Evidence of meeting #10 for Canadian Heritage in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was bbc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:55 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
The licence fee funds the radio networks, but if you don't have a television and you only have radio, you don't have to pay a licence fee.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you.
Is there a trend toward people resisting or refusing to pay the licence fee?
9:55 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
No. I'm pleased to say we think evasion of the licence fee is by about 5% of the population—and that figure has been reasonably constant for several years now.
Realistically, there is always going to be an element of evasion, particularly among people who move house a great deal, people who have rather transient lives. And that 5% has been pretty constant for the last five or six years.
9:55 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
It used to be higher, actually.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Is there a concern in the BBC that the technology would allow people to obtain the BBC programming without a television set?
9:55 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
Well, it's certainly possible in the future that people will increasingly consume their media via broadband rather than other means. But the law requires at the moment that if you watch any live broadcast content, however you watch it—even if you're watching it on your computer—you are obliged to pay a television licence fee.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you.
Does the system you launched, the iPlayer, pose a possible threat?
9:55 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
Well, conceivably, but I personally think it's highly unlikely that we will end up with many media consumers in the future who never ever want to watch, for example, the World Cup live or the news live. I think there is always going to be a demand for live programming, even if people do time-shift a good deal of their viewing.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you.
You say there is no commercial advertising. Is there non-commercial advertising, like public service announcements, embedded in BBC programming?
9:55 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
Yes, we do occasionally make public service promotions. For example, at the moment, as we move towards the digital switchover, we are doing what we can to promote the take-up of digital television. But that's on a purely non-commercial basis; we receive no revenue for that.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
And when people pick up these same programs within the week by broadband using the iPlayer, are these messages also embedded in the programming?
9:55 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
No, I should have responded to your saying “embedded in the programming”. These messages come in the continuity between programs, so they're separate from the programs themselves.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you. I appreciate the clarification there.
I have another question about a service you've launched, which, I must admit, I'm not at all familiar with, and that's Freeview. Would you mind briefly explaining what that is to the members of this committee?
9:55 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
Freeview is essentially the brand name of digital terrestrial television in the United Kingdom. We have three thriving digital platforms: digital cable, digital satellite, and digital terrestrial broadcasting.
In the U.K., digital terrestrial broadcasting began as a commercial platform, but it failed; it went bust.
We then thought to ourselves, along with our fellow public service broadcasters, that it would not be in the public interest for there to be no digital terrestrial platform in the U.K. So we got together in a joint venture to revive the platform and to make it available.
If you want to get Freeview, you don't get a box from Freeview. You walk into any electrical retailer and buy a box. The costs start at around £20. You take it home, and in the majority of instances you can just plug and play it.
So the only money the BBC puts into Freeview is simply to pay its costs of carriage on the platform. And we don't have to acquire boxes for people and deliver them in the way, for example, Sky, our satellite operator, or Virgin Media, our primary cable operator, do.
The Freeview platform has been very successful in the U.K. There are now more Freeview boxes than satellite boxes, though the figures are broadly similar.
10 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
I have a final question, if I may.
Could you describe for us the relationship that exists between BBC and the private broadcasters in England? Is it cordial? Is it antagonistic? Do they even care about each other?
10 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
We certainly care about each other. I would say relations are pretty cordial. I see my opposite numbers, the public policy people from most U.K. broadcasters, and I like to think we get on pretty well with each other.
Realistically, we are, of course, competitors, and they are concerned that having public funding we stay honest and we don't go into what they would regard as commercial territory. They want to keep us as public service as possible and not commercial. They watch us pretty carefully when we're trying to launch a new service or to change one of our existing services, but I think relations are pretty good.
10 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for being here with us today, gentlemen. It is a very great pleasure to be able to discuss the public broadcaster, both Canadian and British, with you today.
In your introduction, you told us about the changes you have made in the area of new technologies. You seem to be very enthusiastic about the progress you have made. I also see in the briefing notes that you have decided to see competitors like YouTube or Yahoo as opportunities to capitalize on rather than threats.
Could you tell us more specifically about the relationships you have decided to establish with such partners, who are very popular these days.
10 a.m.
Deputy, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
If I might answer this one, I'd start by saying that places like YouTube have a very large audience. In terms of how we measure the public value the BBC creates, the reach we manage to achieve and the level of usage are among those key concerns. Doing deals with Google and YouTube is one way for us to get to audiences, particularly audiences who might be badly served by other ways of distributing BBC content.
The YouTube deal is one where we have three BBC channels on YouTube: a BBC channel, which is largely entertainment content; a news channel; and a BBC Worldwide channel, which focuses on the international aspect of our content. That content is provided in a BBC environment, whereas on YouTube ordinarily you'd see advertisements next to the content as it streams. When you click on the BBC channel you don't have the advertisements on the BBC public service offering. We are again sticking to our duty in our public service operations not to damage the commercial market unduly.
To give you a feel for the size of audiences we're talking about, the BBC recently did a deal with Bebo, the social networking site, where we provide short clips of BBC content, normally entertainment content, and that now is getting to 10.8 million U.K. unique monthly users. We are talking about a significant number of users.
Obviously it does have threats in terms of piracy and the context in which it can be seen occasionally. We do try, where possible in these deals, to make sure we retain control over the way in which the content is viewed.
10:05 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
Broadly speaking, I would characterize our arrangement as one where they want our content and we want their audience. There is mutual benefit in these arrangements.
10:05 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
Financially speaking, is this also to the benefit of the corporation?
10:05 a.m.
Deputy, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
If you look at the potential distribution costs in terms of distributing things online rather than, for instance, paying satellite carriage fees, there is potential for saving there, although obviously this is an issue of debate at the moment in terms of the level of demand for on-demand content. When this content is being hosted by other providers, then obviously they are paying for the bandwidth they need to show the BBC content online. To that extent there is a potential for saving there.
10:05 a.m.
Chief Advisor, Public Policy, British Broadcasting Corporation
I should add, we don't get any revenue from these arrangements. We are not paid by YouTube for the provision of content. The financial advantage to the BBC is in terms of saving costs, not in terms of direct revenue.
10:05 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
Indeed, earlier on you were talking about “'public value”'. I would simply like to know how you assess that criterion. Is it in terms of market share, of audience share? Is audience share a mark of success for you? I would just like to have a little more clarification on this concept and the way in which you assess it.
