GEITF 2001 MacTaggart Lecture
In the absence of the minister for culture, media and sport casting light on the future of UK digital TV, David Liddiment’s MacTaggart Memorial lecture became a focal event of this year’s Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival (GEITF).
In a passionate speech which impressed all but a few BBC executives, he declared “Saving the soul of television isn’t just a job for one broadcaster, commissioner or producer, its a job for us all.”
Liddiments reasons for believing TV’s soul is in need of saving was what he saw as an increasing fixation on ratings as a measure of a programme’s worth. This may sound surprising from the man in charge of the UK’s biggest commercial terrestrial channel, but his criticisms were aimed more at the BBC. With its public funding and lack of shareholders to answer to, he argued, the BBC should be taking the sort of risks in programming that his own channel, with its commitment to the attraction of mass audiences, could not.
He accused the BBC of being as intent on winning ratings as the commercial channels, and of pushing important public service programmes such as Panorama and arts programmes to the margins in order to make room for popular ratings winners such as Casualty.
In the process Liddiment criticised the way that the BBC is governed for allowing such decisions to be made without public consultation. “Who is there to tell the BBC it might have its priorities wrong?” he asked, “Television regulators have no locus. If the Secretary of State opens his or her mouth there are cries of editorial interference. The Select Committee huffs and puffs but nothing happens. Who else is there, except the Governors? This is not the way to run a 21st century public body with huge cultural obligations as well as significant commercial interests. They are either regulator or management. They cannot be both.”
Post-lecture, the BBC hit back, with Mark Thompson, director of television saying he did not recognise Liddiment’s description of BBC1 and that the attack on the BBC was not even coherent.
Liddiment’s overall sentiment seemed to be that while he was happy to face creative competition from the BBC, he felt that competing on ratings was to the detriment of the industry as a whole, to say nothing of the viewers. This was certainly food for thought during a festival which went on to discuss the ratings-winning merits of Big Brother, Survivor, The Premiership and so on.
GEITF: 020 7430 1333 www.geitf.co.uk
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