Category: Â鶹Éç
Date: 12.09.2004
Printable version
Transcript of
Breakfast with Frost interview with the Â鶹Éç's Director-General Mark
Thompson.
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Please credit Â鶹Éç Breakfast with Frost if any part of
this transcript is used.
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David Frost:
First of all, someone who's been settling into a high profile job is
the new Director-General of the Â鶹Éç, Mark Thompson. Since taking over
the job previously held by Greg Dyke, Mark has indicated that the Â鶹Éç
faces a radical shake up in certain different ways, but let's turn to
him straight away and ask – welcome Mark.
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Mark Thompson:
Good morning David.
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David Frost:
Odd saying welcome to the Director-General because it's your studio
but anyway, so welcome to us all, anyway. Tell me, you've mentioned
the word change, how important change is, how great change has to be
to the Â鶹Éç, more in the last ten years than ever before, how would you
summarise what you mean by the change you would like to bring about
in the Â鶹Éç?
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Mark Thompson:
Well the key thing is that the whole world of broadcasting is changing,
technology's changing and I think audiences and audience expectations
of the Â鶹Éç are changing as well. And I think the Â鶹Éç's challenge is
to keep some things the same.
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I think there are traditions, values, things that the
public have expected from the Â鶹Éç for 80 years, we've got to hold onto
but we've got to find new ways of expressing them, with new technologies,
through mobile phones, digital television, broadband and so forth.
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And these new technologies are not, they're not just
experiments any more – we've just finished the Olympics, more than
nine million people used our interactive services in the Olympics, they
pressed the red button – and yet at the same time we've also got
recognise that many, many of our audience don't yet have digital equipment,
so we've got to kind of balance the present services with the new ones.
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David Frost:
And do you think that the licence fee, which you're in the middle of
negotiating or preparing to negotiate, the licence fee will last for
not only this next charter but the one after it – could there still
be a licence fee in 20 or 30 years time?
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Mark Thompson:
I believe so but it very much depends on the Â鶹Éç. I think if we, if
we do what we've always done, which is stand for brilliant content,
outstanding excellent content – we don't always achieve that by
the way but at our best that's what we do – it may well be delivered
to households in different ways, but if we still stand for that I think
the public absolutely will support us and the, the unbroken chain –
if you like – of the relationship between us and the public will
stay unbroken.
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David Frost:
And what about if people have computers and start getting really high
quality pictures on their computers which they watch, would they then
have to pay a licence fee to their computer?
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Mark Thompson:
Well I, I think for as far as the eye can see, television sets and television
reception is going to be an important part of the mix in the household.
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But I have to say, I think that in the end what really
matters is the content, is the programming –whether it's David
Attenborough natural history, whether it's great news content, whether
it's dramas like The Long Firm or the Â鶹Éç TWO this summer – and
we will deliver the content sometimes through the computer.
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I mean I think there will be, one of the things we're
looking at is whether we could, we could give you at home, via a computer
or broadband connection, or perhaps to a hard disk, a recording device
inside a, inside a digital box, we could give you a whole week's programming
– a whole week of the Â鶹Éç, so instead of having to watch programmes
when we put them in the schedule, you could dip in and watch anything
you wanted when you wanted to watch it.
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David Frost:
So that in fact you would say that the licence fee is probably safe
for the next charter for ten years and may well be safe for the next
one but would become, you'd start having to think of other ways of doing
it maybe by the third charter? Assuming you're still here in your 34th
year, of course.
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Mark Thompson:
Well I think – every, every time the Â鶹Éç's charter comes up for
renewal, people say it's the last time. It's the last time for the charter,
the last, the last time for the licence fee.
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I was involved in the Nineties in the charter then,
all the same arguments happened and actually the Â鶹Éç and its, and its
relationship with the public persists and is much stronger.
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So, yes I do believe the licence fee has got a long
future, but only, only if, if we give the public what they want, we
live up to the expectations of the public, which is partly about the
Â鶹Éç being different from commercial broadcasters. It's about a kind
of extra factor x, of when they turn to the Â鶹Éç they feel that we are
different, that we're striving for more.
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David Frost:
And what do you say, what do you say to people – obviously we mentioned
earlier on, obviously you came in in the wake of the Hutton Report and
so on and so forth, and Greg Dyke in his book says that in some ways
he thinks that the whole crisis may have strengthened the Â鶹Éç –
would you agree with that?
Mark Thompson:
Well we certainly know from talking to the public that their faith in
the Â鶹Éç and Â鶹Éç journalism is undamaged. They still think of the Â鶹Éç
as one of the absolutely most trustworthy sources of news and information.
And I have to say I think they're absolutely right to do so.
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I do think that we don't get everything right, we make
mistakes, and indeed one of the lessons from Hutton is that when we
make mistakes, when we get complaints, we have to deal with them very
quickly and very thoroughly. I mean our journalism must be robust, it
must be, it must be hard-hitting.
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I think that the Gilligan reports on David Kelly were
exactly the right kind of stories for the Â鶹Éç to do doing – we
have to get it right as well. But I think that, you know, if you look
at our news services, I think the level of professionalism, the level
of quality is very high and the public recognise that.
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David Frost:
I mean Greg says in his book in fact most of the story broadcast on
the Today programme was right and while Gilligan made mistakes "they
were nowhere near as serious as those made by Downing Street and the
Â鶹Éç was not sending British soldiers to war". I mean that's making
the point that with a few, a few minor blips or mistakes that the Â鶹Éç
was right. Do you think the Â鶹Éç was right in that controversy?
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Mark Thompson:
Well let me speak for myself. I've never seen this as a kind of a, a
battle, or a competition between the Â鶹Éç and the Government.
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I mean my, my task as Director-General is to look at
the Â鶹Éç's journalism and I think it was exactly the right kind of story
to be doing, the right story to pursue – mistakes were made though.
Greg and the Â鶹Éç recognise the series of mistakes and they apologise
for those mistakes.
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I need to make sure that we make as few mistakes as
possible and when we do make mistakes that we, we identify them and
correct them quickly. And I – that's my focus. Of course Hutton
raised many bigger issues.
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Should we have gone to war, was the Government in the
right or in the wrong in what it said in its dossiers about weapons
of mass destruction? Those areas of public debate are ones for the Â鶹Éç
to cover, not for me to be one of the players in. I need to sit back,
look at the evidence and with the Â鶹Éç's, all the other Â鶹Éç journalists,
try and report that debate fairly and squarely.
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David Frost:
The other thing the Hutton Report brought out very dramatically was
of course the question of the governors, and the governance of the Â鶹Éç,
and lots of people have said that the thing now has to be that the governors
need to be a separate body in a separate place, they can't manage the
management as well as doing their job of invigilating, as it were, and
they've got to be separated – the two roles – separated geographically,
separated in terms of who runs them and so on and so forth. Do you feel
there have to be reforms like that to make the system of governing the
Â鶹Éç credible again?
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Mark Thompson:
Firstly, I think the governors, over more than 80 years, have done a
great job in keeping the Â鶹Éç, above all, independent. We know, indeed
the Government's own consultation on the public made it clear the biggest
single thing the public wants is an absolute guarantee the politicians
won't get too closely involved in the Â鶹Éç and the great strength of
our governance system is it guarantees independence.
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I think in the current age, where accountability and
objectivity and regulation are more, more important than ever, the governors
do need to look at their separation of management and indeed in our
vision of the future, Building Public Value, they set out some ideas
about how they can be more separate, more separate. But I mean we shouldn't
get impression that the Â鶹Éç is utterly unaccountable. Two of the last
four Director-Generals have effectively been dismissed by the governors
– two out of four – so I mean, you know, if I get even slightly
out of line –
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David Frost:
Tread carefully here, yes, yes -
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Mark Thompson:
... exactly.
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David Frost:
You're walking on eggs here. Tell me, there was a story this week again
about the way that you are, and indeed it had already started before
you got there, moving staff to the, outside London, that it's too metropolitan,
the Â鶹Éç, and so on. In five years time, how many people would you guess
will have moved, Â鶹Éç staff, from within the M25 to without it?
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Mark Thompson:
Certainly by the, by the end of the next charter, which I guess is probably
2016, if we get a ten year charter, we expect at least half of the Â鶹Éç
staff to be based outside London – at least half. And with some
major centre – and not just –
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David Frost:
Mainly in the Oxford area –
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Mark Thompson:
That's where I live – and not just doing local news or regional
news or in the nation's programmes for Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland, but doing everything – some of our biggest network, some
of our big departments.
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And that's because the Â鶹Éç, you know, it's owned by
the whole country, it draws its talent from the whole country, it's
paid for by licence payers living in the whole country and if we're
to really reflect that and to be visible in the whole country, we need
to be more broadly based than we are now.
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David Frost:
And what about the Â鶹Éç, in its essential nature? You've said you don't
think the Â鶹Éç should, should do Big Brother, but obviously when you
were at Channel 4 you thought it was all right for Channel 4 to do Big
Brother and you put it on, or you inherited it, but you still put it
on. How is it right for Channel 4 and wrong for the Â鶹Éç?
Mark Thompson:
Well I think, you know, what I would say is different public service
broadcasters have got different objectives. I mean to me one of the
great glories of Channel 4 is it's not the Â鶹Éç, it's meant to be more
edgy, it's meant to focus a little bit more on the kind of limits of
taste, and also it's both economically and I think also useful from
an editorial point of view for it to concentrate on younger audiences,
in particular. So to me Big Brother, I wouldn't claim that Big Brother
was a great innovation any more, but I think it's part of the mix on
Channel 4.
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I think reality programming as a whole, if the Â鶹Éç
has got something distinctive, if we've got something unusual to do,
let's consider it. But I have to say there's a great deal of reality
television provided by the commercially-funded broadcasters, unless
the Â鶹Éç has got something really unusual to offer, I think we should
concentrate, if you like, on some of the programmes people do expect
from us, which is news and current affairs – but it's also things
like great comedy, it's drama, it's natural history, it's music –
last night's Last Night of the Proms will be, you know, just a bit like
a metaphor for the, just the way the Â鶹Éç brings the whole country together
to celebrate the musical life of the nation.
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And I think those are the things that we should concentrate
on rather than trying to operate in every single kind of programming,
which already other broadcasters do rather well.
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David Frost:
And so – well thank you very much indeed Mark – so when will
you, incidentally, get your one billion pound cheque for selling off
70 per cent of Â鶹Éç Worldwide, is that imminent?
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Mark Thompson:
No. What we're doing, we're, as, you know, at the time of charter renewal
the whole, the whole country looks at the Â鶹Éç and we're looking harder
at ourselves. We're looking at the future of our commercial services.
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We absolutely should be trying to get as much commercial
value out of our programmes as we can because we can use that to make
more programmes and to improve our public services. How we do it is
an open question. We've got some great commercial divisions and we're
looking very openly at what their future should be.
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David Frost:
Mark, thank you very much for being with us this morning.
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Mark Thompson:
Thank you David.
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David Frost:
It's been a pleasure.
Interview ends
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