Episode 13 Points of View

Good afternoon, and a very warm welcome to Points of View

and a rather special programme for you today

as I interview, on your behalf, the chief policeman of the BBC -

the chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten.

Now, for you and for me, the BBC is all about programmes

but, in a sense, Lord Patten sits above all that.

Lord Patten has the final say on how licence fee money is spent

and so, in a way, has ultimate power within the BBC.

He and the Trust police quality and value for money,

and name and shame departments and programmes that fail.

Up for a challenge,

he was Governor of Hong Kong during its handover back to China

and helped establish a new police force in Northern Ireland.

Since starting at the BBC in May last year,

Lord Patten has made his presence felt.

He rejected plans for cuts to local radio,

protected the World Service and now plans to cut management pay.

Lord Patten believes that the BBC can enrich people's lives

by introducing them to good books, great paintings or beautiful music.

He recently appointed the new BBC Director-General, George Entwistle,

telling him the BBC should be ten to 20% better than it currently is.

-Lord Patten, hello.

-Hello, Jeremy.

-Let me ask you,

first of all,

these questions are on behalf of our viewers, about the shape of the BBC

because a lot of people, now, take stuff down off YouTube,

they take it on demand,

and here we are using channels to give them material

at our convenience

and it seems like that's just a broken model.

Well, not most people.

Most people, like 91%,

still watch television in the...traditional way...

linear watching - you watch a channel.

and one of the reasons why the BBC has been so successful

is that we're very good at organising, or curating, channels,

to use the BBC speak.

Um, but there are more who are choosing when they watch a programme

and that's why iPlayer has been so fantastically successful.

But, yes, iPlayer, obviously,

is a way of people getting what they want on demand

but that, that suggests that the channels ARE gone,

that there is no need for them.

It's undoubtedly the case that technology

is changing the way a lot of people view but not everybody

and what, to use an awful expression, at the end of the day,

what the BBC has to make sure it's doing

is making terrific content, however people watch it.

To a licence fee payer, surely, content is what they are buying.

They want the programmes, we all understand that.

They don't want to be paying for a pensions department,

a property department, a legal department, HR department and so on.

Don't they have to go?

We're on a programme of 11% efficiency savings...

over this...charter period,

until 2016-17.

We're cutting overheads, support services, by 25% -

the sort of things you were talking about -

so as to find more money to put into programmes

because it's, that's the sharp end.

But in order to have a sharp end

you've got to have something behind it from time to time.

If we got rid of the people who are managing the books

we'd soon find ourselves in big trouble with licence fee payers.

OK, let's pause there, if we can, and just move to content,

and what you've been talking about this week.

And, firstly, tissues out because Gareth Malone's The Choir is back.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

This song is just, hits the nail on the head.

I think that people, when they hear of us,

will be inspired by the choir

and think, "Hey, these guys are sending a message.

"Sending a message out to every individual," you know?

And I think people will sit up and notice,

and who knows, relationships, to some extent, could improve

on the basis of us delivering this message.

Well done, Sam, that was very good. You can go back and join the tenors.

So, Gareth Malone working his musical magic again

but it seems that Andrew Marr is making history

for all the wrong reasons.

People learned the essentials of survival -

language, clothing and cooked food -

and, above all, working together to stay alive.

Too many distractions there, maybe, for Andrew Marr.

And back to the BBC and its own distractions

because the property portfolio

is something that comes up again and again.

The two billion in Salford

and a billion pounds for the new Broadcasting House.

Just the amount of money that is being spent on buildings

that could have been spent on programmes,

does that not...is that not cause for an apology at some point?

Well, Salford was two billion pounds but over 20 years

and what we're doing in Salford

is making programmes in a much more productive way.

Salford's involved...2,300 people working in...in the city.

About a third were already working in Manchester,

about a third have gone from London,

about a third have been recruited locally.

I think it's been an astonishing success -

sport, Radio 5 Live, children's and one or two other things as well.

But the cost of bricks and mortar

is just what you would call dead weight, isn't it?

You can spend all that money, you don't get a single programme!

No, but you can't go on making programmes in...

..clapped-out facilities.

This building, for example?

Yeah, if you think about the move from here to Broadcasting House

and the move out of Bush House,

we're putting all our journalists together,

there will be huge improvements, I think,

in the quality of output as well as savings made as well.

The BBC, frankly, was in too many bits of property

and reducing the numbers and going into property which is,

you can make more productive use of - as the management speak puts it,

"Property whose assets you can sweat more."

The BBC has unarguably had a very, very good summer of sport,

with the Olympics and Wimbledon as well, and it's led to the question,

why not take the hint and buy more sport, even though it's expensive?

We will be spending about two billion on sport

over the rest of the licence fee period.

That's the same as we're spending from the licence fee on journalism.

It's about ten per cent of our overall spend.

Now, that still enables us to do a lot of sport.

It enables us to do Wimbledon, Match of the Day,

it enables us to do Six Nations

and it's enabled us, of course, to do the Olympics.

It enables us to do sport,

which clearly binds the community, the country together.

I think it's very important that we should continue to do a lot of sport

but we just haven't got as much money to spend as some others.

Look, when, when BT and Sky

are bidding up to six and a half million, or more,

to televise a football match, we simply don't have that much money.

Well, on our message board, Germinator says,

"Instead of BBC Three and BBC Four, sport."

Well, interestingly, if you scrap BBC Three and BBC Four

you'd have certainly a bit more money for sport

but you certainly wouldn't have enough money to compete with Sky

in paying money for premiership football games.

One of the things, one of the lessons we've learned from, I think,

from the Olympics coverage is that sport is hugely important to reach

and a statistic which I offer you,

which may seem incredible but is true,

is the BBC televises about two per cent of all televised sport

but we get 40% of the audience.

Another viewer, Joan Beveridge,

has said you don't do enough women's sport.

What we should be doing,

and I think will be doing more after the Olympics,

is more minority sports, as they are so-called,

because, sooner or later, they become majority sports,

which I think is what's been happening with cycling.

And we have to do more women's sport

and I very much hope

that we'll be able to demonstrate our determination to do that

in the coming... in the coming weeks and months.

Well, sport makes a great TV pastime,

let's talk about another thing that does, which is cooking.

We all enjoy our cooking shows and there's one TV chef

who is so famous she's only known by her first name.

In fact, now, even that's been changed to Nigellissima!

My children are bigger than me now

but luckily I've always got lots of other people's little ones

surrounding me so I'm happy.

It happens that my meatzza

and also my chocolate hazelnut cheesecake

are just perfect for this sort of thing.

There we are, Nigella, a very recognisable BBC brand

and, Lord Patten, if we look at the branding of the BBC

and what it's most famous for - its dramas and documentaries,

and news, and sport, and so on - does lead us to the question

why the BBC doesn't just drop the broadcasting,

drop the channel end, and just become a production house.

I don't think you can just do that

without having any supporting services at all.

For example, the BBC has always been, in a sense,

as much an engineering company as a creative production company

and it's because it's been so good at the technology.

For example, we've had such a successful Olympics.

The head of our technology said to me,

when I became chairman of the BBC Trust,

"What the coronation did for television back in the 1950s

"I think the Olympics will do for digital."

So, here we are, Points of View,

and, obviously, we handle viewer complaints

and I just wonder what you can tell the viewers about your role

because traditionally the chairman of the governors

used to go into bat for the BBC. So, whose side are you on?

I think it's a very good thing about the Trust,

that we are able to criticise the BBC when we think it's got things wrong

but I think that if the BBC is doing well,

and I think overwhelmingly it is, it does deserve to have a cheerleader

but it also needs a cheerleader who can wrap it on the knuckles

when it isn't is doing as good a job as it should.

Lord Patten, thank you very much joining us.

Good to be with you.

So, drama is on of those core areas of BBC output

and one of the newest dramas on the BBC is called The Paradise.

I want to bring 1,000

undreamed of temptations into the Paradise.

I promise you, sir, there will be no end to their appetite.

However, it will take more than one spectacular event

to convince my partners at the bank.

If I may, sir,

we were never going to convince them.

The point is to convince you!

Now to another drama, Good Cop.

And if you've been enjoying that

you may have wondered why one of the episodes was dropped a few days ago.

And the answer was it had uncomfortable parallels

with the shooting of two police officers in Greater Manchester.

So, what is the latest decision on whether Good Cop will ever be shown?

And that brings our BBC Trust special to an end.

Next week we've got the start of Merlin

and if you want to react to that or anything else on the BBC

do write to us.

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Goodbye.

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