Episode 7 Points of View

Good afternoon. We asked you to send us questions

for the BBC's Director of Television, Danny Cohen,

and you have not disappointed.

Danny will be in the spotlight in a few moments.

First, other questions being asked

about how council workers are described

in BBC One daytime's Call The Council.

I was absolutely amazed at the number of times the council workers

were referred to as heroes

and their normal daily operations referred to as heroic.

I can only presume the narrator, Mike Radcliffe,

was doing this firmly tongue in cheek.

Our nation's council heroes are...

Their heroic council colleagues...

Unsung council heroes...

Heroic officers like...

The voice-over on this documentary

on the work done by Thameside Council left some feeling

the high praise was a bit too high.

They are good people. End of story.

Compare them to 70 years ago,

the D-Day landings.

Thousands died.

They were the heroes, not the council workers.

No questioning the heroic credentials of the central character

in the police drama, Happy Valley. Did you see it?

I know you're frightened of him but now is not the time

and tell him what's going on. I need people there and fast.

Sarah Lancashire's portrayal of Sergeant Catherine Cawood's fight

to get her man kept us all gripping our seats to the very end.

The storylines are fantastic and I have been totally gripped every week.

It has made me laugh, cry and shout. Well done, BBC. Keep them coming.

For some though, the post watershed grit in it

did make for uncomfortable viewing.

But how about this, Springwatch is being accused of being too violent

with its decision to show footage

of the killing of a group of young rabbits.

But she makes a fatal mistake as she leaves.

She doesn't cover the nest up and

she leaves those kits quite exposed.

Then a jackdaw comes in.

It goes straight up to the nest, looks inside and finds an easy meal.

So, should the pictures have been shown?

Should the production team have stepped in to save the rabbits?

We asked Springwatch's executive producer.

It's always tempting in these circumstances to intervene,

but remember, this is nature taking its course

and it would have happened whether we were there or not.

We have a policy of not intervening because otherwise,

we would be influencing natural events.

Some of these scenes are naturally quite tough to watch,

so we make sure they are sensitively handled.

We don't shy away from showing the truth of nature, and we warn people

so they have a chance to look away or not watch that particular scene.

Well, I'm joined now by the BBC's Director of Television himself,

Danny Cohen. Welcome.

-Thanks, Jeremy, thanks for having me back on the show.

-A pleasure.

We're starting with sound issues which have come up a lot.

I'll give you this tablet so you can see exactly

what our viewers are saying.

The first thing is, it's all to do with Quirke and Jamaica Inn.

If you press there, you will hear from Jenny Hedges.

I do not pay my television licence to watch mime.

I was going to go for a drink.

-Well, we've finished at a respectable hour.

-Right.

Quirke could be an excellent drama, if only we could hear it.

The cast are brilliant and the subject, so heart rendering.

Jamaica Inn was another drama I gave up on because of the same problem.

You are so good at drama, but please, please, could we hear them?

INDISTINCT SPEECH

I'm wondering if you feel a bit heartbroken by that

because she obviously wants to hear them so badly.

The first thing is, I repeat the apology we've given,

that we did have sound problems, particularly on Jamaica Inn,

and I've apologised to viewers for that.

It's actually a source of frustration to me on a number of levels.

I've been working quite hard on the audibility of BBC Television

in the last two to three years

and due to the work we've done,

we'd got to the point where the amount of complaints about audibility

had reduced by over one third.

So, to get this setback is both frustrating for us, it's frustrating

for the drama producers involved and I apologise to our viewers for it.

The BBC went two ways, it firstly blamed the actors,

then it said, actually, it's the technicians.

We never worked out what you think is wrong.

We didn't blame the actors.

We kept our powder dry until we knew what was going on

and there was various press speculation about what was going on.

But with sound issues, it's very, very compensated.

It can be a mixture of acting, or an issue with stylistic directing,

the naturalistic nature of that directing.

An element of it can be how sound is produced in post production.

We don't want to blame one specific person.

There is no one more devastated about this

than the producers of Jamaica Inn.

They've spent three years producing that drama

and that is why it's sad when this happens.

It is sad for the people involved and it is not good for viewers

and we apologise for that.

Let's talk about Saturday nights which of course is a vital area.

A sense that maybe the BBC has not got the oomph on Saturdays.

Repeats of Pointless, Mrs Brown's Boys and so on.

Have a look at our viewers speaking.

I really think The Voice is just so good, seeing all the judges

and how good the singers are.

Strictly is just entertaining.

I love all the comments the judges have to say.

I don't think Saturday night on the BBC is as good as it used to be.

I think it used to be quite consistent throughout the year

but now, we just get Strictly for instance,

that's my watch right through the winter,

but there doesn't seem to be an awful lot to capture me in between.

I think that they should be playing shows like The Generation Game,

like they used to in the good old days.

They just don't make them like that any more.

We had Mr Blobby, where's he gone?

Blobby, Blobby!

He was really funny.

The BBC isn't as good as it used to be on a Saturday night.

There could be a number of reasons for me.

I'm getting a lot older

and I prefer to watch a good variety programme such as Morecambe and Wise.

I think BBC on a Saturday night should not change.

There's a good variety for everyone out there.

There's football for the men.

There's Casualty and there's game shows for the family.

I think sometimes, they are trying to emulate ITV,

if I'm allowed to say that,

in some ways with the reality programmes.

There's a lot there from those shoppers in Cardiff.

-There was indeed.

-Do you sense a problem?

We are amazingly committed to Saturday nights.

We've just had a fantastic run of The Voice, really big numbers,

fantastic to have Kylie Minogue on the show this year.

-Not in trouble, The Voice?

-In what way?

In the sense that it may be just isn't making the impact

that Strictly makes.

Strictly has been going for over 10 years and you build up a following,

a loyalty with those shows over a number of years.

We're in year three of The Voice so a different stage.

Up to 10 million people watching a show on a Saturday night

is pretty good going.

It's also the case that we cannot afford to have

that scale of Saturday night entertainment on 52 weeks through the year.

The BBC doesn't have enough money to do that.

We would love to have that but what we have to do is,

we spread them through the year.

We're investing more into entertainment.

We have a new show, Tumble, coming after the Commonwealth Games,

a new Saturday night show. That will be on before Strictly.

It is a gymnastics based show,

which is not something we've done before on the BBC.

We've also got Doctor Who of course coming back.

Peter Capaldi making his debut as Doctor Who.

That'll be back in the autumn,

so we're incredibly committed to Saturday night, but we do have

to manage our resources through the year effectively.

OK. Another subject now, your view

that panels should have women on them, where possible.

Have a look now at the view of a panel show fan.

Hi, my name is Vicki.

By day I work in an office, by night,

I try stand-up comedy. It's just a hobby.

Today I would like to talk about women and panel shows.

I think the policy of having a woman on all panel shows

is a good and admirable one and I salute it.

I just don't necessarily see why we needed to be told

that such a policy exists.

Why not just put more women on panel shows?

Jeremy, we've been pushing to put more women on panel shows

for a few years now and for me, it wasn't happening fast enough.

I think the change needed to happen, it was happening slowly

and on some programmes it was happening fantastically well.

On others, it was too slow.

I thought the time was right to say quite publicly,

I don't think this is good enough, I think we can make more progress here.

The danger is that the woman who is then phoned up thinks,

I'm there because Danny has said they need a woman.

I don't think she should think that.

I think people should think to themselves,

there are seven people on that show at least.

I'm sure I'm at least one woman who should be on it.

Maybe there should be two or three.

I think people, producers in general, they are looking hard now

to make sure we have enough talented women on these programmes.

The people are out there.

If you're talking about women,

about diverse contributors to our programmes, the talent is out there.

We've got to push really hard to make sure they're represented on screen.

Sometimes in my role, it is important to just say, enough,

we can do better than this. Let's make sure we are doing it.

Jeremy Clarkson, key talent, made a comment that involved him

saying the N-word. It was publicised.

The papers said you wanted him fired.

You are his immediate boss, is that true?

I don't want to get into an insight into the internal discussion.

Please do, tell us, because people pay for it.

I think there's some things we should be able to discuss internally

around our talent that we shouldn't always play out in public.

I do know and what I can tell you is, it shouldn't have happened.

Jeremy has apologised, he knows it is not acceptable, and we move on.

There was no part in the decision not to fire him was the sense that

this guy brings in a lot of money to the BBC,

that's not part of the decision?

We were decided in the end and the Director-General led on this,

that it was important to give Jeremy another chance.

That is what we have done and we will go from there.

Let me ask you about BBC Three, you've been Controller of BBC One

and Three as well. It is closing?

It is closing as a linear television service and moving online.

Let's see what viewer, Ryan, says about that.

I'm disgusted by the decision to move BBC Three online.

Every night in my house with my housemates,

we come and sit down and eat dinner and watch BBC Three,

enjoy it and discuss what is happening on it.

I understand that the BBC has to make cuts

but I think it is unfair that they are cutting BBC Three over BBC Four.

I think the reason why is because BBC Four has older viewers

and older viewers are more likely to complain over younger viewers.

-Ryan is not happy.

-I can see.

Well, I really respect Ryan's views on it and it's been really good

as part of this process to hear different views.

At the next stage of this process, the BBC Trust will be seeking views

from a wide range of people about this proposal.

The first thing to say is, we've got to get through that stage first.

Why Three and not Four?

Three are the future, Ryan is the future for the BBC.

The reason, we looked at both Three and Four when we looked at this.

The bottom line is, I've been asked to save £100 million.

The BBC Four budget would not get anywhere near that.

The other reason and this is the main reason,

more young people are online

so if we're going to move a service online, and it's a risky thing to do

and if we had more money, we may not do it quite as soon as this.

BBC Three is a better bet to do that

because of young people watching it than BBC Four.

You mentioned funding and of course in the end it comes down to that.

The future licence fee settlement, that will be decided in 2016.

Have a look at this question from Phil.

Now that so much television is broadcast by the BBC

via the Internet through the medium of iPlayer,

does this offer scope to charge for programmes

either by subscription or as one-offs in order to supplement the license fee?

In other words, will there ever be a BBC version of Netflix?

So, what if you put Strictly on the iPlayer and you charge for it?

I think he asks a really interesting question there.

But I don't believe that's the right route for the BBC to go down.

I believe in the universality of the BBC.

I believe the BBC should provide something for everyone

and it should be free access to news and great television programmes

for everyone in the UK.

-Danny Cohen, thank you very much indeed.

-Thank you.

That is, I'm afraid, all we have time for this week.

Thank you so much if you've been in touch with your comments.

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That is it for this week. Until next week, goodbye.