Economy: Broadcast Media

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to be the first Member of this House to be able to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, on her excellent maiden speech. She brings a characteristic lilt to her remarks, which simply enhances the basic sense and commitment of everything she says. She said that she suffered from an appalling sense of direction, but her career is the contradiction of that. She has been entirely consistent in her commitment to public service, both in the Welsh Assembly and in the Liberal Democrat party. We are delighted to see the noble Baroness in this House and her contribution will be invaluable.

We have heard other very good maiden speeches, which is important, but I shall mention one speaker in this debate who is far from being a maiden speaker—the noble Lord, Lord Bragg. He is a consummate broadcaster. I was listening to him dealing with a slightly difficult topic on Radio 4 this morning: the evolution of the microscope. He had a number of scientists in the studio with him and one of them insisted on conducting an experiment during the programme. It consisted largely of handing round a metal bar which people tried to twist in different directions. I could see the noble Lord dealing with the inherent challenge of this event—this was radio, not television. He fastened upon the most perfect phrase when he said to the scientist involved, “Hold it up to the microphone”, which was a wonderful combination of radio and television.

Like a number of Members of this House, I have had some difficulty in deciding what interests I should declare. Suffice to say that in one form or another I have been involved in broadcasting virtually from university to the present time—first, as a broadcaster myself. Given the subject of this debate, I recall my first programme on BBC television, which was the “Money Programme”. I was on it from its second edition and was taken aside and told that there was a problem with “money”—not the money that I would receive but the programme’s name: the fear of the governors that it was somehow unseemly to spend too much time discussing money. Other titles were suggested by the governors—one was the “Industry Programme” and the other was the “Export Programme”. Fortunately, neither was adopted and we settled for the “Money Programme”. Broadcasting certainly makes a huge amount of money for Britain.

My other involvements illustrate some of the diversity of this debate. I worked in the European Commission for five years, in charge of media, particularly broadcast media. I currently chair a digital television production company called CTN and Havas Media in the UK, where online advertising is now by far our fastest-growing sector. That demonstrates a central feature of our subject, and maybe a problem with it. Broadcasting is no longer a phrase which in itself adequately describes the diversity and creativity of the communications revolution. The most dramatic growth, for example, in the BBC’s global news audiences this year was in the number of young people around the world using mobile phones to receive programmes, and 1 billion page views of the BBC’s international website were achieved in one month. Looking at the overall picture, British consumers spend one in every 12 working hours online, and advertising on mobile phones exceeds £1 billion. That is just a part of the terrain.

I had a classic illustration of that last week. Archbishop Tutu of South Africa was in our CTN studios. It was not a broadcast in the formal sense of the word, but it was instantly transmitted to a conference audience of 10,000 in the United States and to several other conferences. It also immediately went on YouTube, where it has access to a potential audience of millions of people. How would we describe this? Of course, it is broadcasting, narrowcasting, webcasting and social media. We are at the start of a major revolution—only at the very start. I can see no real limitations on the way in which it will go. As we are having this debate, just down the road in Millbank, an interesting announcement was made by the Government about setting up a creative media sector task force, looking particularly at the role of SMEs in the creative industries. The figures given at that conference for the value of the creative industries as a whole are profound. Will the Minister comment on what the task force might achieve in the areas that we have been debating today?

I will make two final points, one about opportunity and the other about responsibility. First, on opportunity, I have spent a number of years involved with the cause of the English language abroad, particularly as chairman of the English-Speaking Union. To an astonishing extent our first language has become the world’s second language, which gives us a huge advantage. The BBC broadcasts in 27 languages, but by far its most powerful instrument is the English language itself, and the accessibility of the world to it. It is a great opportunity.

My second point is about responsibility. The BBC, as we all know, does not only sell programmes or indeed, services around the world; it stands for certain values, which have been referred to in the debate. They include impartiality, accuracy, credibility and freedom from government control. These are fundamental characteristics. When I joined the BBC in the early 1960s, in a very dilapidated office in what was Lime Grove Studios, I knew that I could pick up my telephone and ring virtually anyone I wanted around the world and get an interview with them simply because I represented the BBC. The power of the brand was immense. Today, that brand has been jeopardised, and the tragedy is that it is effectively an own goal. The jeopardy has come from scandal and, as other noble Lords have commented, from quite grotesque executive settlements and payouts.

A line has been drawn under that, and we all wish the noble Lord, Lord Hall, the very best in his new leadership of the corporation and in the challenges he faces. He and we must always remember that even in this multichannel, interactive, digital world, virtue remains the key licence for broadcasting.