DG outlines commercial vision for reshaped production arm
The clue, said one senior BBC executive on Monday, is in the name. Director general Tony Hall had just impressively delivered a speech that warned of the danger of the corporation being undermined by a low licence fee and restricted charter.
He cautioned against a “sleepwalk into decay” that would leave the public subject to “global gatekeepers” and “American taste-makers”.
In other words, the British Broadcasting Corporation will stress its Britishness during the looming debate on its future.
The tactic had echoes of David Abraham’s controversial MacTaggart lecture last year, in which the C4 chief executive referenced the US-led “gold rush of British television”, pointing to Viacom’s takeover of Channel 5 and Discovery and Liberty Global’s acquisition of All3Media.
Endemol Shine Group has since been added to the mix and Hall outlined an early vision for BBC Studios, which could become a powerful and very obviously British producer in the commercial sector, with a turnover of around £400m.
Keeping the indie community on-side while establishing BBC Studios will be a challenge. Hall wants the industry to “stand up for the BBC”, but playing the British card is risky.
Super-indie business execs want greater clarity about how Studios will operate and the tariffs involved, while creatives bristle at the idea that new overseas ownership might impact on the ideas they generate, as opposed to those that would come out of BBC Studios.
“It’s the buyers that determine what gets made,” one told me last week. “If a broadcaster wants a series about basket weaving, that’s what they get, whether the indie has US shareholders or not.”
At least the phoney war is over and more details of BBC Studios are starting to emerge. The corporation hopes to lure a high-calibre leader to run the operation, a process Hall estimates could take six to eight months, and there is now a clearer blueprint of what will form the ‘company’: drama, entertainment, comedy and factual (presumably encompassing everything from fact-ent to arts and religion).
BBC Sport, Children’s and Current Affairs will remain within the traditional rump of the BBC, which might itself cause issues.
Some staff in those sections might feel relieved they will be protected from the forces of commercialism – it is hard to see how the creation of BBC Studios will not involve many redundancies.
But others might cast envious glances at their colleagues in different departments, who may be offered significant creative freedom and commercial rewards.
The process is likely to be painful and circuitous, but finally (from the outside at least) the journey has begun.
Chris Curtis is the editor of Broadcast
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