So far so good for BBC chairman
A year into the role Sir David Clementi seems to be a safe pair of hands who has mastered his complex and ever-changing brief, writes Ray Snoddy – but the future still offers major challenges
Hardly a day goes by without the BBC being embroiled in some controversy – at least in the newspapers.
“BBC West Side Story star quits in race row,” or disputed bonus schemes at Capita, the private company that collects licence fee payments on behalf of the BBC, are merely the most recent examples.
More substantially, Sir Cliff Richard is in court suing the BBC for damages for invading his privacy by covering, via helicopter, a police raid on his home in relation to an historic sex allegation. Sir Cliff denies any offence and has never been charged.
It’s a difficult one, which could be clarified by the outcome of the current case. Should the identity of anyone being investigated for a sexual crime be revealed before charge? A taint of suspicion always lingers, even when allegations are dropped. On the other hand, openness in the police and justice system is usually good in principle and publicity can produce evidence to clear a suspect, or the reverse.
Then there is the small storm over Lord Adonis on the BBC’s alleged bias in favour of Brexit.
Allegations of political bias are as old as the BBC itself and difficult to prove either way across a myriad of BBC outlets with relatively autonomous editors. Certainly it is not something that can be resolved by crude measurements of for and against.
There is a continuing problem of political debate being skewed by television’s addiction to “star turns” who are willing to turn up at the drop of a hat and can be guaranteed to be controversial.
Surely the Blairite Lord Adonis has an argument when he points to Nigel Farage’s 32 appearances on Question Time since 2000, even though he has never been elected to the House of Commons and is merely a former leader – several times over – of a disappearing party.[advert position=”left”]
UKIP may finally start to implode in the local elections and if so it will be time for the BBC to desist on Farage.
Similarly, it would be wise for the BBC and the UK’s other guilty broadcasters to place some limit on the endless appearances of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the hitherto obscure, comedy back-bencher who has many idiosyncratic views including his trademark extreme pro-Brexit stance.
Much more substantially there has been the gender pay row within the BBC, an important matter that needs to be resolved as quickly as possible. However, Sir David Clementi, the chairman of the BBC, was able to put the BBC’s gender sins in perspective last week in a speech at the Voice of the Viewer and Listener conference.
He offered reassurance that the Corporation was working tremendously hard to address the issues raised but was able to note that the BBC’s gender pay gap was actually smaller than that at ITV, Channel 4, Sky and ITN.
“It is better than a host of newspaper groups who have not covered their own pay gaps quite as extensively as they chose to cover ours,” said Sir David who has recently completed his first year as chairman of a unified BBC board.
For many the remarkable thing will not be the usual stream of normal middling crises that regularly buffets the BBC, but the lack of any obvious conflagration.
It’s only a year and a huge crisis can come out of the blue at any moment, but as befits a former deputy governor of the Bank of England and former chairman of the Prudential life insurance company, Sir David is no song-and-dance man.
He will never appear on Strictly Come Dancing, although he loves the programme, and seems to be a safe pair of hands who has mastered his complex and ever-changing brief.
He is able to sound calm, however, because the fundamentals are already in place with a workable Royal Charter which runs at least until the end of 2027 and which guarantees a licence fee rising in line with inflation for at least five years.
There is of course an acute awareness of the underlying structural problems facing all broadcasters ranging from intensifying competition from the likes of Netflix and changing viewer behaviour, particularly among children and young adults.
Sir David highlighted a number of moves in the direction of solutions, if not actual solutions themselves.
The BBC is trying to address the addiction of the young to their mobiles by launching a new app – CBBC Buzz – aimed at providing 8-12 year-olds with interesting and inspiring facts.
And talking of facts, apart from initiatives like Reality Check, the BBC is offering more than 1,000 schools around the country mentoring by BBC journalists to help young people distinguish between real news and fake news.
Changing tastes
One of the real longer-term problems facing the BBC is the habits of 16 to 34 year-olds. They watch less TV than older people, listen to less radio and take their news mainly from social media.
When Sir David and a number of other BBC board members met a group of such young adults in Coventry the difference was clear.
They used the BBC to verify social media news – but it was not their primary source, and although they liked a lot of BBC drama they wanted all episodes to be made available immediately and for longer periods, as in the Netflix mode.
In part response the BBC is now working to upgrade iPlayer to make it more of a browsing service with personal recommendations rather than mere catch-up.
There is, however, a buffer against the changing tastes of the young – older audiences are still remarkably loyal to the BBC and they are living longer.
Sir David reached for his experience at the Pru to note that the BBC can rely on large sections of that audience for decades to come.
In news that certainly reassured members of the VLV, who tend to be of a certain age, Sir David, who is 69, related how if you get to 60 in good shape you have a very good chance of making it to 90.
So far so good for Sir David Clementi, who seems in good shape.
The test will come when he faces his first major BBC crisis and like one of those hurricanes in the Caribbean one is virtually inevitable during his chairmanship.