MUMBAI: UK Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has announced that the BBC licence fee will rise by three per cent over each of the next two years. The deal will see the current fee of ?131.50 rise to a maximum ?151 by 2012.
Borrowing limits will also be tighter than requested. The BBC had wanted an above-inflation hike in the licence to boost programmes and digital services.
Not surprisingly BBC DG Mark Thompson expressed “real disappointment” at the Government’s final licence fee level settlement but said it was a privilege to receive and gave certainty in planning to create the best possible content and services for all audiences.
Thompson said that no commercial rival enjoyed that certainty of funding. While the BBC could argue that the benefits that extra funding would bring to the wider creative industries as well as audiences, he said that it was ultimately for the Government to decide the level in the broader context of inflation and the wider public sector.
He also welcomed the longer settlement at six years enabling efficient planning for digital switchover, rapidly changing audience expectations and new creative initiatives.
“Our vision for the future, broadly endorsed by a Government White Paper, as well as their own requirements and ambitions, especially around digital switchover, plus not wanting existing, valued BBC services to be squeezed as we invest for the future, led us to bid for a settlement that would increase in real terms.
“The settlement announced means the BBC still receives substantial, guaranteed income of more than ?20billion over the next six years, which is financial security denied to any other media player. But it leaves a gap of around ?2 billion over the next six years between what we believed we needed to deliver our vision and what will actually be available. That’s not a gap many organisations can swallow comfortably.”
Thompson said there were three ways the organisation could now move to reduce the gap:
1 – Simply not make some new investments, do them later or do them more modestly;
2 – Increase self help targets. This would mean: increasing licence fee efficiencies in collection and evasion; maximising commercial revenues and continuing reform, modernisation and productivity;
3 – Move resources inside the BBC from existing content and services to new ideas.
The BBC’s executive board and senior managers across the organisation will now review investment plans in the light of the settlement and explore the options.
The executive will then make initial recommendations to the BBC Trust who will take decisions later in the year in the best interests of licence fee payers, drawing on the framework of the BBC’s public purposes and public value.
Thompson adds, “The BBC faces challenges to find enough money to create the fantastic content our audiences want. After seven years of funding that has grown in real terms, we now face not just a tight settlement but daunting investment challenges in distribution, infrastructure and technology that risk diverting money away from content creation. These challenges call for some new thinking about how we produce content and how we create value.”
Thompson said that the BBC’s vision for content in the digital world, Creative Future, was never fundamentally about spending new money:
“It is about flexing, adapting, liberating all content, but above all, content we already make. It’s about unlocking the full value of existing investment.”
Tag: Tessa Jowell
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BBC licence fee to rise by 3%
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Licence fee payers to help set the BBC’s agenda
MUMBAI: For the first time, licence fee payers will have a say in how UK pubcaster the BBC delivers its mission to inform, educate and entertain.
The new Charter and Agreement outline six ‘Public Purposes’ for the BBC and task the new BBC Trust with ensuring the BBC delivers the best possible programming to promote them.
The Trust has taken its first step to fulfilling this responsibility, publishing for public consultation six draft Purpose Remits which spell out proposed priorities and how the BBCs delivery of each purpose will be judged. The consultation and the first of the Trusts major audience research surveys will seek to find out what priorities are most important to licence fee payers and how the BBC is currently performing in those areas.
BBC Trust acting chairman Chitra Bharucha said, “The new Charter makes clear that the BBC exists only to serve the public interest and the BBC’s main object is the promotion of its six Public Purposes. For each of these Public Purposes we are today publishing draft remits and asking licence fee payers whether they agree with the priorities proposed for the BBC. We also want to know how well licence fee payers think the BBC is currently performing in these priority areas.”
The public consultation has begun formally and any individual or organisation can respond via the BBC Trust’s website. The Audience Councils – the Trust’s advisers in the UK’s four nations will provide responses from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and around England; and the Trust will seek to raise awareness amongst interest groups and the public directly.
Bharucha said however that the Trust needed to do more in order to ensure the evidence on which the Trust based its judgements was properly representative of licence fee payers:
“The Trust hopes as many people as possible will respond to the consultation. We owe it to all licence fee payers to ensure that the evidence we collect is truly representative. We are therefore also commissioning our first major survey of 4,500 adults to help identify the publics priorities for the BBC and where they think the BBC could do better. The Trust will take account of all views expressed before finalising the Purpose Remits. We will then request BBC management to respond with their plans for delivery.”
The consultation will close on 10 April 2007. The Trust will publish responses to the consultation and the results of the survey alongside the final Purpose Remits later this year. This follows on media reports last month which had stated that UK’s culture secretary Tessa Jowell and chancellor Gordon Brown had agreed to a below-inflation rise for the TV licence fee. The agreement has not yet been approved by British PM Tony Blair.
Under the plan, the fee would rise by three per cent next year and the year after, and two per cent for the following three years. The Retail Price Index is currently 3.9 per cent. The decision would mean the licence fee rising to £135.45 next year from its current level of £131.50. By 2012, the cost of a TV licence is set to be between £148.05 and £151. BBC DG Mark Thompson had told staff it would be a real disappointment if this move goes ahead. The BBC wanted an annual rise of 1.8 per cent above inflation.
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UK minister for culture, media, sport Jowell lays emphasis on India UK film co-production treaty
MUMBAI: A film co-production treaty between India and the UK was signed last year. 10 films are expected to be made in the first year..
This announcement was made Britain’s secretary of state, department of culture, media and sport Tessa Jowell at Frames. “Last year, I signed the main body of the Indo-UK co-production treaty. The treaty will enable both our film industries to take fuller advantage of the new opportunities of the digital age.
“We estimate that in the first year around 10 films would be made. This will benefit UK and India by around 155 million pounds. Cineworld cinemas in the UK are showng Indian films. There were 2.6 million visitors to Hindi films in the UK last year. Indian films accounted for 16 per cent of all releases in the UK last year, taking in 12 million pounds at the UK box office last year.
“The treaty will benefit both nations’ creative skill sets. There will be creative and technical collaborations from film festivals and marketing to production management services and the sale of cinematography equipment. It has been fantastic to the UK Film Council distribution and exhibition Fund to support The Rising. Veer Zaara took in 2.3 million pounds at the UK box office.
“We have just completed a White Paper on the BBC where a key theme is bringing the world to UK and UK to the world. Coupled with developments in the BBC Asian Network and the Window of Creative Competition which will open BBC production to a wider range of creative talent, we will surely see further collaboration between the two cultures and countries.”
She noted that this kind of progress is important not just in the film contest but as part of the UK government’s aim to nurture the creative sector. “The global market value of creative industries has increased from $831 billion in 2000 to $1.3 trillion in 2005. This represents more than seven per cent of the total GDP. In the UK creative business contributes 11.4 billion pounds to our trade balance. This is one pound in ever 12 pounds in our GDP. My job is to ensure that the creative sector is the first to benefit from the economic changes wrought by globalisation. For the film industry we know that digital technology is enabling better production, distribution and access.
“It is starting to fully examine the potential of this new technology in the ciontext of games, animation, individual and producer platforms as well as providing opportunities for areas like multiplex development.
Indian innovation is making waves across the world being the first to stream a film on mobile for instance,” said Jowell.
Jowell says that the UK government is encouraging the creative sectors to work together and share best practice and skills. “We have encouraged the BBC to work with organisations like Visit Britain and the Tate galleries. We have recently launched a flagship Creative Economy programme which is getting together luminaries from the creative sectors of film, music, fashion, advertising, publishing and computer games.”
The result, Jowell says, is that the UK is seeing regional clusters of creative business. In the film industry, the UK is seeing investment in regional production firms, visual effects firms, post production houses and film financiers.