Daily viewing has decreased by only six minutes over the last five years and actually increased last year.

Television has been the cultural engine of this country since sets became widely available and public service broadcasting is the premium-grade fuel that fires the engine.

Public service broadcasting is not fatally damaged. Ofcom's report is a prescription, not the last rites.

TIMETABLE

I said I'd finish with a timetable.

Ofcom are consulting until December 4th and of course they must give serious consideration to the responses they receive through the consultation.

But I also think it is right that we should be stepping up the pace in the interests of viewers and the whole of the television industry. That is why Government and Ofcom will be working on a twin track approach, looking at the policy options and practicalities upon which I will need to decide.

That way, early in the New Year, Ofcom can conclude its review and Government can announce decisions and the process to implement those decisions.

Ofcom has established a clear framework for the discussion. All options are open at the moment, but it is important that we are all prepared to accept we have to make trade-offs. There are no presumptions at this stage about the outcome, or about the nature or level of future intervention – and certainly no presumption about any future level or use of the licence fee.

There are no easy options and none without consequences.

The coming weeks are about deciding on solutions.

Public service broadcasting has a long future as the power behind Britain's cultural engine. But there will be changes, with decisions taken as quickly as possible to end the uncertainty and restore our collective belief in television.

Thank you