Of pots and kettles in a digital age

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The BBC’s director-general Mark Thompson has been urging the government this week to prevent Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp from taking full control of British Sky Broadcasting. According to press reports, Mr Thompson will also sign a letter from non-Murdoch newspaper groups to Business Secretary Vince Cable, decrying the proposed acquisition.

In an interview in the US, Mr Thompson warned of an abuse of power should the deal go through. Yes, the Rupert Murdoch bogeyman is alive and well! Governments rise and fall with his changing moods. British culture is threatened by populist dross. Profits drive out the noble Reithian mission.

But this is surely a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Consider the facts. Most recent figures show the BBC’s television audience with a dominant 30.7% market share and a crushing 55% in radio. For television, ITV trails BBC at 23.2% while all the various Sky channels – general, sports and movies – are way back at 6.7%.
As for the newspapers, this is clearly a dying industry fighting yesterday’s battles. In its most recent annual report, News Corp reported revenues at its UK newspapers fell 2%. Yes, profits increased somewhat but this was due to what News Corp called “cost containment initiatives.” In other words, they’re shrinking in accordance with the new reality.

The alliance of Mr Thompson and the non-Murdoch newspapers smacks of vested interests seeking to protect their historic dominance of news and culture. They blame the unrelenting and ruthless Mr Murdoch when, in fact, the threat comes from the unrelenting and ruthless advance of technology.

No one knows better than Mr Murdoch about the threats from technology. He blew a bundle on what was then the biggest social networking site MySpace, only to see it soon overtaken by Facebook. In the UK, BSkyB is a leader in providing alternative satellite distribution of new TV channels but Freeview still offers a cheaper alternative.

Meanwhile, BSkyB’s aggressive rollout of high definition TV and now 3D TV is outflanked by the appeal of the decidedly poorer quality of YouTube. Mr Murdoch is a big influential player in modern media but, in seeking protection from the government, Mr Thompson and his newspaper friends are fighting yesterday’s battles and missing the bigger picture.

George Bush and Robert Mugabe walk into a bar...

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The other night I watched Michael Mcintyre’s Comedy Roadshow on BBC iPlayer. You can watch it here.

I was enjoying the programme until right at the end (scroll to 41:50) when the comedian Kevin Bridges, who was making a joke about God coming to earth, lumped George Bush and Robert Mugabe together as the worst examples of humanity – the people who would run away from God.

I did a double take. Was he seriously comparing George Bush to Mugabe in terms of evil? Where these seriously the two worst people that came to mind? Evidently, they were.

Bush may have passed the Patriot act destroying civil liberties, he may have gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he may have run up huge deficits through spending, but Mugabe he ain’t. Mugabe is a genuinely evil tyrant who has run his entire country into the ground for racist reasons, and who now rules as an unelected despot crushing any democratic opposition. The two men aren’t even worthy of comparison.

Ultimately, this worrying window into the left’s bizarre world view is given a prime showing via our state broadcaster, as if there is something funny about George Bush and Robert Mugabe being likened to one another. Somehow, I think a joke comparing Barack Obama to Joseph Stalin wouldn’t have made the cut.

What’s worse still is that the public is forced to pay for such views to be broadcast via a poll tax, or ‘TV license’ as it is commonly called. The BBC is meant to be politically neutral, but instead the public is paying for democratically elected right-wingers to be compared to murdering despots. If the BBC wants to broadcast such views it should do so in a marketplace where people are free to opt out of paying for the BBC’s services.

Examples like this reinforce the case for the license fee to be abolished and for the BBC to be privatised. It cannot expect to take our money and then use it to propagate a slanted worldview. The BBC must adapt and compete in an open media market: It cannot go on being the loudest voice of authority in the broadcast media simply thanks to its government-enforced monopoly.

In which we praise Damien Hirst

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A slightly strange thing this, me the cultural barbarian praising an artist such as Damien Hirst. It's not that I'm Goering like, on hearing the word culture and reaching for my Browning (which is actually a line from a play but never mind), for there are arts that I'm greatly enamoured of. It's simply that the visual arts entirely pass me by: oooh!, pretty pictures! And?

So why am I praising someone whose work I have absolutely no understanding of? Because I'm not about to praise their work, rather an insight of a very different kind:

He is not troubled by the fact that the market determines the value of art: “I’m one of the few people in the world who can say, ‘I know what everything is worth.’... Everything in the whole world is worth what anyone else is prepared to pay for it. And that’s it. Simple.”

The ignorance of, the ignoring of, this simple truism is what led to so many of the gross tragedies of the 20 th century. Stalin's depredations, Mao's depredations, Pol Pot's murderous lunacies, Castro's imprisonment of the Cuban people. And in more minor ways it still causes problems in better climes: our own minimum wage is nothing but a lighter version of the refusal to face this simple fact.

There is no such thing as a "true" value of anything, no independent measure of what something is worth. There is only the sometimes arbitrary and always subjective values placed upon a thing by those capricious creatures, human beings, that value only to be measured by what people are prepared to pay for that thing.

Everyone from St. Thomas Aquinas through Karl Marx to the teenage Trots hatching in university common rooms as you read are and were wrong.

The value of something is what people will pay for it. Any and every political or economic system built on any system of valuation other than that will fail: usually in a sadly bloodthirsty and painful manner.

OpenDemocracy and the BBC

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Prompted by our latest report Global player or Subsidy Junkie?, Steve Barnett of OpenDemocracy gives an impassioned defence of the BBC.

Ultimately I think his article rests on the following arguments:

1. The BBC is good and people like it
2. Without the BBC our media would be worse
3. Without the license fee we would not get the BBC

As someone who doesn’t have a television, I am not really in a position to give my opinion on argument (1). From talking with other people this appears to be one of those ‘Marmite issues’ – you either love it or hate it. Either way, I think it is fair for Mr Barnett to argue that a lot of people do indeed like the BBC and don’t mind paying the licence fee. Argument (2) is impossible to prove. We are not in a world without the BBC and a lot of people already pay extra money upon the cost of the license fee to use other media services.

It is the logic of argument (3) at which his position falls apart. If indeed the BBC is good and people like it and the alternative is worse, why would people not continue to pay for it as a subscription service? Unless Mr Barnett is wrong about (1) and (2), I don’t see how (3) can hold. If, as he believes, the BBC is such a desired institution, why can’t he and others who value it also pay for it, leaving those who would rather not be forced to do so, to pay for what they want to watch? However, if it turns out that he is wrong, we will know that (1) certainly does not hold and that it was wrong to force people to pay the licence fee.

This is indeed the ideological argument that Mr Barnett suggests. It is based on classical liberalism: the ideal of a limited government and the liberty of individuals. As David Graham shows in his report, there are other arguments for changing the funding stream of the BBC, but Mr Barnett does not adequately deal with these in his article. This is because his position is also ideological, one that allows for the state to have the power to force people to support a national media company.

To be worthy of the name, OpenDemocracy should not be defending the government’s involvement in the media at all.

The UK Film Council should be just the start

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As Eamonn suggested last week and Tim pointed out at the weekend, we really should reconsider funding the arts.

In the now infamous words of Liam Byrne “I’m afraid there is no money.” Rather than salami slicing across departments, much better to have a complete rethink on the functions of government. If we did this, arts funding would be first on the cutting room floor.

Arts subsidies are a regressive transfer of money from poorer and less educated folk to richer more highly educated people. It is also a transfer of wealth from the countryside to the cities and more broadly from everywhere to London. As such, it is Londoners who get upwards of £24 per head subsidy per year, with all other regions languishing well below £10 per head, with some as low as £2. Taxing hardworking families to subsidise the amusements of wealthy metropolitan London elites is not a policy anyone should support.

Also, if we have any pretension of wanting to live in a free society, the funding of the arts would be completely independent of the state. Art has historically offered powerful critiques of power, and for the government – even based on good intentions – to be involved, is just another post-WWII development that need derision and revision in equal measure.

And as Douglas Carswell points out, the now oft-quoted statistic in defence of the UK Film Council £1 pound in £5 out, is patent nonsense. In fact, it is based on the assumption that there is a direct correlation between the subsidy and the profit from all cinema. For these statistics to make sense there would have to be no private funding, no possibility of private funding and no crowding out of private money. Also, a cursory glance at the UK Film Council's Production Report shows that in fact most of their cash was going on supporting ‘Inward Investment’. In other words they were shelling out cash by the bucket load for the production of films like Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean, commercially viable films that clearly didn’t need government support.

All arts funding should be scrapped. The inability of art to appeal to enough people to make it commercially viable is either a failure of the artist or our government run education system. More or less taxpayer funding will not change this – we need reform.

Toy Story 3: Socialism isn’t for play time

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Warning - slight spolier!

The other day I watched Toy Story 3. Amongst the fun animation, adventure and a tale of a boy parting ways with his much loved childhood, was a significant sub-theme. Toy Story 3 was a film that was anti-authoritarian and pro freedom.

Much of the film focuses around the toys’ lives in the world of Sunnyside Day Care Center. The center is initially depicted as a utopia, where the toys are played with frequently and a wise benevolent strawberry scented teddy called Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear (A.K.A Lotso) acts as community organizer.

However, the dystopian reality of this socialism becomes quickly apparent, as Lotso has conflicting opinions about the public good, inequality before the law prevails and our protagonists begin to suffer under this coercive system of hierarchical public control. A vast totalitarian machinery of cameras, toy trucks and a large dolly is used to maintain order, ensuring that toys must follow the rules, and that the only escape is death.

The story tracks the toys’ escape from the center, politically climaxing with Barbie’s proclamation that “authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force”, a statement that would have surely gained the approval of the U.S. founding fathers if they had been in figurine form.

For those who have yet to seen it, I will avoid revealing the ending, simply noting that many have described it as a tear jerker. While I was hardly blown away by the film, I did enjoy it. I’m also pleased to note that the film has been a capitalist success story in reality, raking in over $800,000,000.

Let's abolish the Arts Council

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Let's abolish the Arts Council. There's something repugnant about a state agency that dishes out taxpayers' money for arts projects. It somehow makes me think of the appalling art that was condoned and encouraged by the governments of Soviet Russia, or Nazi Germany, or Maoist China (the image of 'Revolutionary Ballet', danced with rifles and machine guns, will stay with me for the rest of my days). Give the government a monopoly or near-monopoly of arts funding, and you're going to get art that appeals to bureaucrats. It might be really dull, or really 'challenging', but it will be the bureaucrats' choice, not the public's choice.

It's no surprise that art, literature, music, architecture as well as science and technology have flourished in capitalist societies rather than in socialist ones. Capitalist societies have had the wealth to look beyond subsistence to art and culture. They have given people the freedom to explore new approaches in the arts and sciences too. Even Russia's greatest buildings, and its greatest music, were created for private families and firms, not for soviet planning boards.

The freedom that is allowed in capitalist societies produces the freedom and elbow room that artists need. If your arts are funded and dominated by the state, you have only one place to go for support and sponsorship. If the officials like what you do and your face fits, you might get support. If not, you won't. In the capitalist society it is quite different. There are no end of people around with crazy ideas about art just like you, and wealth enough to back them. If you want to try out your ideas, all you have to do is to find one or two of those people, and you are in business. While the state system is exclusive, the capitalist system lets diversity flourish.

Of course, if we closed down the Arts Council – actually, I think it's more a matter of when – people say that there would be a funding gap, that private philanthropy would be insufficient to step into the breach, and that the nation's production of good art would fall.

In the first place, this begs the question of what the optimum quantity of arts production is, of course. Perhaps, with less public subsidy, production would fall, but perhaps the loss would bother nobody except a few artists. I do not know. The state can no more identify and plan the right quantity of painting or theatre or sculpture than it can identify and plan how many 50mm brass screws the nation needs. That is why we leave these things to the free market to deliver.

But even if we accept that the nation does indeed need and want greater output from the arts sectors, how best to encourage philanthropy to bring that on? Here I think we need reform of the charitable sector. Gordon Brown's gift aid was a revolution in charitable funding: no longer did they have to get subscribers to fill out complicated covenant forms before they could get tax relief. One simple form was perfectly sufficient. But the United States does it better, by making the tax benefit automatic, and giving it to the donor. The result is that people in all walks of life give willingly, and give much more, to charitable causes. They somehow think that they are cheating the tax collectors out of some money if they do. As a motivator for arts funding, I can think of none better.

Has the TV licence had its day?

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Vote on guardian.co.uk here.

Highlights of the media's reaction to our BBC report

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• BBC
• BBC Radio 5 (2 hours, 8 minutes)
• BBC: Arts & Entertainment
• BBC Torin Douglas: Media Brief blog
• Biased BBC
• City AM
• ConservativeHome
• Daily Mash
• Daily Mirror
• Epolitix
• Guardian
• ITN
• Media Week
• New Statesman
• PoliticsHome
• Press Association
• Sky News
• Sunday Times
• Techwatch
• Wales Online

Scrap the TV Licence Fee and reform the BBC

Our latest report, Global Player or Subsidy Junkie? Decision time for the BBC, argues that the TV Licence Fee should be abolished, and that the BBC should instead become a subscription service. The report's author, media expert and former BBC producer David Graham, explained some of the thinking behind his proposals in an article for the Sunday Times yesterday.

The report makes a number of points against the Licence Fee, arguing that it criminalises poor people, that it forces people to pay for genuinely “free” services funded by advertising, that it obliges the BBC to replicate a crude commercial model based on mass-audience advertising, and that universal broadband and the Internet make a “licence” to broadcast obsolete.

However, the report actually focuses on a more positive argument, suggesting that the BBC is a hugely important British institution that should be working harder for the country. At the moment, the BBC invests heavily in opinion management and capturing UK regulators. Instead, it should look outwards towards the international media market, exporting prime time content to other countries (particularly in the EU) and competing for the first time with the major US studios. Rather than just exploiting the exclusive benefits of public subsidy, it should be contributing substantially to the national economy. The report argues that shifting to a voluntary subscription model is the best way to make this happen. It would also allow the public, for the first time, the chance to make its own choices, as well as making the BBC more responsive to consumer demands and interests.

As David Graham put it, "Continuing with the current funding model means justified hostility from the rest of the industry, contraction and decline for the BBC. The new Government seems ready to rethink fundamentals. I hope this paper will help to encourage a serious debate, at a critical time, about a very important British institution.“

Tom Clougherty added: "The status quo will not be an option for the BBC for much longer. The licence fee is already an anachronism, and opposition will grow as technological advances and changing viewing preferences make it even more outdated. But most of the reforms on the agenda at the moment – like scaling back the BBC or sharing licence fee revenues with other broadcasters – risk stifling the potential of the British media. Our proposals, as well as addressing the unfairness of the current system, would set British broadcasters free to make a significant contribution to economic growth."

Click here to download copy of the report.