Public Service Broadcasters

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that we should have nimble and agile PSBs and therefore a regulatory system that is capable of dealing with that. The analogy he draws is not quite correct. Netflix can change its platform overnight because it has to consider only Netflix, whereas Ofcom has to consider the whole regulatory landscape. It is therefore important that it takes into account what effect it has if the BBC changes something such as the iPlayer. I take the point he makes about being nimble and agile and moving with the times. The chief executive of Ofcom made that point exactly when she said that it needed to be,

“a forward-looking regulator that supports the future success of UK TV, firmly rooted in the online world”.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, collaboration obviously brings opportunities, but will my noble friend comment on the importance of ensuring, and indeed what is being done to ensure, that PSBs carry on making programmes that the UK viewer wants to watch—as opposed, perhaps, to what the American viewer wants to watch?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My noble friend is absolutely right. This is one problem with US subscription services. They spend a huge amount on content. Netflix spent £4.6 billion on content in 2017 and Amazon spent £3.4 billion, but only £150 million of that was UK-made TV, whereas the public service broadcasters spent £2.6 billion on UK content.