stuart hall - report of the committee on the future of broadcasting

7/29/2019 Stuart Hall - Report of the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting

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on theThe Report of the Committee

Future of BroadcastingStuart Hall, Director, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies,Faculty of Arts, University of Birmingham

THE Report of the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting (Com-mand 6753 : inevitably-and hereinafter, Annan) is a critical

document. I t reviews the present state and makes recommendationsfor the future of the most powerful, concentrated, technically-advanced sectors of what A dorno once called the culture industry.I t appears in the wake of an unmistakeable crisis in broadcasting-adecade in which broadcastings role has been subject to wide-rangingand searching criticism on all sides : but also, when the industry itselffaces technical developments which are likely to transform itscharacter long before another such Committee will be called into

existence. I t thus provides us with an opportunity to examinebroadcasting at a critical turning-point in the history of its post-wardevelopment .

Our assessment of Annans performance will depend on a numberof different criteria. How profoundly has it grasped the centrality ofbroadcasting to our social, cultural and political life? How deep is itsunderstanding of the present state of British broadcasting-itsstrengths and weaknesses, possibilities and limits : its structuraltendencies? How cogent is its reasoning about these issues? I s thelogic of argument behind its proposals and recommendations con-vincing? Do these proposals tend to shift broadcasting in the rightdi rection40 they relate to the key problems? What is the likelihoodof their being given practical political effect, sometime between nowand the 199Os, the period of A nnans remit?

These questions are framed within certain very distinct limits :some may even regard them as already reflecting a set of reduced orlowered expectations. Where are the large ambitions, the grandsketches, the bold innovative strokes? M y view is that they are, inthe present context, largely irrelevant. We all have our favouredbroadcasting systems, as we have our ideal societies. Indeed, in


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264 NUQ Summer 1977

modern industrial societies, the two are deeply intertwined: for we

live in societies where it is no longer possible to consider social,economic or cultural life separate from the systems of communica-tion which fundamentally mediate them. The communications net-works, like the education systems, are the major life-support systemsof such societies. They are the consciousness-making industries-societys nervous system. Consequently, such societies construct,support and maintain broadcasting systems which are profoundlyadapted to their needs, and which mirror, in their structures and

relations, the institutional contexts in which they are embedded. I tis slightly beside the point to project on to a Report which takesthis whole framework for granted the sketch of some quite differentideal system. To design a radically new communications system isto design a new society. This is not the name of the game in whichAnnan is involved. The more open and libertarian forms of com-munication which I would like to see emerge, and which are nowtechnically feasible, are unlikely to be legislated for in the era ofMr Callaghan or Mrs Thatcher, or, indeed, in the shadow of Visita-tions from the IM F team. All we can do is to try to assess Annanstendency. Giving this and taking that-this i s the name of Annansgame-does it tend to facilitate or hinder the advance of Britishbroadcasting towards the more open and democratic forms which arenot only possible but necessary, in the long run? In this more sombreperspective, Annan must be adjudged, in sum, a mixed blessing.

Nevertheless, I confess Annan has done better than I either expectedor predicted. I t has had a peculiar history-constituted, disbandedand reconstituted by successive governments. Given its composition,its ethos and status, plus the notorious capacity of such bodies tosmother all controversial issues beneath a bland and consensualCivil Service prose, I expected Annan to take tactical advantage ofthe distance which separated it from the crisis in broadcasting of the1960s (its true rai son detre): and to assume a position well abovethe struggle, taking a lofty, judicious, considered or enlarged view.Many controversial positions are, indeed, given the aristocratic

coup de grdce in these pages. But some of the important argumentshave surfaced in Annans collective consciousness. They are addressedin a vigorous, often personally idiosyncratic, prose; by a Committeewell-informed about broadcasting; which has done some instructiveviewing of programmes and seems to have understood some of theunorthodox things being said to it, even if in the end it has taken a


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The report of the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting 265

safer view. Indeed, Annans strategy is the classical liberal reforming

one of citing the wild extremists, dispatching their excesses wthcogent reasoning-which then enables him to adopt some moremoderate, but critical, positions while assuming the air of judiciousreason and good sense.

On the central issue of broadcastings relation to society in itsbroadest dimensions, Annan has taken over an argument several ofus have been advancing for some time: namely, that many of thetravails of the past two decades arise from the fragmentation and

collapse, under conditions of momentous social change, of thatconsensus on which broadcasting as a national system was firstpredicated. Since the whole structure was premised on and rooted inthis consensus, its disintegration has dissolved the existing hn-tractual relationship between broadcasting and society. Broadcastinghas lost a role: it is still in search of an alternative one. Annan,naturally, looks back with regret to the passing of that ideal ofmiddle class culture, so felicitously expressed by Matthew Arnold acentury ago, which . . . created a continuum of taste and opinion,and takes a sour view (that, essentially, of the hard-pressed broad-casting managers) of the divisions in society and the politics ofperceptual crisis and strain which intervened. The wonder, of course,is not that this Reithean view of the world collapsed but that itpersisted so long, and passed so successfully as a national consensus.It was always too narrow a cultural base for a medium with the spanand heterogeneity of television or radio. Its collapse has naturallyprecipitated a loss of moral certainty and direction among thebroadcasting mandarins. But Annan fails to observe that the periodof its fragmentation-the 1960s-was in fact also the most fertile,creative and challenging one in post-war broadcasting: one in whichthe BBC abandoned its role as an echo-machine of His MastersVoice, ITV was edged a degree or two away from the philosophy ofgiving the people what it wants, and television generally-inRichard Hoggarts felicitous phrase-ntered more directly intosocietys quarrel with itself. This is not, of course, the view of the

television managers, who had to deal with the backlash on all sides.And Annan has been persuaded to their view: though it does notethat it was against this alternative role that the broadcasters batteneddown the hatches. It fails, however, to pinpoint what a strategicerror, what a failure of nerve, this retreat to a line of least resistancehas proved to be. But echoes of it remain in the Report: in the


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266 NUQ Summer 1977

criticisms of the BBCS overall performance; in the strong support

for more diversity; in the plea for less over-management and greaterautonomy to small groups of producers; in its sponsorship of thenotion of a publishers role for broadcasting; and above all in itsproposal for a new Open Broadcasting A uthority as an alternative toa fourth (commercial) channel. But adventurous young producerswll read p. 264 of the Report, which describes the relations betweentelevision professionals and managers which made That Was TheWeek That Was possible, with nostalgic regret: it happened then: itcould not happen now. A nnan did not like my phrase, but that iswhat I meant by a failure of nerve.

The decision not to award the fourth channel to I TV (despitethat fact of those buttons on our sets labelled I T V2 in eageranticipation of a self-fulfilling prophecy) is A nnans most radicaldecision. It witnesses to the effect of the two principal structuralfeatures of British broadcasting, which shape and determine its wholelogic of development : competition and concentration. Competitionbetween I TV and BBC has had many positive effects-stimulatingthe iirst and breaking down some of the cosiness of the second.But its overall effect within the present structure remains negative.A nnan rightly acknowledges the raising of programme standards inthe commercial companies. It notes that competition made Auntygather up her skirts-if only to enable her to enter into the com-petitive struggle over ratings and the mass audience with an un-expected degree of will and energy. T his was the price of survival in

face of the over-riding commercial logic. In the circumstances theBBCS capacity to claw back over half the viewing audience must becounted a success. But this has been at the expense of what I callHalls Law-in straight commercial competitive conditions, moremeans more-of-the-same. The commercial logic has only beendeflected a little: it remains the dominant impulse. Hence, theoverall effect has been to strengthen the presence of what A nnancalls the monopoly of the duopoly. Annan knows that if thismonopoly continues unchanged British broadcasting will die of adouble jeopardy : bureaucratic seizure (since intense competitionmeans centralized command and the over-management of themedium) plus blatant populist exploitation. I t has therefore tried totamper with the monopoly of the duopoly without wholly dis-mantling it. M r J ulian Critchley, Conservative M.P. and the Partyschief architect of its broadcasting policy, found (in a recent Listener


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review of Annan) the phrase an unhappy one. But ugly and com-

pelling facts require infelicitous phrases.The critique of the monopoly of the duopoly must rest, finally,on a judgment of the overall programme performance of the twomain authorities. Here, Annan scores many useful and telling points.The BBC is praised for its positive qualities: its unique and un-mistakable ethos, its reputation for integrity, its spectacular successes,its loyalty and quality of staff, its position as arguably the singlemost important cultural organization in the nation. But the overall

tone and thrust of Annans observations are, rightly, critical. A lossof clarity about the objectives of the television service as a whole;the overkill effect of many of its prestige spectaculars; the hardeningof the arteries of professionalism in the ranks and managerialism inthe hierarchy; feebleness, caution, touchiness, unsteadiness, patchi-ness, programmes sometimes dull and on occasions superficial to thepoint of banality . . .. These are harsh, but well-judged terms. Aperiod in which it can be said that consistently ITN has the edge

over BBC news and l n current affairs is more adventurous andinteresting must be a moment of undisguised crisis for the principalinstrument of national broadcasting policy. We detected a numberof warning signs, Annan cautiously remarks. Y ou can say that again.For even where the BBC has scored-its great prestige series, itshistorical dramas and adaptations-it has often been at the expenseof precisely that sort of contemporary drama which, a decade ago,touched a contemporary nerve, designed to awaken us from, ratherthan precipitate us into the deep sleep of historical nostalgia towhich, after all, declining imperial powers are all too prone. Whenwe know what has been displaced by these great television moon-shots, and why (often, in part, the need to sell abroad to protectrevenues and to be successful in the global television stakes), ourassessment of even the BBC successes must necessarily be aqualified one.

The IBA complex, inevitably, comes off better. In this respect,I am happy that Annan has set the historical record right. For therelative success of I TV is often taken now as evidence that theintroduction of commercial competition in television was right, andhas proved the capacity of the commercial impulse to deliver thegoods. Annan, however, notes that, left to itself, the commercialprinciple would have continued to deliver the mass audience to theadvertisers at roughly three or four points below the existing level of


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268 NUQ Summer 1977

popular taste. Though Pilkingtons efforts to break the Gordian

knot between programme making and advertising revenues came tonought, Annan is correct to insist that The Pilkington Reporttransformed the face of I TV : by wakening the Authority a littlefrom its deep slumber, and by mobilizing public opinion againstthe massive exploitation of the public which was ITVS lucrativerole in the 1950s-and thereby giving some elbow room within thecompanies to good producers to make interesting programmes. I tmight have added that, without the revelations of that maverick

group, Free Communications, at the timeof

the last distribution ofcontracts, the scandal of the contracting system might never haveseen the light of day. The improvement in ITVS performance, farfrom proving that the commercial principle in broadcasting deliversthe goods, shows that it is only when that principle is harnessed,constrained and subject to constant critical exposure that it is able tomeet any but the supermarket requirements in broadcasting. Evenso, i ts successes seem to me more limited than Annan suggests.They are principally in the news, current affairs and documentaryareas-where, precisely, the BBC is now crippled by the weight ofmanagerialism, caution and the burden of impartiality. In manyareas of light entertainment, ITV still thoroughly deserves itscharacterization here : settled in well-worn grooves, safe, stereotypedand routine in its production. Of course, smooth, glossy-andeminently successful on the international market. The creaming offof funds raised in the lucrative television market, and their diversifi-cation into fresh financial fields and pastures new-leading to thecreation of huge leisure conglomerates-is one of the continuingstructural features of a television system where the commercialprinciple dictates the logic, about which Annan is far too reticent.I n television, programmes matter: but they are produced by struc-tures. If you dont tamper with structures, you will get, not theparticular programmes, but the overall programming logic whichthe structures dictate.

Given its reading of the current situation, what then does Annan

propose7

The most important-and controversial-of its proposalsis the denial of the fourth channel to the ITV complex (it would, itcorrectly says, confirm the duopoly and intensify competition); andits recommendations for an Open Broadcasting Authority instead.This Authority would take programmes from both the BBC andITV companies, but also from independent producers, and from a


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range of civic, educational and other bodies, including the most

important single educational force now visible in British broadcast-ing, the Open University. Since Annan set its face against anyfurther breaking-up of the BBC (on baby-with-the-bath-watergrounds) or any structural changes in the ITV complex (apart fromurging it to exploit more fully its regional structure), the OpenBroadcasting Authority is the most we could hope for: and deservessupport. Annan was rightly critical of the proposal to erect a Broad-casting Commissioii with overall authority right across the board :

not because it is an impossible ideal-it could have fostered a farwider degree of diversification on the basis of the existing infra-structure-but because these are not ideal conditions. Given thepresent climate, this would indeed have spawned yet another, con-servative and managerial bureaucracy over what is already the mostover-managed television system in the world, harnessing the ainvavesto that conservative consensus which is fast forming up around us.It seemed to give Annan some pleasure to find me, on this score, inthe most unlikely company-including the Liberal Party, the SocialMorality Council, the Roman Catholic Episcopal Conference,Lord Hill and Sir Hugh Greene! But my view is that, if the broadlines of the present structure are to remain intact, the only modesthope is for the inter-pellation of the widest possible diversity. I amfor the television of a hundred flowers-the broadcasting of athousand mistakes! I believe the Open Broadcasting Authority maymake a small contribution to this subversive ideal. I believe it to bea cardinal error-and right against the logic which led them topropose it in the first place-to expose such a channel to thevicissitudes of advertising and sponsorship. Here, Annans left handdid not seem to know what its right hand was about.

The same point must be made, with greater strength, about theproposed-also new-Local Broadcasting Authority; where, again,advertising revenue should provide the main source of income forthe stations. Annan did confront real dilemmas in this area. Twolocal radio stations--one BBC, one commercial-are often too much

for any but the large urban conurbations: and there are a limitednumber of frequencies to go round. Yet, undoubtedly, the presentarrangement does have the effect of increasing diversity. Not all theBBc-sponsored local stations are good or vigorous: but the best arevery good indeed; committed to the notion of mixed programming,where their rivals go resolutely for popular music on-tap; and giving


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270 NUQ Summer 1977

a degree of access at local level to voices, groups, points of view and

interests which cannot find a niche in the national system elsewhere.I would happily exchange an hour of Radio Leeds, which is in somereal connection with its locality, for those hours of pseudo-grassroots phone-in programmes on national BBC radio, where theorthodox voices of the silent majority have become all-too horren-dously vocal. Some people, of course, do want good popular musicsome part of the day: I do : and I presently get it more from the localcommercial station, with all its pseudo-personalization and station-

loyalty gimmicks, than from my local BBC station. If the problemis to conserve funds and frequencies, and distribute them more evenlyacross the country, then by all means break the sponsorship overlocal radio of the BBC and the IBA, where the stations have asomewhat poor-relation status. But if you then found an alternativeAuthority wholly within the logic of commercial sponsorship, theeffect must be a clear loss in diversity and access. I t is really notsufficient to suggest that the advertising in these local areas will be

of the small, informative and classified variety. The more the accessto a city or region is concentrated under a single station, the greaterwill be the temptation to penetrate it with well-targeted advertising:and the more the programmes will be designed to facilitate thispenetration. That is the name of the game. Despite its considerableworldliness, every now and again-at the strategic points-Annanreads as if it had become suddenly distracted by the harmony ofthe spheres.

The Broadcasting Complaints Commission, on the other hand,was written in the stars, and had to come. I view it with mixedfeelings. Of course, the authorities are remarkably insulated andremote from many of the real and important currents moving in thesociety on which they report and comment: there are abuses whichnever get corrected, people whose privacy has been unnecessarilyintruded upon: the public has a right of access to these highlyconcentrated units of cultural power. It remains to be seen whetherthe Complaints Commission will be so composed, and develop asufficiently conoclastic style of work as to perform the task requiredof it. Clearly, Annan was very concerned-and not only in the pageswhere this proposal is framed-to open further and more con-sistently the channels between the professionals and the public.But, where this really takes palpable form-an intrusion of the publicinto public communication, with effect; namely, in the token advance


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of access broadcasting-Annan has been bought off by the pro-

fessionals. It is lofty, snooty and short-visioned, about accessbroadcasting. But it is generous about public complaints. How-ever, this-like all the other measures proposed-has to be seen incontext. We are in the midst of a profound moral backlash-theslow construction of what can only be called an authoritarianpopulist consensus. The great debate in education is a good indexof who and what is now setting the pace in these critical areas. Inthat context, the Complaints Commission could easily become the

instrument of the organized pressure groups, the moral entre-preneurs-what Richard once called the populist guardians. I fore-see an unholy alliance between the commercial and cautious forceswithin the profession, and the organized populist backlash outside,which could have the effect of strengthening the trend towards safeprogramming, godliness and the conventional wisdom in all things.If the Broadcasting Commission becomes the means by which thisspirit gains ascendancy-and legitimacy-inside broadcasting, thenwe need a Commission like we need a dose of salts.

This question-f safety and orthodoxy, of the dominance of theconventional wisdom in broadcasting-is really the heart of thematter. Annan has acknowledged this by taking it head on. But I amnot persuaded by the judicious finding it has made. Indeed, thejudicious tone and the careful balancing off of positions covers bothconfusion and hesitancy. Its position was not an enviable one. Forevery witness like myself, anxious to persuade it of the extremelylimited range of experiences and opinions which surface in Britishtelevision, of its orthodox, conventional management of topics tobalance out any disturbing force or statement in the name of dueimpartiality, there must have been several submitting that broad-casting was failing to reflect and endorse the values to which societyshould conform. These are the two ends of the consensus-rather,dissensns: with the broadcaster trapped in the gap in the middle. Butit really will not do to reaffirm the pure gospel of John Stuart Millonce again, revived in the classic form of the balance between re-

inforcement and challenge. This is the balance which the broad-casters have been operating in the last decade-with what stultifyingeffects Annan is, in other sections, only too well aware. The notionthat this can be qualified a little, by urging the broadcasters to conceiveof themselves as publishers rather than as authors-reflecting onthe whole range of contentious issues, groups and points of view,


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272 NUQ Summer 1977

without the necessity of feeling themselves directly responsible for

everything they broadcast-matters little if this principle is to beapplied to the inevitably minority Open Broadcasting Authoritychannel exclusively. For this precisely leaves the chimera of balance,impartiality and objectivity intact in exactly the areas where itreally serves as a strait-jacket on vigorous broadcasting: in theheartland of the system, BBC 1 and I TV. In a conservative socialclimate, professional broadcasters will always seek the cover ofbalance and impartiality to legitimate their own cautious practice.

Unless and until this strangle-hold-which assumes a consensus onfundamental issues where patently there is none-is broken, broad-casting will remain the timid, conflict-blurring, dream-enhancingforce it currently is.

But here, at the very centre of the issue, Annans thinking dissolvesinto pious platitudes. I t raises the critical issue of the power of themedia to set agendas, and define reality-now really a well-established conventional wisdom of broadcasting research-nly tofind it unproven. What seems to have persuaded Annan against itwas the bewilderment with which the very idea was received by theprofessional broadcasters! But the concept of agenda setting is astructural concept. It deals with the relationship between a highly-concentrated system and its professionals (the latter, precisely,insulated from the larger imperatives of the work they perform bythe professional ideologies), which reports on and communicateswith, but is not operated by the great mass of the public outside whoare its consumers. I t cannot be reduced to the recognition of thisjournalist or that. Annan finds-surprisingly-that there is no con-spiracy between broadcasters and those who command the powercentres of our society. But who spoke of conspiracy? There is anecessary, obvious, perfectly open and plain structural connectionbetween what broadcasters treat of, who they get to comment, whatframeworks are taken for granted by them as plausible: and thisstructure of programming reflects the structure of power and ofknowledge outside of broadcasting. This is not a conspiracy: but

it exists none the less. Paragraph after paragraph in the Report isnothing but an acknowledgment of the fact that broadcasting existswithin a particular social and political structure, and largely takesits coloration from that surrounding terrain. Those of us who makesuch criticisms did not purport to find a distinct and consistent biasto either the left or to the right of the political spectrum. Indeed,


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he reprt of the Committee on the Futare of Broadcasting 273

we have gone out of our way to transcend the quite inadequate

concept of bias in this limited sense. But the fundamental alignmentof the broadcasting system to the structure of power in the society isnot to be cashed in terms of accusations or denials of bias, any morethan the agenda-setting function of the media can be cashed in termsof what journalists think they are doing. These critical issues requirea concept of structure. Annan is mired in the thought processes ofclassical Millian doctrinein which, it appears, at strategic moments,it was instructed by the philosophers, Mrs Warnock, Professors

Williams and Crick. Unfortunately, there is more here than philo-sophers dream of.The structure of due impartiality, which is the form through which

broadcasting is harnessed, not to society in general, but to thepowerful centres of power in society, is whittled away a little, croppedat the edges, hedged round with injunctions to innovation, vitality,boldness, etc. In the margins of the system-the Open BroadcastingAuthority-a little erosion of balance as a practice is to be per-mitted : more publishing, less authorial sponsorship. But at the centreof the communications universe, it remains intact. So long as broad-casting is held responsible for everything which anyone says on itsfrequencies, its range will have to be narrow, its tread cautious, itsheavy management of topics weighty, its relentless search for thedisappearing middle-point in every argument pronounced, itsstructure of access restricted, its displacement from the centre of theargument-societys quarrel with itself-ensured. Annan, by con-firming broadcastings central-and centrist-practice, ensures that,despite important modifications, British broadcasting will be verymuch the same-standing in the same relation to its society-post-Annan as it was pre-Annan.

That is not the only structural factor which will stabilize andconfirm the present disposition. In his review of Annan, quotedearlier, Mr J ulian Critchley pours a lofty disdain on the costlyanarchism which led Annan to forbid ITV the second channel,and propose an Open Authority instead. I t is perfectly clear that,

once returned to power, the Conservatives will complete the logicthey initiated in the 1950s, with the inception of a competitive com-mercial channel, by giving the second channel where that logicdictates: to the commercial interest. The Open Authority is a toy, adevice to play with, outside what we must call the logic of capital.I t is, I am afraid, destined for the historical scrapheap. I t is quite


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274 NUQ Summer 1977

unlikely to be rescued from it by the party at present in power, whose

commitment to greater open-ness, diversity and flexibility-Annanswatchwords-are, if anything, less pronounced than those interestswhich Mr Critchley represents. There are, then, many incidentalbenefits which may accrue from Annan: a little more room forprogramme-makers, the preservation of television archives so that,at last, a history of this medium could be written, perhaps a loop-holeor two in the operation of impartiality, perhaps a little less heavy-handedness in Broadcasting House. Annan has observed the struc-

tural logic governing British broadcasting. But it has not managedto reverse or even to deflect it substantially. It leaves us betterinformed-but, essentially, where we were.

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