The coronavirus crisis may have saved the BBC licence fee, the chairman of ITV has said, while the editor of the BBC’s Today programme on Radio 4 said the broadcaster’s coverage had restored its role at the heart of the nation.
ITV’s Sir Peter Bazalgette also urged the government to review legislation to force Apple and Amazon to promote public service broadcasters’ content.
Speaking at a webinar hosted by Peter Mandelson’s consultancy Global Counsel, Bazalgette said he expected the Conservative party would rethink its threats to the BBC because it has demonstrated how regulated broadcasters deliver the demand for safe, reliable information that unregulated social media cannot meet.
He described the Tory aggression towards the BBC as “priapic” at times, with threats made to its future funding and calls for it to be turned into a subscription service.
“I think the value of the BBC particularly … and the way the nation has relied on it in a crisis, as it has so many times before, will make them [the Conservative party] think again,” Bazalgette said. “I think that licence fee settlement will be, I’m not saying it’ll go up necessarily, but it should be at a level where it means that the long-term cuts internally … don’t have to be quite as brutal.”
Sarah Sands, the editor of the Today programme, which was boycotted by the Tories after the general election, said the BBC’s place at the heart of the nation had been restored during the past few weeks.
More than seven in 10 of the TV audience at that time watched Boris Johnson’s address to the nation on Sunday night, she said.
Sands said Conservatives had come back to Today “quickly realising that all the characteristics of the programme which they were complaining about … too many experts, too many academics and not demotic enough for them, suddenly actually became a great virtue [for them]. So I think it’s had a huge public service role.”
Bazalgette said the BBC’s financial position was stronger than that of any other public service broadcaster, with the advertising downturn at its commercial rivals “the worst in the history of commercial TV”. He said they could return to financial strength as they simultaneously deliver mass audiences that online services cannot, along with “brand equity” and reputation.
However, he called on the government to ensure the role of public service broadcasters as trusted and regulated news and entertainment providers, by legally forcing streaming platforms and smart TV manufacturers to promote their content.
“We are going to need a new public service broadcast regime where the content of the BBC and ITV is given prominence on all the platforms it is distributed on such as Virgin, Sky, Apple, Amazon, and connected television such as Samsung and LG,” he said.
All that was required would be an update to the Communications Act 2003, he added. Before that, public services broadcasters were guaranteed the first five slots on Sky TV’s electronic programme guide, after a successful campaign by the former BBC boss Lord Birt and ITV colleagues in the 1990s.
Bazalgette, a former chair of the Arts Council, also called on the government to be mindful of the crisis in the arts sector, which had no revenue because it was closed and had bleak prospects because of physical distancing requirements.
