Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [394]
So much for the — somewhat nebulous and increasingly outdated — theory. The practice was very different. BBC1 and ITV ran programmes that were increasingly indistinguishable from commercial programming in market systems — soap operas, sport, game shows and made-for-TV films. To use Benthamite language, the public broadcasters were claiming the rights of poetry but providing us with pushpin. Good fun perhaps. But did our civilization really depend on it?
Furthermore the duopoly was being undermined by technological developments. Scarcity of available spectrum had previously determined that only a very few channels could be broadcast. But this was changing. It seemed likely that ever higher-frequency parts of the spectrum would be able to be brought into use. Cable television and direct broadcasting by satellite (DBS) also looked likely to transform the possibilities. There was more opportunity for payment — per channel or per programme — by subscription. An entire new world was opening up.
I believed we should take advantage of these technical possibilities to give viewers a far wider choice. This was already happening in countries as diverse as the United States and Luxemburg. Why not in Britain? But this vastly increased potential demand for programmes should not be met from within the existing duopoly. I wanted to see the widest competition among and opportunities for the independent producers — who were themselves virtually a creation of our earlier decision to set up Channel 4 in 1982. I also believed that it would be possible to combine more choice for viewers and more opportunity for producers with standards — both of production and of taste — that were as high as, if not higher than, those under the existing duopoly. To make assurance doubly sure, however, I wanted to establish independent watchdogs to keep standards high by exposing broadcasters to public criticism, complaint and debate.
The Peacock Committee on Broadcasting, which had been set up by Leon Brittan as Home Secretary in March 1985 and reported the following year, provided a good opportunity to look at all these matters once again. I would have liked to find an alternative to the BBC licence fee. One possibility was advertising: Peacock rejected the idea. Willie Whitelaw too was fiercely opposed to it and indeed threatened to resign from the Government if it were introduced. I felt that index-linking the licence fee achieved something of the same purpose — to make the BBC more cost-conscious and business-like. In October 1986 the ministerial committee on broadcasting which I chaired agreed that the BBC licence fee should remain at £58 until April 1988 and then be linked to the RPI until 1991. But I did not drop my long-term reservations about the licence fee as the source of its funding. It was agreed to study whether the licence fee could be replaced by subscription.
At least as important for the future was the need to break the BBC and ITV duopoly over the production of the programmes they showed. My ministerial group agreed that the Government should set a target of 25 per cent of BBC and ITV programmes to be provided by independent producers. But there was a sharp division between those of us like Nigel Lawson and David Young who believed that the BBC and ITV would use every opportunity to resist this and Douglas Hurd and Willie Whitelaw who thought that they could be persuaded without legislation. Douglas was to enter into discussions with the broadcasters and report back. In the end we had to legislate to secure it.
I also insisted, against Home Office resistance, that our