Starcom UK Chairman Says BBC Is Like A “Spoilt Child”
The BBC is like a “rather overindulged spoilt child”, according to Jim Marshall, chairman of Starcom UK, who was a panellist at the ‘Future Of TV’ seminar held in London by MediaTel Group this morning.
“When you indulge spoilt children, they behave badly, and the BBC does,” he said. “It behaves badly in television in terms of the way it competes with the commercial sector with absolutely no level of accountability, and actually it behaves even worse in the radio sector.”
Journalist Ray Snoddy was also less than complimentary about the Corporation. “My question is one of scale,” he said. “Are you spending too much on [new technologies] and therefore intervening in other people’s market opportunities at a time when your director general thinks it’s fine and dandy to improve programme quality by sacking programme makers and news journalists by the hundred? I just don’t see the priority there.”
Rahul Chakkara, controller BBCi, said the BBC exists because the British public wants it. Clare Salmon, director of marketing and commercial strategy at ITV, believes a strong BBC is good for ITV, instead saying it was Channel 4 that was more of a problem.
“[Channel 4] exist in a nebulous world somewhere between the public sector broadcaster model and the commercial one,” she said, commenting that their PSB output is about 5% of their programming. “We regard that as much of a problem as the long held rumoured rivalry between ITV and the BBC.”
Snoddy also had a dig at C4: “Ofcom has it right on Channel 4. For the first time they may have to define what it is they actually offer in terms of public service broadcasting.”
Salmon acknowledged that content on ITV has not been as strong as it should have been in the past, saying the broadcaster was investing in audience insight tools. “Producing mass programming that appeals to everyone all at once is a tough call,” she said. “It’s increasingly hard to be all things to all men.”
Ford Ennals, chief executive of Digital UK, was fairly optimistic about ITV’s future. “People will watch ITV when the programming delivers what they want,” he said. “I think ITV is in good shape as long as it continues to make the right programming decisions.”
Roger Parry, chairman of Johnston Press and a candidate to take over from outgoing ITV chief executive Charles Allen, added from the floor: “ITV’s issue is that it kind of lost its way by being obsessed with regulators and shareholders. There is every reason to assume that it can get back on the horse assuming that it gets back to making programmes.”
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