Sell your best stuff to us, Sky tells BBC

net1

The BBC should be made to sell off its most successful programmes to commercial broadcasters, Sky chief executive Tony Ball has proposed.

Speaking at the Edinburgh Television Festival last week, Ball also argued that all of the BBC’s channels should be governed by a broad and clear remit, just like the recently launched BBC3, and that the publicly-funded behemoth should be prevented from spending the licence fee on US and other foreign imports.

The concern about the amount of money spent on foreign programming emerged as a result of reports that the BBC has spent £10m on a package of rights for a number of US movies, including Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, scheduled to make its UK premiere this Christmas.

The three propositions were the focus of Ball’s MacTaggart lecture and coincided with the results of NOP research commissioned by Sky which showed that 51% of people disagreed that the BBC was good value for money.

Ball’s suggestion of “programme syndication” would oblige the BBC, which he said was run by “paternalism”, to sell off some of its quality programming, such as EastEnders to commercial broadcasters.

The money raised would then be ploughed back into innovative programming.

Ball argued that the system would free up the BBC schedule and mean less repeats after findings that less than a fifth of the BBC1’s peak-time schedule is taken up by formats that are less than two years old.

“The BBC would have the role of using public money to discover the best talent, taking the biggest risks and building up the show. Just as public money is used to fund scientific research, but not to fund the commercial applications of that research, so public money should not be used to continue to fund programmes when it is clear that they can find a commercial home,” said Ball.

The BBC moved to discredit the proposals, with director general Greg Dyke dismissing the speech as ineffective.

And the corporation issued a statement saying: “We’re flattered that Tony Ball should be so preoccupied with the BBC but his comments have to be seen in the context of Rupert Murdoch’s long and hostile campaign against the BBC. Thankfully for the British public, Mr Murdoch has not been successful in this campaign.”



Ball's Proposals for the BBC

Create clear remits for all channels. These would cover minimum hours per genre, per week in peak time and independent and regional production commitments.

Restrict the types of programming the corporation is permitted to spend public funds on – for example, US movies and other foreign imports.

Order the BBC to licence out to commercial broadcasters some of its popular programmes. The money raised would then be ploughed back into public service programming and developing classic shows of the future.

rolfw

LOL, this falls under the "Well he would say that wouldn't he" banner.

Whilst I agree with Tony Bal that the BBC as a general case should not be spending licence payers money on American imports. To force them to relinquish any series which becomes popular, to the commercial stations, is quite frankly ludicrous.

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arraknid

He can talk! If Sky stopped showing foriegn imports, they'd have nothing to show! What's good for the goose, etc

Channel Hopper

Coming from the other end of the argument, does this mean that anything shown by the commercial channels, deemed as either not worthy or rubbish by a reasonable percentage of the general public (say 49%), these should moved off subscription and broadcast on a free to air channel ?

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

PaulR

I'm afraid that I give $ly no credit for anything innovative in programming.

I well remember back in the early 90s that the Beeb had started showing Star Trek: The Next Generation. The next thing I knew was that $ly had bought the rights to first showing and we had to wait, I think, 3 or 4 years before it appeared on terrestrial TV again.

B******s. I can NEVER forgive them

PaulR