Ten Commandments Carlo Sartori, Chairman, RaiSAT; Head of RAI s Digital Terrestrial TV Project 2004/43 DIFFUSION online 1
Ten Commandments for the attention of the European Union. Television is going through some hard times: major multinationals with strategies (good or bad), uncertainties and threats of national politics, critics trashing much of the programming as trivial and the ratings war that has disastrous consequences. All of this in a climate of unprecedented technological, economic and sociocultural uncertainty. Deadlock Two extremes are battling it out. On one hand there are the liberals using arguments such as the convergence of television, telecom and the Internet, and economic and financial globalization, to treat television like a barrel of oil or a car make. For such people the market, privatisation and competition can cure all ills. On the other hand, there are the conservatives, nostalgic for television dedicated exclusively to the noble genres: culture, current affairs, the arts, history, theatre and music; convinced that television can continue to be what it was when public television enjoyed a monopoly. Is there a way out of this deadlock? Perhaps, but only if we can put aside certain prejudices in both camps. There is not just one kind of television. There is the television of reality shows, exploited almost to the point of self-parody; that of the socially destructive and psychologically twisted game shows; and that of the talk-shows, that resemble back street brawls. There is the stupid, brash amateurism of many light entertainment shows. There is no point in listing all of the genres that have successfully established themselves throughout the world since the 1980s. This is television that sells viewers to advertisers and pours petrol on the ratings wars. This type of television gives viewers the impression of greater choice (only the most popular programmes survive) and greater involvement (with schedules increasingly occupied by people like us ). Another model However, another model of television does exist. This is the television of great drama, of wonderful stories told by writers, directors, producers and Ten Comm Carlo Sartori Chairman, RaiSAT; Head of RAI s Digital Terrestrial TV Project 2 DIFFUSION online 2004/43
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actors who still believe it is possible to entertain without sacrificing professionalism. There is the television of great music and of the magic of the world around us; and there is the television of honest, objective news and current affairs and of well-researched, well-made documentaries. This is the television to which we owe a good deal of our knowledge and our social development: it makes us aware of what is happening around us. As quality television, it has not only made a considerable contribution to the development of public opinion in many countries, but also on many of the most important occasions in history to forming international public opinion, something which previously only existed in higher socio-cultural circles. Freedom of choice Whether we like it or not, even the most vulgar, invasive and objectionable television has a right to exist, not in the name of freedom of speech, as some would claim, but rather in the name of freedom of choice. This is an important freedom and one to which we owe many fundamental advances. Thanks to market choice and free competition, the quality/price ratio of many products and services has improved. Many economic sectors still need greater market forces and greater competition (such as electricity and telephony in Italy). And in television? Over the last twenty years, market forces have contributed to modernizing the sector, forcing all operators to improve their production thanks to the promotional stimulus of advertising, contributing to the growth of companies and entire economic sectors. Yet television is not a product or a service whose quality can be measured exclusively by specific evaluation techniques or consumer behaviour. Television comes directly into our homes and has a more or less immediate influence on our spending and behaviour patterns. Television content is no ordinary product: it is determined, day by day, by those who make it, with greater or lesser professionalism, creativity, and dedication. Television is just as important as schools, the legal system, and health care. That is why television cannot be left entirely up to market forces and free competition. Furthermore, perfect competition cannot be applied in the media industry, because its various products (for example, two newspapers or two TV channels) are never exactly the same and can never simply replace each other. In those markets where perfect competition does exist, its development effectively improves quality and prices. However, when perfect competition cannot be created, variables come into play which upset the quality/price ratio, to the detriment of one or the other. In the case of television, as prices are decided according to fixed elements, such as advertising and the licence fee, it is quality that suffers. It is ignored in the search for the lowest common denominator that is acceptable to the advertisers. This is why television is going through hard times, while other industries are doing well. In television, competition lowers the level of professionalism and responsibility towards consumers and encourages the repeated use of the same formats. All channels serve up the same soup, whose ingredients differ only in their ratings. Digital democracy When national and European legislators start reforming the television system, they cannot ignore these market forces. Furthermore, it is inconceivable that modern television specialists should simply leave the market to do what it wants, in the blind conviction that commercialization and competition can solve all this industry s problems as if by magic. In fact, more than greater market forces, today s television needs more democracy, more responsibility in its operators and greater respect for its audience. Suitable legislation needs to be passed, if we want television where we can distinguish truth from lies, good journalists from hacks, quality drama from cheap trash, the kind of television that does not reduce its audience to a blank page on which anything can be written, that does not pander to their basest instincts, but one that treats all viewers as mature, responsible participants, even when they just want to relax and be entertained. This kind of television is only possible within a system that continues to include among other forms a widespread, important, responsible television for all, supported and financed by public authorities and of which the public can be proud. It is not a question of condemning the free market, but it is necessary to allow this television for all to exist within the free market and in harmony with it, based on the public service broadcasting system, which is the stable base and the stabilizing force of the market. 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to impose minimum common rules regardless the medium used. And obviously, according to this laissezfaire position, the ideology of public service and media pluralism is an obstacle to the application of the normal rules that usually govern competition. In fact, even within television itself, there are those who say that public service broadcasting once necessary to prevent the limited number of television frequencies from being bought up by private operators can now disappear because digital compression has solved the problem of a lack of frequencies. It is undeniable that over the last twenty years, public service broadcasters have lost many of the traditional prerogatives that once justified their existence and have been replaced or flanked by private operators in the production and news sectors. More generally, we could say that structurally the European public services increasingly resemble the private operators, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their editorial traditions and the proportion of advertising in their budgets. If we carry this argument to its extreme, we could conclude that public service broadcasting is no longer needed and that everything can now be left to market forces and competition, as in the other sectors of the information society. Divisions However, if we look at television in particular, we can see that the decline of traditional general interest TV, caused by the arrival of digital satellite channels, has increased the social divide and that this is now in danger of widening alarmingly: in the coming pay-tv environment, only public service broadcasters will look after the needs of the weaker members of our societies, giving them access to enjoyable (perhaps even useful) products, and not just cheap trash TV. Every day we read increasingly disturbing evidence of the digital divide between rich and poor countries. This divide could infiltrate even with the richest and most advanced countries, in equally pernicious forms, contributing to increasing disorder, intolerance, and earthobservatory.nasa.gov 2004/43 DIFFUSION online 7
economic, social and cultural problems. Is this what we want for Italy? for Europe? Rather than dismantle them, we should be asking public service broadcasters to really perform a public service. We should ask them to perform those basic functions that they performed rather well in the era of traditional analogue TV. These are functions that society has the right to ask of the market, but that no purely commercial operator is prepared to perform. In this way, in the age of new technologies and new user services, the public operators will be able to play a competitive role (as, for example, in the coming digital terrestrial challenge), while contributing to broadening the user base, thereby preventing the development of a twotier society. Digital literacy and access to the products of convergence must not depend on wealth, but must be available to all. If this is accepted, it is clear that public service broadcasters should be considered as true instruments of society and cultural policy in the collective interest, and thus put in a position where they can adequately fulfil this role. To this end, a variety of forms of financing could be considered, preferably linked to a reliable way of measuring their efficiency. This is the case in various recent initiatives regarding the public service broadcasters in the larger European countries: Germany, France and, in particular, Great Britain, where the government has financed an ambitious five-year BBC project of on-line training, with stringent costcontrol mechanisms. Resources The main criticisms directed at public service television are about schedules and thus its relationship with the audience and the market. It would be ridiculous to ask public service broadcasters to give up the large, general interest audience in the name of abstract principles of quality. Apart from anything else, without that audience, it would lose its raison d être as an institution belonging to the whole of society. However, the public service should not need to fight a battle based on ratings alone: this would cause it to lose its identity and probably even the war. Honest, sophisticated general-interest scheduling cannot fight equally on the commercial battlefield. Public service broadcasters judge themselves by more sophisticated measurements of audience size and satisfaction. They do not limit themselves to mere numbers and measure their success in terms of editorial choices and the particular target audience of various programmes, thus offering an extremely varied diet of light entertainment, current affairs, education and the arts. It is this very diversification of editorial genres and the consequent rational modulation of the channels schedules as well as the artistic, entertainment and sports events which matter most to society as a whole that the public services cannot give up. It is the fact that they have the right programmes for the right audiences of various types (from huge audiences, to the most sophisticated niche viewers and consumers) that make them attractive to advertisers. In this way, the public service broadcasters would also contribute to refining the advertising strategies of agencies and media centres (who love to talk about diversification and target audiences, but very often cannot give up their old habits of relying on crude numbers). They would be performing a true public service, for the good of all segments of their fragmented audience. However, advertising should never be the be-all and end-all of the PSB strategy. The licence fee exists so that they do not have to rely on the market like a private company does. The licence fee, a modest sum in absolute terms, seems an irritating burden when all public and private channels look the same. However, it is broadly accepted, even where the fee is higher (Europe and Japan), where it is understood that they give the public something extra, and above all better than their commercial counterparts. Magna Carta Rather than seeing them as an obstacle to free competition, the public service broadcasters, when allowed to play the vital socio-cultural role, should be one of the inalienable properties of the community, one of the institutions in which society as a whole believes in and recognizes itself. This does not mean that the body that fulfils this role must be public or government property. In fact, it would be beneficial to allow the viewers themselves to own part of this entity. It must not be bought up by some media mogul or a multinational group. Although difficult to put into practice, such a solution could be one way of eliminating the problem of party political control. This would not take anything away from the concept of public, but would return it to the highest, most widely shared values of the res publica. A public service broadcaster of this kind would be, by definition, a vital tool for democracy and would regain its value as a universal service, but in a much wider and more meaningful sense than the mere daily bread and butter of its programming and the ratings. It would play what would perhaps be a much more important role in the direct development of its industrial division and the indirect development (in the sense of the promotion and communicative support) of other industrial sectors, 8 DIFFUSION online 2004/43
in particular those most dynamic in the international arena. In other words: the public service would become a crucial tool of the country s industrial policy. Carlo Sartori is also a lecturer in mass communications. His publications include The Universal Eye (Rizzoli 1981), Big Sister (Mondadori 1989), Televison Quality (Bompiani 1993). If this applies for each individual nation, at the supra-national level we should feel morally obliged to draw up a kind of European Magna Carta of multimedia public services, confirming how essential they are even in the new digital universe of electronic communication. 2004/43 DIFFUSION online 9