Speaking of public service and its futures, readers might like to know that there is a 1999 corporate survey tucked away on the BBC website called Public Service Around The World. Its a comparative study covering twenty-one public broadcasting systems, commissioned by the BBC from McKinsey Consultants.
The report is a brisk and relatively straightforward read, but it's ultimately tendentious. McKinsey assess the state of public service in the new multi-channel, satellite and cable saturated broadcasting climate in the light of the digital revolution. The report usefully compares the performance and strategies of PSBs across the world - in Japan, South Africa, and the USA, as well as across Europe (although there are disappointing omissions, such as India, and none from the Asia, Africa, the Caribbean or South America).
It divides PSBs broadly into three categories - those who prioritise distinctiveness over 'market share (like Americas PBS with its tiny viewership), the audience-hungry channels who compete with commercial stations by aping their content (like Italys RAI), and those somewhere in between (like the BBC). In the best tradition of classroom essays it is the third category- the synthesis- that comes out on top.
The report proposes the existence, in a deregulating world, of a virtuous cycle where PSBs produce such innovative quality programming that it compels commercial stations to do the same. It suggests that the most effective strategy for the PSB is to combine an interest in market share with a strong commitment to those public service stalwarts to inform and to educate. To sum up, the McKinsey Report suggests that public service broadcasters, rather than being anachronistic legacies of 20th century paternalism, can be the pacesetters who set the tone for broadcasting markets.
There are undoubtedly some useful statistics and comparisons here, both for the media professional and the student of broadcasting policy. There are easy-to-understand graphs summarising the various strategies employed by each public service institution, and the varying fortunes of each system as it comes face-to-face with the deregulated market. There are some cheery facts for those who argue that state funded media institutions have a future, and that informative and educational programming can be popular too. Similarly there is grist for the anti-American mill: the report suggests that the American model is not necessarily the one to emulate (the virtuous cycle apparently does not operate in the USA where PBS has a miniscule audience share and little impact on the main commercial broadcasters).
But in the end the report is complacent. It is as if the BBC have commissioned it, not in an attempt to improve their service, but as a justification for their existing policies. What is given as an example of public service broadcasters' innovative agenda-setting programming? Oh, it's Pride and Prejudice (BBC). You want popular, informative and educative? The Human Body cant be beat (yes, its a BBC show too). The preferred funding strategy? That would be the licence fee (the BBCs method). The BBC emerges as the benchmark by which all others are to be judged. Portuguese public service is, apparently, a shambles (though Eunice Goes has confirmed this view here). The French? Blunderers. The Swedes are efficient and impressive, indeed almost as good as the impeccable Brits.
McKinsey develop the principle of distinctiveness by which to judge the output of PSBs, a composite of the amount of programming from several key genres thought to be indicative of the core public service remit; factual, cultural, childrens. From this they come up with the categories of rigorousness, distinctiveness and tone by which the PSBs are graded. They suggest, by way of anecdotal evidence which they do not actually present, that public service broadcasters have a superior tone (popular but not populist, less sensationalist, more rigorous) to their commercial rivals.
The problem is of course that these categories - in the absence of a convincing methodology for judging content, much less defining genre - rest upon exactly the same pious assumptions which have been characteristic of a particularly British brand of paternalism and elitism. Is it so clear that there is inherent merit in an historical costume drama just because it is based on a canonised work of literature? (I thought the TV show of Pride and Prejudice was boring.) How do we distinguish between factual or cultural programmes, or are they all good by virtue of their content alone?
The report has no answers. It assumes a consensus that ultimately serves the BBC. Neither does the report countenance the possibility that good programming can emanate from the commercial sector (no mention of The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Sky News) except as a response to the pace-setting of the PSBs. Much as the BBC executives must have been cheered to hear it, on what grounds can they claim that it is the public service stations which set the pace?
Lest you get the wrong impression, I am a big fan of public service, and the BBC in particular - I just find it so frustrating that the case for the defence is made so poorly by the institution itself. I cant remember the last time I heard anyone from the BBC stand up and say what I believe to be an obvious truth: that TV is far better without ads - films are uninterrupted and therefore far more powerful, documentaries can follow a flowing logic without the continual recourse to or did they cliff hangers and back from the break recaps.
Go to the BBC site and see for yourself how Greg Dyke defends the BBC funding structure, and also take a look at the BBCs submission to the government select committee on its funding future. It also includes the BBCs response to what we must imagine were the committees rather hostile findings - because these negative comments, just like the possibility that the BBC could ever have made a mistake, are entirely absent from this site.
Come on, Beeb - I dont expect you to be perfect, just honest, decent, fair, and as free of corporate double-speak as you should be free from corporate cash.