BBC Trust consultation : Service review of BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Four

Response from the Church of England

Made by The Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester

Senior Spokesman on Communications

1. How well are BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Four performing against the terms of their services licences?

To what extent are licence fee payers aware of and using the services, and are some demographic groups better served than others?

Are the services delivering high quality and distinctive content across the full range of television genres?

Are the services making an effective contribution to delivering the BBC’s public purposes?

Are the services delivering good value for money?

§ This response, co-ordinated by the Archbishops’ Council Communications Office, is written in the context of a long-term engagement in media policy issues, particularly relating to religious broadcasting and the depiction of faith by broadcasters. The Church of England’s General Synod is expected to discuss religious broadcasting and the role of the BBC and Ofcom at its February 2010 meeting, presenting an opportunity for the subject to be deliberated with insights gained from across the Church.

§ BBC1 and BBC2 are together required to broadcast at least 110 hours of religious programming each year. According to the BBC Annual Report 2009, the BBC is exceeding its required number of hours of religious programming. This commitment, alongside the sentiments expressed by the Director General on a number of occasions in support of religious programming[1], is appreciated by many, and the Church welcomes this continued investment in a vital segment of public service content.

§ It is encouraging that the total number of hours of religious programming (on BBC1, 2 and 4) increased in 2009 to 164 hours from 155 hours in 2008 (following a small rise between 2007 and 2008), and that the proportion of that programming scheduled within peak hours has stabilised in recent years. The biggest increase in religious programmes was on BBC4.

§ The service licence for BBC1 requires it to “show high quality, landmark factual programmes in peak and other viewing times. These should be in genres such as natural history….and feature a range of documentary, leisure, social action and religious output”. The licence also requires “some high impact religious programming in peaktime”.

§ In 2008 the BBC could point to the The P assion as fulfilling this requirement, while in 2009 there has been a lack of “high impact” factual religious programming in peak viewing time on BBC1.

§ The shelving in late 2008 of the proposed six part Bible drama series for BBC1 in 2009 has left a big hole in the schedule. The indefinite postponement of the series raises questions about whether the BBC’s ambitions for religion on BBC1 are narrowing.

§ Regular weekly output of religious programming on BBC1 is represented by just two programmes: The Big Questions and Songs of Praise. Both employ formats which represent the breadth of the UK geographically. The latter is a much-loved part of the broadcast landscape, but regrettably it does not appear to have a regular, consistent slot in the schedule. As one of the staple elements of the religious schedule, it is unfortunate that The Big Questions’ format makes it difficult to explore subjects in detail, and that a significant part of its potential audience is in church during the transmission time.

§ BBC 1 is continuing to provide high quality live coverage of public religious events, e.g Remembrance Sunday, and the installation of the new Archbishop of Westminster. Continued investment in the skills and expertise needed for planning, filming, producing and commentating on other complex outside broadcast/special events, where public worship is often a core element, is absolutely vital.

§ However, in a trend detectable across the BBC’s television output, the number of services broadcast over the course of the year has fallen considerably in the past decade. For an activity in which millions regularly participate (1.7 million people each month within the Church of England alone, a figure that has been stable since 2001) to be increasingly neglected could be regarded as a lapse in the BBC delivering its public purposes. This is not just about serving the housebound who wish to access high quality worship, but about reflecting the life of Britain, “sustaining citizenship and civil society”, and meeting the onus on public service broadcasters to have regard to providing “programmes showing acts of worship and other ceremonies and practices” (Communications Act 2003, Section 264). While BBC radio continues to excel at broadcasting worship services, it is regrettable that television has not explored new ways of introducing audiences to the authentic experience of religious communities in worship.

§ In 2009 BBC2 screened Around the World in 80 Faiths and in recent years has developed a cluster of series – The Monastery, The Convent, The Retreat – that have not only attracted significant audiences but impacted on public awareness of religious communities’ ministries. This programming can be argued to meet the channel’s charge to “broaden horizons” but it is debatable whether it meets the criterion that some BBC2 programmes should take “a more challenging approach than BBC One”.

§ An encouraging example of how the channel can effectively deliver on its licence is the co-commission between BBC2 and BBC4, History of Christianity, which has already attracted impressive audience figures on BBC4 (approximately 500,000 for the first screening of each episode; roughly double the usual figures for factual programming on the channel) and we anticipate it will do likewise when it moves to BBC2.

§ So far the high-quality programmes proposed for 2010 and 2011 all appear to be on BBC2. These include a documentary on the King James Bible on BBC2 in 2011 and The Silence (BBC2 April 2010) – a series showing five men and women trying to build silent prayer into their daily lives.

§ It is also encouraging to see occasions where religious themes and the portrayal of religion appears as a normal part of the lives of UK communities – the inclusion of a number of church choirs in BBC1’s Last Choir Standing (2008), for instance, and the inclusion of characters discussing ethical themes, or attending religious services, in drama and soaps. The BBC/Open University survey currently being conducted online illustrates the extent of ‘informal’ religious observance in the UK distinct from churchgoing, as indicated by the responses of more than 3,800 participants[2]. The BBC’s new comedy commission, Handle with Prayer, has the potential to similarly portray religious practice as part of the tapestry of life in the UK today, and we wait to see to what extent it does this without relying on stereotyping to achieve its comic aims. However, in general, we feel that people for whom faith is part of their daily lives seldom appear in soap operas and other drama programmes.

§ The fact that the BBC won Sandford St Martin Trust awards in 2009 for The Passion and Miracle on the Estate, both broadcast on BBC1 in 2008, indicates that quality religious programmes can continue to be made.

§ While Easter Sunday 2009 offered some strong religious programming, there was a significant lapse in the provision of appropriate programmes on Good Friday 2009. This deprived the majority of the BBC’s TV audience (85 per cent of whom, the BBC’s own research has found, describe themselves as Christian[3]) of opportunities to reflect on the festival with the input of leading theologians and church leaders, to hear from other Christians about what Easter means to them, or see the festival celebrated in church. This was, at best, a deeply regrettable oversight, and we hope that the BBC will take steps to ensure a much fuller reflection of this key event in the Christian calendar in future years, and in particular, mark Good Friday appropriately.

§ Similarly, we look to the Christmas TV schedules to offer high quality, distinctive contributions to the BBC’s proposition for reflecting and informing the celebration of this Christian festival across the UK, for all age groups. We believe this is an integral element of the BBC delivering their public purposes.

§ Whether the BBC’s current religious output contributes to all its public purposes is debatable. Among the BBC’s purposes is a requirement to “sustain citizenship and civil society”, which requires a properly informed society, aware of the factors motivating people and giving their lives purpose. That appears to call for a proper portrayal of religion with that aim in mind – allowing for religion to be shown accurately as something providing meaning, purpose and cohesion in society, something recognized in British Attitude Surveys, by the Social Cohesion Unit and others. Yet the BBC does not formally recognise the accurate portrayal and reporting of religion as part of this purpose.

§ Another purpose is to reflect Britain to the world and the world to Britain. This purpose, covered largely by the BBC’s news and current affairs output, does not explicitly recognise the significance of religion to fulfilling this purpose. We certainly welcome regular reporting of religious affairs within the news, but there are concerns that increasingly moving religion out of specialist slots and into news and magazine programming can have a detrimental effect on the quality of the representation of religion because of the lack of specialist knowledge in newsrooms. There is also a danger of the “David Attenborough” effect: religion always reported from the point of view of an observer of a fascinating and increasingly rare species, rather than explored as something of fundamental importance to the vast majority of the country.

2. Are BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Four equipped to deliver their service licence commitments in the future, in particular to meet audience expectations of high quality and distinctive content?

Do the services have appropriate strategies in place?

Are resources appropriately allocated to meet objectives?

§ The importance of religion in the public sphere, and its particular importance on the lives of many under-reported and under-represented groups in the UK, demands the highest quality of programming that in turn requires the availability of high-level expertise and understanding, both for the production of specific ‘Religion and Ethics’ output but also as an in-house resource for other departments.

§ In relation to religious programmes, concerns exist about the extent to which the BBC is committed to ensuring that it has a sufficient amount of in-house expertise and the resources to guarantee the long term quality of its religious output. Retaining and nurturing a core team of specialists is absolutely crucial to maintaining the current stable of regular programmes and developing innovative new formats. The recent example of Advent programming on BBC1, Fern Britton meets…, led to a major news story concerning Tony Blair’s rationale for going to war in Iraq, and demonstrates the power of programming which the Religion & Ethics team are able to produce in-house, when given the resources and schedule slots.

§ The practical implications of the recent restructuring of the arrangements for religious commissioning have yet to be seen. We will continue to monitor output to assess whether the BBC’s aspirations for strengthening programming in this area are realised through the realignment.

3. Should the service licences for BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Four be changed?

§ Some modifications to the service licences of BBC1 and BBC4 to give explicit recognition to the fact that religious issues are matters of general public interest and not just the concern of the religious or of particular communities.

§ In the BBC 1 service licence place religion as an area under the category of the promotion of education and learning.

§ In the BBC 4 religion should be added to the list of the “ambitious range of subject matter” under education and learning.

Submitted 15 th December 2009

ends

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BBC Trust Consultation: Service review of BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Four, December 2009

[1] Lecture at Theos thinktank, October 2008 ( dia.com/Client/Theos/Files/MarkThompsonSpeech.doc); Lecture as part of ‘Faith and Life in Britain’ series organised by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, April 2008.

[2] n2.net/survey/history_of_christianity/embed.html

[3] Research study, Taste, Standards and the BBC, Quantitative Research, conducted by Ipsos/Mori, June 2009