What Shall We Do with the BBC?'
Against Commercials
By RICHARD HOGGART and STUART HALL OF the arguments in favour of commercially financed local radio the simplest says that it would be 'free.' If this means only that no one would have to pay directly for the pro- grammes they received, it is self-evident. But it doesn't take us far. The money for programmes would come from advertisement revenue and that from the manufacturers, chiefly of con- sumer goods. The manufacturers have to raise it .somewhere. Roughly speaking, some econo- mists say it's added to retail prices and so keeps them slightly higher that they would otherwise be. Others say advertisements stimulate pro- duction, which brings cheaper production, and thereby the costs of the advertisements are more than absorbed. So to argue that local commercial radio would be 'free' is simply to assert more than we know.
Set against this the probable cost of pro- viding local radio from licence-money. Advo- cates of 'free' local radio say we would all be faced with large licence dues. The BBC reckons it could run a fairly comprehensive network of local stations for 5s. a year (not 5s. a head . . . each licence serves several people). Suppose the BBC is underestimating, and double their esti- mates. We are still left with a price of one halfpenny a head a week to establish local radio stations right across the country.
So the argument from comparative costs has no weight. Ott the one hand and at the most onerous estimate one halfpenny a week; on the Other hand a so-called 'free' service whose free- dom has not been proved. It's simply not worth bothering about in comparison with the basic question, which is: which type of local broad- casting will give the better service?
What is good local broadcasting anyway? What should have time on it, if it is to be really local and distinctive? The most obvious 'minority' example is education. Local radio will need time to develop the right sorts of connec- tions -correspondence links, direct consultation, continuous assessment—with the local educa- tional services. But that's an obvious and ready- made slot. More important is the scope of local radio as a mirror of the life and a forum for the voices of its area. This means much more than local news, sport and market information. It is a clichd, but true, that life becomes more and more centralised (and the process isn't all loss). 4ut the discussion of important local issues does Suffer. Look, for instance, at the power which national finance-groups have shown in deciding the new shape of most cities. Right across the country the new city centres look as though they have been knocked out on the same drawing- board in Slough, without thought of local topo- graphy, climate or temper. Local radio could
do something to focus and stimulate the imagina- tive life of its areas.
More tricky: it is easy to slip into thinking that on national and international matters only London-based comment is worth while. It's assumed that all the bright boys go there, that provincial discussion is slightly subfuse—or amusingly ham. If local radio broke this myth it might even reform national broadcasting practice, eventually.
If these and many similar things are good distinctive uses for local radio how best to give them the chance to develop? By putting the stations in the hands of men who are glad to be in that crucial position, who have the imagina- tion to rise to it, and have been left as free as possible to do so.
What structure will best let such men find their own ways? The advocates of commercial radio say theirs will, that any other system will stultify initiative and lead to establishment paternalism. But would a commercial system give the, kind of freedom we sketched above? Really good men might do wonders, so a few stations might have some success. But if the station manager in a commercial system is to do his duty by his board he must make as much profit as possible. Big profits come from large advertising charges, and these are decided by size of audiences; and consistently large audi- ences are ensured by safe, predictable, common denominator programmes. Could the manager Milder his dues to Caesar in this world and at the same time meet the varied demands of good local broadcasting'? Suppose he provides (not only at marginal times) plenty of opportunity, for local interests to express themselves, and a reasonable number of educational programmes— as well as providing a good measure of more obviously majority-programmes. He is going at times to divide his audience. This is inevitable. If he puts out a programme of popular music, x thousands of us will listen. If he takes it off so as to air some local issue, half of us will go away and do something else, because we're too tired to be bothered that night. Perhaps the other half will be listening with increased interest; and perhaps the lost half will come back later and listen with interest to yet another kind of programme, while the first half switch off.
All this should sound right to a station manager out to do a representative local job. It won't to advertisers who see the graph of listening figures going up and down, or to the board who see their advertising revenue fluctuating in sympathy. To them it will seem stupid deliber- ately to programme for dips in a graph that cOuld be kept steady. The pressure on the station manager to provide programmes which do keep the graph high and steady (without bothering about the full range of local tastes and needs) will be very strong.
And commercial local radio looks likely to form quickly into national chains, since there have been multiple provisional registrations of 'local' stations by some large national concerns. Partial or cbmplete national networking would certainly follow. Much the same would happen with advertisements. We are told that commer- cial local stations would primarily advertise local businesses—and offer consumer-advice. Why should they, when the big national advertiser can pay more? In fact, some of the provisional companies reckon they will put out 60 per cent of national advertising. And how much tough consumer-advice will come from stations de- pendent on keeping the advertisers sweet?
All in all, you will have a service led from the rear by the needs of advertising, not some- thing free to serve its area flexibly. It's a pity to legislate in such a way that good men can do a good job only against the grain of the structure. Much better to set up a system which naturally supports station managers in their search for good local broadcasting.
Not enough thinking has gone on so far about the best ways of organising local radio. More experiments are needed with different patterns. Plainly the BBC could provide most effectively and cheaply the overall administrative and technical umbrella. But the Corporation hasn't yet sufficiently explained how it would ensure that its managers wouldn't be all the time looking towards Portland Place. They could do their claim for local radio most good now by showing that they have a good grasp of potentialities— and of the necessary structure—for really local radio, a better grasp thari they have always shown in their regions.
One doesn't want, or not as a standard form, a committee of local eminences (and certainly not a sub-committee of the local council) con- stituting an advisory board to the station man- ager. Managers have to be able to call on help when they need it and still retain an enormous measure of autonomy. Different towns should de- velop different patterns (within a common basic servicing structure) and so have different tem- pers—so that Radio Newcastle is unmistakably Radio Newcastle and couldn't be confused with Radio Bristol; but both' have energy, objectivity and variety.
Under the commercial system you could expect to hear, as you moved up the MI from county to county, the same sOrt of disc-jockey potting out the same sort of programme (apart from a few local gimmicks) with the same inter- spersed advertisements. The contrast is so startling that you realise tnore than ever how urgent it is to start thinking about ways in which we can get genuinely 'free'--that is, non- commercial—local radio. Nobody wants local radio which is at bottom establishment-paternal and centralised. But in the effort to avoid that danger we shouldn't throw ourselves into the commercial paternalism of centralised vested interests. These tycoons have suddenly become the ardent champions of `the local idea.' The thought of these people—never before notably interested in local provincial life or the imagina- tive energy of regions—constituting themselves the guardians of the quality of local life and culture would be laughable (the wolf imperson- ating Red Riding Hood's grandmother had nothing on them) if their act weren't at bottom ugly and dangerous.
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