The Communications Bill, newly arrived in the House of Commons after
two years of debate, revision and speculation, affirms the Government’s
conviction that the market can be trusted to provide, even in the
problematical media. The Bill aims to create a level playing field on which all
the competing teams, from the Premiership giants in the national press and
broadcasting to the Doc Martens League minnows in weekly newspapers and
local radio, will play the same game with the same set of rules.
A new referee, Ofcom, will keep an eye on everyone, and the referee won’t be forever blowing his whistle over minor infractions, so long as the game flows along freely and keeps the crowd entertained. Teams from all over the world will be free to join in, thus making the competition more intense and productive. Some old-established household names will be relegated: but if you want winners you have to have losers, right?
The Bill’s joint sponsors, Secretaries of State Tessa Jowell from Culture, Media and Sport, and Patricia Hewitt, from Trade and Industry, are congratulating themselves on the consultative process which gave interested parties – and there were many – a chance to speak their various pieces before a joint committee of the Lords and Commons. Ms Jowell noted that 120 of the 148 recommendations made by the committee have been accepted.
But in its latest version the Bill notably has not accepted the counsel made most forcefully by the committee’s chairman, Lord Puttnam. It was he who, in his recommendations, was obviously conscious of the words of the Bill’s predecessor, a White Paper which announced sturdily that, when it came to the ownership of broadcasting licences, “We will retain the disqualifications on grounds of nationality and for political bodies”, and went on to state that the British restrictions were reflected not only across Europe, but “indeed beyond: the U.S. restricts foreigners to a 25 per cent interest in broadcasting companies, and Australia similarly limits foreigners to a minority interest in television.” (Why these two countries were picked out rather than, say, Brazil and Mexico, the White Paper did not reveal.)
Seeing the Government’s plan to open the door to non-European ownership, Lord Puttnam resisted, suggesting instead that media regulator Ofcom should hold the door shut for two or three years until it garners the experience and the knowledge to make an informed judgment. Ms Jowell and Ms Hewitt turned him down, Ms Jowell explaining that Puttnam’s “wait and see” proposal would delay any investment by a foreign owner, and therefore any benefit to the industry, “for up to five years, and I think that’s too long.” She also denied, as one might expect, that she and Ms Hewitt are not so much building a level playing field as a landing strip for Rupert Murdoch, so that he can add Channel 5 to his BSkyB holding and his newspapers: “People can try as hard as they want to construct some scenario of a dirty deal behind closed doors. There was no such deal.”
And nobody would suggest there was a deal, either with Mr Murdoch – prevented by the Bill from himself buying into ITV – who says he doesn’t want Channel 5 anyway, or with Sumner Redstone, the chairman of Viacom, who had a meeting with Tony Blair about the same time Mr Murdoch was saying that Viacom, owner of CBS and MTV, was the only company capable of buying ITV. But if the Government is counting on money coming to Britain to bolster our media, surely it must expect it to come from corporate pockets as deep as those of Murdoch or Viacom. So there will be some powerful people under the scrutiny of the infant Ofcom – and it is unlikely they will be of the breed that respects a light touch.
Ms Jowell may have seen that danger when she wrote into the Bill a new clause allowing her to step in and force BSkyB to carry public service channels if they cannot agree a price through negotiation. The BBC has long been anticipating that Mr Murdoch’s negotiators will demand a big increase in fees for using the satellite platform when the contract comes up for renewal early next year. The Government will continue to protect the BBC in other ways, too, turning down another Puttnam proposal, to abolish the Board of Governors and let Ofcom do its work (although Ofcom will have powers to fine the BBC for breaches of taste and decency). On balance this is probably a reasonable stance. With competing broadcasters denouncing its commercial expansion and many viewers disappointed in its dumbed-down programming, the BBC currently needs every friend it can get.
In the past, the predominant attitude of journalists to media ownership has been one of cynical indifference. Only the most ambitious showed much loyalty to proprietors, let alone shareholders. Loyalty was something journalists owed to the editor, the title or, in the case of broadcasters, the institution that employed them. The cynics took the tough-guy view that they should be able to do their jobs professionally no matter who ultimately held the purse strings. If conditions changed because an owner interfered intolerably, why, they could simply hire their guns out to a boss on the other side of the street.
There are plenty of cynics still around today, but not so many bosses. The trend in the press, television and radio has been towards fewer and less varied outlets in fewer and more powerful hands. You can’t leave the boss and cross the street if one boss owns both sides of the street. And the lack of choice for journalists trickles down rapidly into lack of choice for readers, viewers and listeners. And, in management-speak, the consumers, will also discover that quality further suffers as fewer and fewer media companies take more and more control and look for increased profits by making economies that include closing titles, sharing programmes or simply sacking staff.
The backgrounds of the Ofcom non-executive members so far named suggest the body will be more adept at dealing with the business aspects of its brief than with the sensitive questions of content, which will go to a special board under the deputy chairman, Richard Hooper, of the Radio Authority. The Government is clearly convinced that the “light touch” style of regulation is essential to encourage investment. But if the referee is too timid with his whistle on the level playing field, the name of the game may turn out to be Monopoly.