The BBC has said every one of its services should be “clearly distinguishable from its commercial competitors”, highlighting programmes such as The Great British Bake Off, as it laid out its case for its licence fee-funded future into the next decade.
In its response to the government’s green paper future on the BBC which was published today, the corporation argued that universal access to the sort of programmes and information it provides was a “basic human right”.
Following criticism that some of its programmes were not distinctive enough – Radio 1 and Radio 2 were highlighted in the green paper, along with Saturday night BBC1 shows such The Voice – the BBC said: “The government is right to insist that the BBC should be distinctive.
“We propose a simple test: that every BBC service should be clearly distinguishable from its commercial competitors.
“But distinctiveness does not equal ‘market failure’ or stepping back from popular content. The BBC’s services should be distinctive, not distinct.”
It added: “The BBC makes good popular programmes - if we withdrew, audiences would have less choice. The value of - and public support for - the BBC comes from the range and depth of its content.”
The BBC’s response to the government green paper, published on Thursday, came the day after the final of BBC1’s The Great British Bake Off became the most watched programme of 2015 to date with a record 13.4 million viewers.
It said the BBC “turns things as diverse as ballroom dancing (Strictly Come Dancing), home baking (The Great British Bake Off), business (The Apprentice)“ as well as music, Comic Relief and Wimbledon and the FA Cup final “into national events. They become shared pastimes everyone can experience and talk about”.
The 103-page document said the case for the BBC began with the “sort of society we want”.
“Access to culture, media and information should be a basic human right, ensured regardless of a person’s ability to pay for it. The BBC has an intrinsic mission: to provide programmes and services that people love and enjoy, and which inform, educate, and entertain them as individuals.”
The BBC is not suggesting that every single programme should be subject to the “simple test” it outlines today, but that its channels and services should reflect creative ambition, high editorial standards, range and depth, and supporting homegrown ideas and talent.
Elsewhere, it drew a line in the sand over top-slicing of the licence fee and the mooted privatisation of BBC Worldwide, saying it would regard it as a “reopening of the funding agreement” in which the BBC took on the cost of free licence fees for the over-75s.
The BBC Trust, in a separate response, also came out against the privatisation of BBC Worldwide which is said makes a “vital contribution to the BBC, investing in public service programmes, making and generating substantial returns for licence fee payers”
The BBC said its proposals to modernise the BBC, outlined in recent weeks, including new digital services and helping local newspapers, depended on the budget deal remaining intact, including the inflation-linked licence fee.
The BBC said it agreed with the government that the media landscape had been transformed over the last decade “but we do not accept that the explosion of choice means that the rationale for the BBC has diminished, or that a vibrant market is a reason to constrain the BBC”.
Addressing each of the 19 questions included in the government’s green paper in turn, it described the licence fee as the best way to fund the BBC. It said it could “see merit” in the household levy idea but said subscription was “the wrong model for the BBC in principle and in practice”.
Elsewhere, it rejected criticism that the BBC was stifling online news providers, saying it was “not responsible for structural changes” in advertising. It said newspaper circulation and advertising had declined in all markets.
“The key question is not the scale of the BBC in online news… The question is rather the extent to which BBC’s usage or revenues substitute those of commercial news providers. The evidence for such a negative dynamic impact on the online news market is lacking.”
It said the popularity of UK newspaper websites - Mail Online’s daily page views have grown 14-fold over the last six years, the Guardian three-fold, it said - “suggests that the BBC’s success is not at their expense. UK newspaper websites are successful”.
