| MUMBAI:
News Corp’s Europe and Asian chairman and CEO James Murdoch criticised the
UK TV by naming it “the Addams family of world media”. Speaking
at the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival on
Friday, Murdoch attacked UK broadcasting policy for creating a dominant BBC, which
is threatening independent journalism. Murdoch
said, “There is a land-grab spear-headed by the BBC. The scale and scope
of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling.” The
problem, he reasoned, was the “analogue attitudes” in a digital age.
Murdoch said that “We have business models and a policy framework based on
spectrum scarcity. We have limited choice, and we have central planning. The result
is lost opportunities for enterprise, free choice and commercial investment.”
He condemned
media industry regulator Ofcom, the European Union and the government as well.
He compared the UK broadcasting system to creationism, and said that “Creationism
penalises the poorest in our society with regressive taxes and policies –
like the licence fee and digital switchover; it promotes inefficient infrastructure
in the shape of digital terrestrial television; it creates unaccountable institutions
- like the BBC Trust, Channel 4 and Ofcom.” Murdoch
said that the repeated assertion by Ofcom of its bias against intervention is
becoming impossible to believe in the face of so much evidence of the exact opposite.
“Every year, roughly half a million words are devoted to telling broadcasters
what they can and cannot say," Murdoch added. "In
this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat
to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for
our democracy. Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly
difficult for journalism to flourish on the Internet," he said. Murdoch
noted that despite BBC’s efforts, Channel 4 has cut its programming budget
by 10 per cent and Five by 25 per cent. Spending on original British children’s
programming has fallen by nearly 40 per cent since 2004, including, inexplicably,
a 21 per cent fall at the BBC at a time when the Corporation has been able to
spend £100m a year to out-bid commercial channels for US programming –
“a figure which has increased by a quarter in the past two years”.
“It is
not a coincidence that Google has a higher percentage of advertising spending
in the UK than anywhere else in the world: it is a consequence of a tightly restricted
commercial television sector,” Murdoch quipped. On
the restrictions on advertising, Murdoch commented that the UK and EU regulatory
system tightly controls advertising: the amount of advertising per hour, the availability
of product placement, the distinction between advertising and editorial and so
forth. He
maintained that excessive regulation can also have more serious consequences.
“The latest EU-inspired rules on scheduling of advertising restrict the number
of ad breaks permitted in news programming. Television news is already a tough
enough business. If implemented, these proposals could undermine the commercial
viability of news broadcasting even further,” he opined. Murdoch
pointed out that a radical reorientation of the regulatory approach is necessary
if “dynamism and innovation is going to be central” to the UK media
industry. He
concluded by saying that the private sector is a source of investment, talent,
creativity and innovation in UK media. But it will “never fulfil its full
potential unless we adopt a policy framework that recognises the centrality of
commercial incentives.” Meanwhile,
BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons responded to Murdoch's scathing attack saying
that their variety of
funding is a strength and not a weakness. However, he
admitted that "there are current problems and they need to be addressed." Lyons
countered Murdoch's point of trusting public. He said," BBC agrees with James
Murdoch's analysis that we need to trust them (public). And the public tell us
that they, in turn, trust the BBC and value the wide range of services we provide."
"BBC
Trust is here to strengthen the BBC for the benefit of licence fee payers, not
to emasculate it on behalf of commercial interests,” Lyons added | 
