What is television for?
Jeremy Paxman has used this year's James MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival to call for He expressed his concern that television news, in particular, was losing its way because of an obsession with ratings and "the bottom line". The 大象传媒's licence fee was also in the Newsnight presenter's sights:
The idea of a tax on the ownership of a television belongs in the 1950s. Why not tax people for owning a washing machine to fund the manufacture of Persil?
Paxman's comments follow a which reveals that public trust in television has fallen.
You can read the lecture in full and you can listen to Paxman being Paxmaned by John Humphrys on the Today programme's 8.10 interview here.
Jeremy Paxman thinks that British television is not fit for moral purpose, and believes that the 大象传媒 needs to make more quality programmes if it is to fully justify its license fee. He wants to see a clear statement of "high moral purpose" from the 大象传媒 Trust and other network governing bodies. Television is plainly an extremely powerful medium which has the capacity to promote "public goods" and "public evils" (though whether we can all agree on the moral difference at times is hard to say). The 大象传媒 already has a fairly clear statement of what seem to me like moral values, and the organisation has a stated commitment to create public value through, for example, "sustaining citizenship and civil society".
But Paxman wants more than merely vision statements; he wants a return, in practice, to those values that shaped the first decades of the 大象传媒 and established the corporation's reputation for independence, impartiality and "truth-telling" around the world.
One tabloid media legend in the audience at Edinburgh, interviewed after the lecture, could hardly contain his cynicism in the face of Paxman's attack on commercial values and their impact on modern television. All this talk of "high moral purpose" and "public value" may sound like state-sponsored social engineering to some -- as if the point of the 大象传媒 is to deliver a particular kind of society. That, I think, is a mistake. The point, surely, is that the 大象传媒 is a broadcaster in public service and the public expects the 大象传媒 to be different. The cultural "difference" the 大象传媒 represents is the context of a now globalised and highly competitive media landscape may be difficult to specify at times (in terms of individual programmes), but if the public believes there is no difference at all, they will wonder what they are paying for. And public service broadcasting makes no sense if the public doesn't feel served.
Comments
Paxman gets paid more than a million pounds a year. Take some of that money back and pay for the staff he's complaining are losing their jobs through cuts.
Im very surprised that Paxman said what he said about the license fee. That's a BC sacred cow and for him to suggest abandoning it is astonishing. The license fee is the reason why the 大象传媒 is able to produce the very programmes he is worried about protecting. Does he really think THOSE programmes would stand a chance in the ansence of a license fee? Would advertising produce Blue Planet (or even Newsnight?). Not a chance. If te 大象传媒 is to make quality shows it needs the money to do it. Look at the quality of TV in te US, where their public service segment is tiny by comparision to the main networks. Maybe Paxman would like to see telethons on UK tv to come up with his salary?
Save the licence fee. It's the only thing protecting UK culture from the trivialising effects of American culture.
Take a look at how 'public service' television has gone in New Zealand (www.tvnz.co.nz).
There is no licence fee, the national broadcaster relies mostly on commercial advertising (up to 14 minutes an hour in primetime!), and is required to give any profits back to the government. This all means very little programming that is made in NZ - and mostly imports from the US or the UK.
The only tv service producing a significant amount of locally-produced programming is Maori TV (www.maoritelevision.com).
You people are asking the wrong questions and avoiding the real issue.
Is it moral that a government can force people to pay for television they might never wish to watch? No. If this is about morals, one might start by inflicting the least amount of interference possible upon the decisions of rational individuals who are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves what constitutes "quality" television. If the commercial TV networks are so crap in comparison to the 'public service' one, how are they able to compete against the 大象传媒 so effectively and remain so devoted to programming that the public so blatantly enjoys?
One might argue that the programming on the commercial networks is popular but not of high quality. First, it's not at all clear that there is such a thing as a universal means of establishing what is 'quality' TV and what is not. So the very idea of a universal funding method to produce it is flawed at the outset. Secondly, this claim is tantamount to claiming that one should be able to tell the difference between programming produced by the 大象传媒 and programming produced by commercial networks just by watching them. This is patently not the case, and that much should be obvious.
American television has been mentioned several times above. Little gets me more irate than to listen to the blathering of sanctimonious hypocrites who are content to devote hours of their week to watching imported American television shows and then to get into an 'intellectual' discussion about how crap they are in comparison to the 大象传媒. Why the hell do you watch them then? I'm fed up hearing 大象传媒 News being juxtaposed against Fox News, or 大象传媒 Newsnight with Jerry Springer, as if they constitute one and the same genre of programming. Ever hear of PBS? HD News? Discovery Channel? HBO? National Geographic? C-SPAN? How many of these are funded by a licence fee? And these are full-fledged networks, not just programs.
What kind of programming do you people believe can only be produced with money obtained by a decree of government force? The very idea is absurd. That force should be used to procure money from citizens so that TV shows like Eastenders can be produced is a wholly astonishing notion to me, and I grew up with it! Would that more people like Paxman within the 大象传媒 would be willing challenge the notion of 'public service' broadcasting (as if the 'public' are a single entity whose needs can be met in such a collectivist manner).
Cathy D asks: "Would advertising produce Blue Planet (or even Newsnight?). Not a chance."
I fear you're living in a mis-inspired daydream. Almost anything by National Geographic ranks as good as Blue Planet, and often better. You know it as well as I do: if I were to play you two similar pieces of content from 大象传媒 and Channel Four, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. And, in any case, you'd have to show that revenues from the licence fee could not produce as efficiently as revenue from commercial advertising.
Cathy goes on: "Look at the quality of TV in te US, where their public service segment is tiny by comparision to the main networks."
Shouldn't it be? Again I find myself confused by the term 'public service'. Is public service broadcasting supposed to be providing something in the public interest that cannot be produced by networks funded by commercial advertising? If so, I can't see the justification for entertainment, soap operas, game shows, reality TV shows, dramas and much more that the 大象传媒 is engaged in spending licence fee-payers' money on. It's patently obvious that the commercial networks are providing everything the 大象传媒 is providing in equal quality and better quantity. Now justify the licence fee again???
Fr Anonymous says: "Save the licence fee. It's the only thing protecting UK culture from the trivialising effects of American culture."
I'm sure you'll be able to furnish us with some examples? I'm slightly amused that you feel the UK culture must be protected from American culture. Still, you haven't made it known how the licence fee is making that happen. Would you just like to BAN the import of American television (by any network), since it's clear you see it as some kind of a threat?
One final point. You all appear to find the licence fee value for money. You obviously believe that the public at large shares this judgment. If that is the case, why not convert the licence fee to a voluntary subscription for those interested? If you're right and the public feel the licence fee is worth the money, there should be little loss of revenue and those interested in watching the output of the 大象传媒 would be those paying for its services.
But if I'm right (and that's my second name), then the 大象传媒 will not be able to sustain some of its exorbitant expenditure and will have to learn how to do business as a moral corporation, without the privilege of the government collecting their salaries at gunpoint. In that case, my argument is that no moral justification exists for the licence fee in the first place, because it involves the forceable expropriation of citizens' hard earned money for a service they don't want. If they want it for this price, they'll pay for it voluntarily. If they don't want it for this price, they won't, and therefore you have been proved wrong.
To continue to demand that the public pay for a service they wouldn't pay for voluntarily is one of the most arrogant attitudes, and to claim it's for their own good one of the most condescending.
I've not dog in this race, but I do want to challenge one claim just made - that Blue Planet is no better than just about anything on the Nat Geo Channel. I wish this were true, since I love the national geographic. Blue Planet has rightly won just about every international TV documentary award and was given cinematic release as well. Few regular documentaries on any major chanell can claim that. Even Fenton's wonderful score for Blue Planet won international musical awards, and the CD is selling in the hundreds of thousands still. Blue Planet has arguably revived and redirected the natural history genre, and few fans of the national geographic channel would disagree with that. It cost an absolute fortune to make, of course, which is probably why no commercial channel would have attempted it. The whale sequence alone (which lasts 60 seconds) took a 6-person crew (with two boats and marine crews) a month to shoot. That single shoot cost more than most 60minute documentaries on national tv. As someone working in independent film-making, I have to take my hat of to the 大象传媒 for their commitment to this kind of project, ad to their extraordinary natural history unit n Bristol. I simply can't imagine anything of this scale being commissioned commercially. I wish I was wrong about that. Maybe I do have a dog in this race after all, because I believe Paxman is right: the 大象传媒 should stop trying to clone commercial productions and concentrate its resources in the kind of science, drama, music, new and factual productions that are comparable to Blue Planet.
Ecorealist-
You make a good point. Blue Planet was spectacular, of course, and I'm not claiming that any random National Geographic program is better. But the consistently great programming on NG is comparable at least, and of course the 大象传媒 aren't producing Blue Planet every week.
You mention the sheer volume of money involved. You're making my point for me.
"As someone working in independent film-making, I have to take my hat of to the 大象传媒 for their commitment to this kind of project..."
If you had millions of pounds' worth of free money, the product of the best of government extortion, why not throw a "fortune" (in your words) at a natural history project? The point is that it's the method of funding that is immoral.
Course, if the 大象传媒 was more like PBS in America and took your advice about sticking to science, history and the like, I'd have much less to complain about. But then, if that were the case, the 大象传媒 would not be the behemoth that it is, would not require a licence fee to operate, and we'd be having a different discussion anyway.
I don't own a television. That makes make a sort of weirdo these days. I can watch pretty much all I want via the internet. I suppose I agree with JW even though I bemoan the loss of Reithian values. But a let's also remember JW that it is the license fee payers of the UK who are giving you a space for your soapbox on this website. Their money also funds this blog and Sunday Sequence.
I would hate to see the 大象传媒 turn commercial but I reckon it's probably inevitable. I only hope it does not go the same way as Channel 4.
vsuk says- ...let's also remember JW that it is the license fee payers of the UK who are giving you a space for your soapbox on this website. Their money also funds this blog and Sunday Sequence."
Yes, and the fact that blogging has emerged entirely independently in multitudes, well before the 大象传媒 joined the party, is strong proof that no such arrangement is necessary to fund blogging! It's not as if I would have no soapbox if the 大象传媒 were not into blogging these days. The very idea that people owe anything to the 大象传媒 with regard to this technology is absurd: if anything it's the 大象传媒 that owes the blogosphere and not the other way around.
"I would hate to see the 大象传媒 turn commercial but I reckon it's probably inevitable."
I would hate to see the 大象传媒 stay 'public' but, despite a lengthy Charter Review in which a 鈥渟ignificant鈥 percentage of those surveyed strongly opposed the license fee, 58% expressed the desire to be able to choose whether to receive 大象传媒 services or not, 48% suggested alternative funding models based on either subscription, advertising or sponsorships, and only 46% believed the license fee offers 鈥渇airly good鈥 value for money, the government chose to change nothing about the way the 大象传媒 is funded.
Unfortunately for British citizens who like their rights of freedom to choose, at least the next eight years of the digital revolution will be spent dragging around the funding of a single UK broadcaster, whether they want it or not, even as thousands upon thousands of other broadcasters of different emerging kinds provide content to them for free. Unbelievable.