Report from Edinburgh

Hope everyone had as much fun in Edinburgh as I did…especially at the Ofcom Watch meet-n-greet cocktail party! Just for fun, I switched name tags with Steve Barnett, and stumbled around the party in my best Belushi-style, stuffing my face with those amazing crab puffs (hats off to Occasions Catering, huh?) and swilling the complimentary champagne. By the way, Luke apologizes to everyone for his outburst. Anyway — What a party! A special thanks to our platinum sponsors: Clear Channel & Disney.

Just kidding. While you nice folks were having fun in Edinburgh, I was watching pay-per-view movies at the Sierra Suites hotel here in bucolic Fairfax, Virginia (I’m relocating back to the U.S. and missing London terribly). So…I was stuck reading other accounts of what happened. In particular, I read Tony Ball’s MacTaggart lecture. Here are my brief thoughts:

First, was this a laugh line?

Like democracy itself, the results are not always pretty - for every uplifting History Channel, Artsworld or National Geographic there’s a tacky, downmarket, ratings chaser. And I’m not just talking about BBC3.

Ball also put forth “three cardinal points” about PSBs. They are:

1. “[P]ublic funding is no more a sure-fire guarantee of quality in the making of programmes….”

2. “[T]he more state subsidy and government control you have in broadcasting, the greater the scope for abuses will be.”

3. “[P]ublicly funded broadcasting in an age of spectrum abundance has to work harder than ever to justify itself to the taxpayer.”

Excellent points, although I’m not sure they are controversial, and they really do not point to any particular policy outcomes, including those advanced by Ball in the latter portion of his speech.

Ball says:

“[The U.K. should] set limits on specific types of programming that we licence-fee payers definitely do not want our money spent on. Some programmes clearly fall outside any reasonable remit for a publicly funded broadcaster. Top of my list would be bought-in American or other foreign programming.”

And further adds:

“The BBC should be asked to license some of its established populist programme franchises to the commercial channels.”

These specific regulatory proposals advanced by Ball are clearly worthy of discussion, but I don’t think he’s quite made his case. First, either the BBC has control over its own content, or it doesn’t. Ball’s suggestion would stymie the BBC’s flexibility and planning ability.

BBC1 Controller Lorraine Heggessey answered back in today’s Independent, although she clearly let her arguments stray somewhat into the political arena:

[Murdoch] is a capital imperialist, isn’t he? That’s what he does. And all people of his political persuasion in the States are against the public sector.

You go, girl!