Throughout the BBC’s history, news has been the most important thing it does. Today, television is still the place where most people get their information. So it’s worrying to read reports that the BBC is considering a radical revamp, or even the end, of its successful television News Channel – which is watched by more than 8 million people a week.
It’s fashionable to argue that channels generally are a thing of the past; a similar case has made about print in another part of the media world. Their reach is going down, and we can see the shape of the internet future. But if every conventional outlet with even a slightly falling reach was shut down, there’d be almost nothing left; and TV channels, like newspapers, still have considerable value.
Having worked there for 33 years, I’m a strong supporter of the corporation; but I’m not one of George Osborne’s BBC imperialists urging its infinite expansion. I am willing to contemplate a slightly smaller BBC.
I do, however, believe that the television News Channel is a fundamental part of its public service offering – and it sits within the mix of essential services alongside BBC1, BBC2, Radio 4 and the World Service. This is recognising that the digital revolution is upon us, but the television age has not yet passed. For now, it’s not either/or: it’s both/and.
The suggestions seem to include the thought that BBC News would shift from 24-hour television to 24-hour online. There is a significant loss in this.
On breaking news stories, a television news channel can guide viewers coherently through a fast-changing situation – and the skill of the presenter is essential for linking and making sense what is happening. In busy times and quiet times, interviews are at the heart of a news channel: correspondents analysing the latest developments or news-makers popping into the studio to give information or be grilled about what they’ve done.
None of this can be easily replicated by even the best array of online or mobile video clips. There are times of the day when you want to sit in front of the TV and watch an intelligently-edited bulletin that is live from the heart of Britain’s best news organisation.
Many of the financial and strategic arguments that were used for the launch of News 24 still apply. It is using a newsgathering infrastructure that is there around the clock, and it produces a lot of hours of television from the state-of-the-art studios, constructed with the News Channel in mind, in central London. Having that resource available means that BBC1 can pick up a major news story immediately and smoothly, whenever it happens.
The other concept appears to be that the UK BBC News Channel would be subsumed into the global BBC World News. This is something we looked at when I was head of television news more than a decade ago.
The problem is that a UK agenda and a world agenda are radically different: the Osborne budget matters hugely to Britain, but not at all to India. A motorway pile-up in the winter fog is a very big rolling story for a domestic outlet, while being of minor note in Brazil.
You can already see the weakening of the service in the “refreshed” BBC News evening schedule when a completely different world agenda with an energetic man and a touchscreen wings in at 9pm and at midnight we are given what seems to be a breakfast show for the Far East from Singapore.
Everyone recognises that the BBC has financial challenges. But the organisation has about £3.7bn a year of licence fee income, and executives claim the new settlement agreed on Monday – however disappointing it looks to many outsiders – is “cash flat” and offers some room for investment in the early years of the new deal.
In those circumstances, it is hard to see how a television news channel – which could be as ambitious in its coverage and intelligent speech content as the Today programme is on the radio – is potentially excluded from the array of services.
Would Rupert Murdoch abandon his market-leading Fox News in America? Although Sky News is excellent, do we really want it to be the only UK-based 24-hour channel? It may be time to hang a banner opposite New Broadcasting House: “Save the BBC News Channel.”
Roger Mosey is master of Selwyn College Cambridge and a former head of BBC television news
