It turns out that everyone I’ve met at the conference so far, including the nice man from the train yesterday, has the first name ‘Lord’, ‘Sir’ or ‘Professor’. Nice train man turns out to be Sir Samuel Brittan, one of the primary members of the committee that debated and authored the Peacock report in the mid-1980s.
He seems to be an economist as well – and the more I speak to him the more it seems that we diverge politically. He uses the phrase ‘audience sovereignty’ quite a lot – which, it turns out, translates as ‘the market shall decide’. During the Thatcher years, this man was one of the people most enthusiastically embracing an ideology that we in the colonies referred to as ‘Rogernomics’.
There’s another man called Lord Peacock, who arrived late after being delayed in Edinburgh airport for quite some time. I’m guessing his connection to events at the time was also fairly fundamental…
There was a great plenary speech at the conference tonight. Professor Tom O’Malley from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, talked about the intellectual and political context for the Peacock Committee.
He boiled it down to two opposing viewpoints (Collectivism and Libertarianism) that needed reconciling under the fairly extreme Thatcher position that the BBC was more or less untenable without complete commercialisation.
There was the suspicion at the time that the mere establishment of the committee was evidence that the Beeb was about to be dismantled – so the fact that the Peacock Committee instead completely re-thought public broadcasting in the UK to such a significant degree is interesting. It was established in an attempt to justify dismantling the BBC, but ended up saving it – but in a way that most of the collectivists at the time didn’t appreciate: one that both endorsed and tried to seduce the market.
In fact, despite the fact that the Peacock Report was commissioned to look at the financial backing of the BBC, there was a strong moral position to the document. Even those who were sympathetic to the economic position of the Thatcher Government came to the conclusion that making BBC television channels carry advertising was pretty much a non-starter.
The philosopher Karl Popper was cited a couple of times, as a thinker who had essentially defected from the collectivist position to the free market libertarian position, because, in his words, ‘Freedom was more important than Equality’.
This idea had informed the debate at the time to a large degree. It was more important that consumers could choose what they most wanted, than that all citizens could get equal access to the kinds of programming that most suited their needs. The room was full of economists, but moral issues were being discussed.
Sir Samuel Brittan’s position was that the conventional wisdom that there was a scarcity of resources (it was considered that there was really only room for one television channel at the time) was starting to prove itself false. So the question became about whether a cosy duopoly was the way to go – or whether to instigate a “robust competitive market”.
It was interesting stuff – about an hour of round-table discussion, none of which I felt in a position to comment on. There were drinks afterwards, and a stunningly good harpist (apparently one of the best on the planet), who just got talked all over as she played, but she managed to keep smiling.
I struck up a conversation with Alwyn Roberts, who turns out to have been a BBC Governor (1979-1986) and Sir David Nicholas who was Head of Daily News and Religious Programming at ITV. Fairly heady company for a lowly researcher and programme maker from the antipodes.
However, after a few glasses of some Australian white wine, I ended up having an animated debate about the motivations for the Iraq War with Alwyn, Dafydd from the University of Wales, and a guy from the University of Westminster (who, thankfully, was more extreme in opinion than I was).
After white chocolate profiteroles and more wine, I made way to another table, and ended up chatting with Professor Jean Seaton, whom I really admire and had wanted to meet, but whom I had been inexplicably nervous about meeting.
She was one of the main reasons I came to this conference. I’d spoken to her on the phone before, and had applied to come and do research with her on the history of the BBC – but had missed out. She was very nice about it, and was kind enough to have remembered me. We spoke for some time, and she’s invited me to come and give a presentation at the University of Westminster – which, y’know, great honour. Westminster’s got a reputation for being the spiritual home of media studies.
I’ve also gained permission to interview Alwyn, Sir Samuel and Professor Richard Collins, so I’ll be busy between sessions.
The only real shame is that I’ve left the desk mic-stand at home so I‘ll be doing hand-held mic i/vs with them. The conference is being recorded – and I’ll be pestering Dafydd for copies of the best bits.
In exchange, I’ve agreed to help him set up his own blog. Daffyd’s a PhD student researching the way television programme makers approach the telling of history. It sounds really interesting, and it’s the kind of thing that could really benefit from an online interface to the outside world – just in terms of generating feedback on ideas from television producers and historians. We’re going to do that sometime tomorrow, though not while he’s watching Ireland vs Wales and I’m busy visiting Powis Castle.
For now though, bed.
