Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Wood of Anfield and Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 29th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield]

My Lords, Amendment 33ZG has a simple purpose: to ensure that high-quality public service broadcasting content, paid for by licence fee payers, continues to be accessible and prominent to viewers as viewing habits change. PSB programming is not only a staple of cultural life in our country but one of the jewels of our world-leading creative industries. A crucial component of the regime surrounding PSB is the regulations to ensure that these programmes are widely available and easy to find. The current rules, established over a decade ago in a code of practice, ensure this by requiring that the main PSB channels—BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5—appear at the top of channel listings or electronic programme guides, EPGs, on all TV platforms. The code works well for traditional TV viewing, where it is watched in real time, but we live in a world in which viewing habits are rapidly changing and the platforms for providing programmes to viewers are multiplying and diversifying.

In the past decade, digital channels have proliferated, and viewing habits have moved on towards on-demand and online viewing. Three-quarters of adults now watch programmes through catch-up services, and about 16% of all programme watching is now time shifted rather than in real time. The problem is that in the face of this behavioural and technological change, it is becoming much harder to find the PSB content that viewers both like and pay for. On-demand players such as BBC iPlayer and All 4 are outside the scope of the prominence rules. New means for accessing these programmes apart from traditional channel listings, such as menus for catch-up and on-demand TV, are also not covered by the rules. In newer TV platforms, the prominence of PSB channels is being marginalised by new graphics and menus. On the new Sky box, Sky Q, you are greeted, when you turn your telly on, by a large box advertising top picks chosen by Sky, more than three-quarters of which is content broadcast by Sky channels.

What is the result of this failure of regulation surrounding PSB prominence to keep up with changing technological developments and viewer behaviour? It means that programmes such as Welsh and Gaelic language programmes are hidden in the digital weeds, often requiring many more than 10 clicks and a sophisticated knowledge of online platforms to reach. It means that the world-leading BBC children’s channels, CBeebies and CBBC, are now below 12 US channels in the channel listing of the leading pay-TV platform, Sky. It means that viewers are increasingly being led to programmes whose prominence is paid for by commercial competitors to PSB channels rather than to PSB content.

Yet viewers’ preference for PSB remains incredibly strong. Ten times more viewers want the TV guide at the top of their screen, in which PSB has preferred prominence, rather than the recommendations of the platform operator. More and more, viewers are not getting what they want.

There is widespread recognition that the rules need updating. In its 2015 PSB review, Ofcom concluded unambiguously:

“The current rules on schedule prominence for the PSBs were designed for an analogue broadcasting era. They need to be reformed to match changes in technology and ensure that public service content remains available and easy to find, in whatever way it is viewed”.


This House’s Communications Committee suggested extending the prominence rules to on-demand services and online menus. The TV licensing laws have already been updated to cover BBC on-demand services; the amendment simply demands that the same work be done for PSB prominence rules.

The amendment responds to the holes in the code in four ways: first, by adding PSB on-demand services to the list of services entitled to prominence; secondly, by extending the definition of an EPG beyond traditional channel listings to include connected and on-demand menus used by a significant number of consumers to access TV content. Note that the concept of “a significant number” is a robust one already in use under the 2003 Act, serving as a threshold test applying to Ofcom’s powers under the must-carry regime, so it has precedent, it is workable and means that it would apply to a few major platforms and not serve as an impediment to emerging innovators in the TV platform market.

Thirdly, it strengthens the requirement for prominence of PSB children’s channels specifically, so that parents and children can find the content they like and trust the most more easily, however they watch television. Fourthly, rather than seeking a legislative definition of prominence, it enables Ofcom to set prominence principles which the platforms would adapt as appropriate to their EPGs.

Some have argued that this proposal is unnecessary because the programmes and on-demand platforms that carry them prominently, such as BBC iPlayer, are thriving. This would be complacency of a high order, as well as ignoring the evidence of changes over time. Usage of iPlayer is indeed growing, but iPlayer’s market share is reducing: Netflix and YouTube are now the market leaders. Pressure on iPlayer and All 4 will increase in line with the amount that US companies are increasingly prepared to pay to support prominence for their commercial product on UK TV platforms. Similarly, children’s PSB programmes are indeed trusted and popular, but we know that platforms that display them prominently generate greater audiences than those, such as Sky, that do so less, so ensuring that the prominence rules cover those platforms is crucial to their sustainability.

What is at stake with the amendment is not an optional add-on to the regulatory regime around PSB, it is an updating of the prominence rules that is indispensable to the long-term sustainability of PSB in the face of changing technology. It is not just what consumers want, it is doing justice to the millions spent by licence fee payers on quality programming, to ensure that these programmes are not just made but watched.

Public service broadcasting cannot fulfil a public service if it is impossible to find or if it is crowded out by the sponsored content of wealthy and powerful commercial rivals. The amendment extends a principle that enjoys universal support for traditional TV viewing of the 2003 era, when the most recent Communications Act was written, to the more exciting, varied and complex world of TV viewing of 2017 and the years ahead. If we want PSB to flourish and remain at the centre of our national cultural life, rather than withering on the vine, we should support the amendment. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

I support this important amendment. In Committee, the Minister rejected the need for change. He said,

“we have not seen compelling evidence of harm to PSBs to date”.—[Official Report, 8/2/17; col. 1783.]

“To date”: key words. What is needed is for them to be made up to date, to ensure that public service content will continue to be available and easy to find in whatever way it is viewed in a future-proofed way. The current rules on the prominence of PSBs have not kept pace with technological and market development. I shall be very brief because, as usual, the noble Lord, Lord Wood, has said all that I was going to say, and I do not want to be a parrot. The impact of PSB depends not just on producing high-quality, distinctive UK content but on providing easy access for people to consume it. It is still the case, as mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, that the main and most trusted source of news is on TV. Given the rise of fake news, PSB content—impartial, well regulated, fact based—is more important than ever.

Prominence is one of the few sources of regulatory benefit to PSB providers, and we believe that in an increasingly complicated and fragmented digital world, its importance increases. As viewing habits change, reform is critical to preserve PSB in a digital age and sustain the creative powerhouse and global success that is UK broadcasting.