Bland backs flagship role for BBC1
BBC Chairman Christopher Bland has denied plans to drop quality programmes from BBC1's schedule.
Answering questions from MPs on the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee in Parliament, Bland said that there were no plans within senior BBC management to move programmes like Panorama and Question Time onto BBC2.
However, he acknowleged that the BBC's Governors were expecting DG Greg Dyke to present a range of options to increase BBC1's share of the audience, which has dropped below the psychologically important 30% figure.
According to Greg Dyke, the BBC needed to plan ahead for the eventual switch-off of analogue TV transmitters, which would push all UK viewers into buying multi-channel systems. Debate had already begun within the BBC on the portfolio of free channels that the Corporation should aim to deliver in the digital age. Estimates suggested that 35% of existing viewers would not pay to watch television, even if they had digital equipment.
A speech in which Mark Thompson, Director of Television, had advocated a move towards specialist BBC channels was described as the "beginning of a voyage" whose destination could not yet be predicted.
Bland defined the BBC's public service role as the provision "on televison, radio, and now online, of a range of programmes which inform, educate and entertain...which [often] would not be supplied by the market alone, sometimes directed at parts of the audience that would not be adequately serviced by the market".
He went on to describe the £104 BBC licence fee as "fantastic value" compared to BSkyB's subscription packages which could cost over £300 a year. Under further questioning, Bland admitted that the recent licence settlement, which guarantees increases of 1.5% over inflation for the next six years, was "not to be grumbled at", and put the BBC in a privileged position. ITV's income, though, was actually rising faster than the BBC's.
Despite this boost in income, the BBC was planning to cut costs by £750m over the licence settlement period, partly through the 1,100 job cuts announced in the last week, which Dyke said would fall "disproportionately on administrative and back office jobs".
The new DG avoided direct criticism of the structure he inherited from predecessor John Birt, but reaffirmed his intention to reduce support costs from 24% of expenditure to 15%. Birt's salary, equivalent to a third of a million pounds when he left, was defended by Christopher Bland as being "only 50% of the going rate". Greg Dyke was revealed to be earning £360,000 a year, with the potential for a further 30% in the form of a bonus.
Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, a member of the Board of Governors, answering a question from Liberal Democrat Ronnie Fraser, did not challenge a direct allegation that Dyke's bonus would depend on achiving the 1,100 job cuts. She said that there were "many other targets he would have to hit" in order to earn a bonus.
MPs questioned the budget of more than £50m a year for News 24, and pointed out that there were already several commercial providers of continuous TV news. Greg Dyke accepted that News 24 had suffered early problems with presentation, but argued that since last year's relaunch, the channel had begun "closing the gap" with Sky News. News 24 was now reaching 6.1m viewers a week, thanks in part to the overnight transmission of the channel on BBC1.
There was no criticism however of the new BBC Sport Online website, which was set up at the beginning of July - Conservative Michael Faber said that the new service was "superb".
The BBC's income from commercial activities, up by only £1m in the last year was challenged as a "failure" by fellow Conservative Julie Kirkbride. John Smith, Director of Finance, pointed out that the cash contribution made by BBC Worldwide to the rest of the Corporation, due to reach £200m within three years, was a more important figure than the headline profit figure in the annual accounts.
Dyke reminded the committee that the BBC's scope for generating external revenue was limited by competition policy, as well as the need to keep licence income separate from any commercial activities.
The BBC team appearing in from of the committee promised to investigate a drop in Radio 3's audience, and indicated that the once secretive Corporation would be willing to attend a hearing after next year's Annual Report is published.