The director general of the BBC has been accused of failing to improve the “dire” representation of Welsh life on the UK’s television screens.
While popular and successful programmes such as Doctor Who, Sherlock and Casualty have been made in Wales in recent years, there is concern that every day Welsh life is all but invisible on much of the BBC.
Appearing before Welsh assembly members in Cardiff, Tony Hall was strongly criticised for not solving a problem he acknowledged more than two years ago when he conceded that aspects of life in Wales were not “sufficiently captured” by the BBC.
Speaking to the culture and communications committee at the assembly, Lord Hall said details of new funding for Wales programming to help address the situation would be announced in March.
Lord Hall says there will be an announcement of new funding for Wales in March NEXT year. No luck of an annoucement today then!! @SeneddCWLC
— bethanjenkins (@bethanjenkins) November 2, 2016
But the Labour assembly member Lee Waters, a former BBC journalist, accused him of acting too slowly.
“That will be almost three years after you first said there was a problem, that Wales wasn’t being properly served, aspects of our national life were not being captured by the BBC,” he said.
“If the budgets aren’t going to be announced until March, it will be a year, 18 months, before anything hits the screens. That will be four, going on five years since you first identified the problem. You failed to deliver.”
Waters flagged up analysis from the Institute of Welsh Affairs thinktank concluding that the portrayal of Wales on BBC1 in 2014-15 in the genres of entertainment, education, comedy and drama totalled three-and-a-half hours.
The drama output consisted of one episode of Hinterland, which is set in Aberystwyth, and a collection of short films produced through the It’s My Shout scheme aimed at finding young talent.
Waters also drew attention to an article in the October edition of Television magazine from the former BBC drama commissioner Jane Tranter, who said Wales used to be considered a “problem child” by the corporation. She argued that the BBC needed to treat it and other regions with “more care and responsibility”.
Waters told Hall: “You’ve been making empathetic noises for some time now. You have been leading us to believe that you have got it and you are going to deliver. It’s going to be five years before you deliver.”
A second committee member, Plaid Cymru’s Dai Lloyd, said the figures highlighted by Waters were “dire”.
Hall said he understood the anxiety and frustration, adding: “But what I am saying to you is we are going to deliver, I do get it.”
He insisted that the BBC was already delivering “a huge amount” for Wales. He spoke of the corporation’s coverage of the Aberfan disaster anniversary last month, which included a well-received documentary fronted by Huw Edwards and the film poem Aberfan: The Green Hollow, which gained the highest audience approval ratings for a BBC1 programme in almost five years.
He also pointed to the development of the BBC studios in Roath Lock, Cardiff, and said a drama commissioner for Wales would be appointed. “We’re making progress,” Hall said.
Ahead of the committee meeting, the chair, Bethan Jenkins, also a Plaid Cymru member, wrote that she had heard time and again that not enough programmes on UK networks said anything about life in Wales.
“The BBC’s Sherlock, Casualty and Doctor Who are all made in Cardiff, which is great news for the Welsh economy, but what do any of these say about Welsh life?” she asked.
