Mark Thompson Hints At Channel 4 Merger With Five, Says BBC Will “Help” Others Make PSB Output

The future of Channel 4 as a public service broadcaster, that we looked at recently, became a mite clearer today with a piece in the FT penned by the BBC’s director-general, Mark Thompson. It’s written in a relentlessly diplomatic style that insulates itself away from any possible beef, and therefore is lethally dull, but read between the lines and there are some revealing moments. 

He begins by saying that top-slicing the licence fee isn’t an option, which we all knew already. He then looks at the BBC’s role, saying “we must share the benefits of our scale and technology, as well as looking at how BBC Worldwide, our commercial arm, can help”, and mentions “industry partnerships” worth “£120m in benefits to the other PSBs each year by 2014″. How nice of them! 

But this stops way short of “consolidation”, i.e. actual mergers. He suggests that consolidation could provide “the chance for a smaller number of larger players to focus on credible and affordable digital plans”. The larger players he means are Channels 4 and 5; the smaller number would be created by them merging. As director of Channel 4, he supported a merger of the two channels in 2004. So the idea of a BBC deal or a Channel 5 deal seems to be heading towards having a bit of BBC and a lot of Channel 5.

He also says we “need a road map [urgh] for the next stage in the development of high-speed broadband and mobile”, before suggesting that “PSBs working together could stimulate public excitement around the uptake of universal high-speed broadband”. Yes, we would be excited at getting real telly on our mobiles and computers, but his comments are likely to annoy the ISPs no end. All that “excitement” means a lot of investment to keep bandwidth up and people happy, and surely the PSBs will have to start footing some of the bill for the installation and upkeep of their new lucrative platforms. Remember how annoyed the ISPs got about iPlayer? It’s going to get a lot nastier.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Creative Economy | January 12, 2009 11:46AM |