Is British Television at a tipping point?

Powerful comment from Will Hutton… British TV must be saved for the nation

British television is at a tipping point. Every night, our screens are filled with programmes that represent two conflicting traditions. On the one hand, we see examples of the great television culture Britain has created over the past 50 years. Use the remote and you get the new trash which threatens to spread throughout the networks. There are still many great programmes to watch, and much creativity on display, but unless something changes, our culture and civilisation are about to be seriously impoverished.

But it gets worse

Within the next two months, the trends look like being emphatically confirmed. Two of the pillars of what made British television great – the BBC and ITV – are to be knocked sideways, one by the government and the other by the market. Gordon Brown and the Treasury, indulged by a weakened Prime Minister, are determined to shrink the BBC. Over the next four years, they propose the licence fee would go up by 1 per cent less than inflation – nearly 3 per cent a year less than the BBC wants, with even bigger cuts planned beyond. By 2013, the BBC would be up to a quarter smaller than it is today.

I wonder if the Blair’s Government ever forgave the beeb for its reporting over the Iraq war? The Hutton report, was well… errrr a bit skewed.

Still is does seem a bit over the top to bring all out market forces to bear on UK TV ? when there still is a chance to preserve something unique. I agree with Hutton…

Lets face it, we would not have the innovation within broadcasting without the BBC, as their need to survive are different to reporting to shareholders that they can all afford a new yacht this year. Sorry to be so cynical.

ITV and Channel 4 are struggling, we even get a company (NTL) that filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy , and having just got out of jail mentioning that it might be interested in buying ITV.

ITV is a victim sadly of arrogance and hubris – once boasting that ITV was a licence to print money

ITV has been struggling ever since its cosy monopoly was broken by Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB in the Nineties. Viewers and advertisers have deserted in droves for the internet and pay-TV. How to reverse, or at least arrest, ITV’s decline has long perplexed management at the company, which became a single entity following the merger of Granada and Carlton in 2004.

Apparently ITV leaked the news of a merger to the press to help its share price.

Hutton says

In any case, the argument goes, the doom-mongers are old fogeys looking back to a golden age that never was. Television is now better, not worse; it has just become more democratic.

And this is the point ? do we bend right over for the capitalist market? Yes revenues have got to come from somewhere – and Tomi and I have blogged about that theme and some, and write about it in our book.

We have have a theory called the 4C’s… if anyone is interested

So bruiser Brown – don’t destroy our culture, and I am a bit pissed that companies, and marketing institutions have not responded to the obvious changes that have been going on for some time.

Heed these words

Digitalisation does not mean that only commercial television and the market rule. Rather, we have to think differently about how to maintain their same constructive tension with the notion of public-service broadcasting and have the confidence and conviction to do it. And that begins with Brown’s decision on the licence fee.

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Posted in: Broadcast, Culture, Darwin, Economics, Engagement Civil Society, Ethics, Government & Politics, Media, Philosophy, Society, Television, Trends

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