Episode 20 Points of View

Good afternoon and welcome to a special edition of Points Of View,

where we will be putting your questions and comments

to the man in charge, here at the BBC,

and that is the Director-General Tony Hall himself.

But first, here's a quick roundup of your views on the TV you've been watching

and we're going to start with last Saturday, and Strictly.

Bruce Forsyth's jibes at the proportions of contestant Mark,

tipping the scales for quite a lot of Strictly fans.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

For a guy of this size to do a jive!

I mean, it was quite something. Darcey.

So were the veteran presenter's comments unfair?

Did Bruce's banter go too far this time? We asked the team at Strictly.

Maybe we'll call them Bruce-isms,

the kind of thing that only he can get away with.

Now, a finale cliffhanger left us all in bits

at the end of series one, but Last Tango In Halifax has returned.

Alan is back from the clutches of death and both he and Celia

are certainly seizing the day in the opening episode

of this returning series.

Book the registrar and get on with it

and worry about everything else afterwards.

Now, with Doctor Who celebrating its much-billed half century,

BBC Two reminded us where it all began.

The special one-off drama An Adventure In Space And Time

travelled back to 1963 and the people who came up with what would

go on to become the longest-running science-fiction series ever made.

Why does it have to change?

Why do things always have to change? Why can't we just go on as we are?

And your reaction's proving

that anything to do with this time traveller

is always warmly received.

So just some of your views on what you've been watching this week

and I'm now joined by the person who runs the BBC,

Director-General Tony Hall.

Welcome to you.

Thank you very much.

Just before we put some of our viewer comments to you,

let's have a look back at some of your career.

Tony Hall joined the BBC as a news trainee a long time ago, in 1973.

But quickly, the bright guy from Birkenhead would rise through the ranks,

becoming Editor of News and Current Affairs at just 36.

By 1990, he'd become the Head of News, overseeing the launch

of BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC News 24 and BBC News Online,

then, in 2001, after nearly 30 years,

Tony Hall left the corporation to become Chief Executive

at the Royal Opera House.

He was appointed Chair of the Cultural Olympiad Board

and, in 2010, became Lord Hall.

Earlier this year,

following the traumatic departure of the Director-General George Entwistle,

Tony Hall got the call from the BBC

and came back to take on the top job.

It's a very impressive CV, if I may say so.

But, of course, now you're running the organisation

and the bucks stops with you and we asked viewers for comments

and they've come up with quite a few. Are you ready for this?

-I'm ready.

-OK.

First up, it's arts on TV and you promised at an extra 20%

for arts programmes.

Great news for culture vultures, but what about the others?

Here's how the announcement was received

by some of our contributors.

So are you investing more money to pay for the pleasures of a few?

No, I profoundly believe that excellence is for everybody,

so I like the idea that great plays,

that the public are often paying for through subsidies anyway,

should be available.

There is a licence fee freeze and therefore

that money that goes into the arts comes from elsewhere, so...

Yes, it'll mean prioritising.

There are things which the BBC, I think, can do really well -

arts, music, drama, natural history - and I want to make sure that every

penny I can get from making the BBC more efficient and more

effective can go on the screen where our viewers would expect it to be.

OK, next is the whole issue of channel loyalty

and issues to do with BBC One, BBC Two, their relationship.

-So have a look at this.

-Yeah.

I don't understand why viewers are occasionally messed around

by apparently arbitrary swapping of programmes

between BBC One and BBC Two.

Case in point was, a few weekends ago, the Indian Grand Prix

was carried live on BBC One, so all of the BBC One programmes

that morning were swapped to BBC Two.

Another case in point was The Great British Bake Off,

which has become a very popular programme on BBC Two.

We're now told that the next season would be on BBC One. Why?

I wondered if Mr Hall could explain some of the politics

behind these sorts of programme swapping decisions.

-So why do that?

-So Mr Currer makes a really good point.

I think BBC Two is an incubator for great ideas.

You want BBC Two to take risks, to try out new things,

like, for example, Have I Got News For You started on BBC Two,

ended up on BBC One.

Then I think if you've been a BBC Two viewer in on the Bake Off,

now, of course, millions more would watch it on BBC One,

I should take pride I was there first.

But I think taking that viewer's response to moving programmes

from BBC Two to BBC One or vice versa,

we probably need to do a lot more explaining about why we're making

programme decisions like that when we make them

so people understand and I hope will accept them too,

cos we're just trying to give people a really good service.

You're planning big changes to the BBC's iPlayer,

so 30-day catch-up and exclusive material and so on,

but a person who just has a TV becomes a second-class citizen.

-You have a two-tier system, effectively.

-No, not really.

They're missing out on the iPlayer exclusive.

Well, but iPlayer exclusives should then end up on our channels at some point.

We just had a very nice little Doctor Who video that's gone out

on the iPlayer. I mean, those scenes will appear elsewhere as well.

I don't want anyone to lose out,

but I do want the BBC, with all the power that we've got,

to help educate people,

to show people some of the benefits of changing technology,

something we've, historically, always done and I want us to do that in the future too.

The joy of this programme is we see what the BBC puts out,

we also see the response to it,

but we see what the BBC says and does about the response

and that causes some concern to viewers,

so just watch this.

I'm quite surprised that whenever someone from BBC comes

on the Points of View programme to discuss viewers' criticism,

they always seem to justify whatever they or BBC have done.

If BBC always gets it right and viewers are always wrong,

then what is the point of having a programme called Points Of View?

We don't hold our hands up enough.

Very good point from Mr Hebbar.

I mean, I think we should own up to things we don't get right.

We're a creative organisation,

that means making lots of decisions which are arguable

and one of the areas I think we have listened very strongly

is on the credit squeeze at the end of programmes where suddenly

you lose the credits and you have what's coming up next.

Now, we've got a way of delivering both the credits

AND also what's coming up next as well.

Often we ask programmes for responses on this show

and they give us a written statement from a press officer, is that right?

Well, I hope that programme makers in this organisation come forward

and talk about what they're doing.

And I mean, you know, we're in an organisation

which increasingly people want to feel involved in

and they should feel involved in and we should explain ourselves.

OK, moving on, the BBC Trust, the governing body set up to make

sure the corporation does what it's supposed to do.

Is it as independent as it should be? Not all viewers think so.

We're told that the BBC Trust

is completely independent of government.

However, all of its members are selected by ministers

and the Chairman is quite plainly a political appointee.

I believe that a bit more honesty starting right at the top here

would begin to improve the BBC's relationship

with its licence-fee payers.

So he doesn't trust the Trust.

Well, Mr Wilson, what I would say to him,

and it's a really important and good question, is the Trust

are and must be independent of government,

independent of political parties.

The Chairman is appointed by government but I can tell you

the Chairman is a phenomenally independent-minded person

and that's exactly what you want,

but they should not be independent of the people,

our owners, the licence-fee payers, who are paying for us.

They've got to be working on THEIR behalf to make sure

that my part of the organisation and everybody around here

are doing the things that our licence-fee payers, our owners, expect of us.

You think about the payoff scandal,

you think about they appointed the last DG when they maybe

shouldn't have done... Not a lot of confidence in them.

Well, look, we've had a bad year or so, I mean, everybody knows that.

But what the Chairman of the Trust and myself are working on now

is a way that, in the next three and a half years of this charter,

that he and I can work out an effective way to work together

so that our licence-fee payers are getting what they want out of us.

OK, sport now.

And the question of whether we should be trying to show

more of it or just give up. Have a look at this viewer's comment.

-So shut the sports department maybe.

-No.

Well, I hope Mr Cleal wouldn't want us to shut the sports department.

From the tone of his e-mail, I think he wouldn't want us to do that.

Look, in the last six months,

we've announced we're bringing the FA Cup back to the BBC.

I think that's an amazing piece of work by a lot of people in this organisation

and the reason we're doing that is because we can cover

and make an event out of sport or other things,

bring the nation together for these things better than any other organisation can

and that's why, working with BT, we won that particular deal.

But listen, in the coming year, we've got the World Cup, we've got the Commonwealth Games,

we've got the Winter Olympics at Sochi coming up shortly as well,

we've got some extremely major events there,

which we do very, very well indeed, which I hope millions can enjoy.

We've lost a lot, haven't we?

We have and we've got to make sure that we spend our money wisely,

but what I'm trying to say is that, actually, I think

even within the constraints of the licence fee, there are things

we can do, like the FA Cup or like the Olympics,

where we bring something very special from the BBC to people.

All right, so sport stays, for the foreseeable future anyway.

What about other areas of TV? I know you've talked about wanting to make

brave TV, what do you mean by that?

What I want is programme makers

and, more important on this programme, our audiences,

to recognise that you get certain things in the BBC

that you wouldn't get by other means

other than by funding it publicly through the licence fee.

So when I look over the past week at Children In Need

and the heart that the BBC showed there in all the things that people

did to raise money, the heart, our audience showed by supporting that fundraising

to the tune of £31 million, unbelievable!

Or I sit back and watch dramas like Top Of The Lake or Peaky Blinders.

These are really pushing boundaries, this is what I mean

by having ambition, having courage, having edge,

trying not just to do the obvious, not just try to do things

which are following, but to take a lead and push boundaries.

What about yourself, Lord Hall?

Well, I want to make sure that the BBC is in good shape,

in good heart, does great programmes.

I'm enjoying myself at the moment and that's sufficient enough for me.

-Tony Hall, thank you very much.

-My pleasure, thank you.

And that is it for us this week. In fact, for this series.

We'll be back in the spring.

In the meantime, you can, of course, continue to talk to us.

Lots of ways to get in touch.

By post at...

By phone, the number is charged as a local-rate call from any landline.

Here it is...

Or you can join the message boarders...

And this e-mail...

Or, finally, we will be keeping the conversation

flowing on Twitter at...

Till our next series in the spring, goodbye.

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