Paxman questions future of television

Jeremy Paxman argued last night that television will only find its way out of the current trust quagmire when it determines precisely what it stands for.

In an impassioned MacTaggart Lecture, Paxman castigated the broadcasting industry's top brass for permitting the situation to develop, and for staying "hunkered down, occasionally lashing out at young people in the business or setting up inquiries of one sort or another."

"The problem is not going to be addressed until senior people in this industry have the courage to come out and state quite clearly what television is for," he said. "Some of the things of which we stand accused are contemptible. In fact, I can't quite see why there aren't grounds for prosecution. And frankly, I find it pretty hard to believe some of the television bosses when they say they had no idea what was going on."

He broadened the lecture beyond the immediate issues of Brainteaser and a trailer for BBC One's upcoming documentary about the Queen to worry about the future of television in British media. He sounded an early-warning alarm bell: "If we allow the belief to take hold that the medium as a whole is guilty as charged, for it to be reduced to the abject, commercial amorality of much of the worldwide media, British television won't be worth working in... If we're going to stay here, we have to rediscover the purpose of this medium."

He further cautioned that "in attemping to regain [trust]" there is a danger of retreating "into such a mind-numbing literalism that we neutralise the imaginative capacity of the medium."

Paxman was keen not to allow the industry to shift blame for decline onto reforms started by the Conservative administrations of Thatcher and Major, and continued by Blair and likely Brown. He said ITV was "abandoning" its public service broadcasting requirements "one by one" as Ofcom regulation is rolled back. He said the BBC could be unable to justify its future unless it determines what it stands for.

"There has been a catastrophic, collective loss of nerve," he warned. "We have television executives behaving like politicians. One of New Labour's tricks was to commission polling evidence and focus groups to find out what people wanted... and then offer it to them. Television has gone much the same way."

"Too often it seems that the people at the top of this industry no longer ask themselves what they ought to be using this uniquely powerful medium for. Instead of seeking to englighten the audience, they set out to second-guess them."

He reserved much of his direct criticism, however, for the BBC, starting with an incident where BBC World interrupted a report on Nigerian elections to report the split between Prince William and Kate Middleton, and ending with a warning that the corporation would not be able to justify its continued existence unless it rediscovers a purpose.

"Deep down, I don't think the objective has changed since that early summary as being to educate, inform and entertain. It's a boring list, but it will do us as well now as ever. Right now, it seems to me that worry about engineering has driven out worry about content. We need to spend less time talking about how we deliver things, and a lot more time talking about what we deliver." He damned the corporation's obsession with grabbing share in the youth market:

"The BBC fears that if it doesn't get its nails into this age group, it's going to succumb to Daily Express syndrome where the paperboy shoves the newspaper throughthe letterboxes of houses with the curtains down... The truth is that TV in Britain is commissioned by middle-aged people who rarely watch the box, attempting to reach young people who look at it even less, when it's actually watched by old people."

Paxman added that "anxiety about irrelevance expresses itself in obsessions with the red button, with interactivity, fatuous opinion polls, podcasts, 360 programming... we've got too interested in the way we deliver what we do, at the expense of what we deliver."

Again criticism was aimed at the BBC, which despite not being a commercial organisation "seems to want to stay in every TV and radio channel and to maintain its internet presence, but to do so with fewer resources. The argument is that since society is more fragmented, it needs a multiplicity of outlets to serve it: why does no-one consider the alternative hypothesis that if social division is a bad thing, perhaps a broadcaster's function could be to build social cohesion?"

He said working at the BBC "has always been a bit like living in Stalin's Russia, with one five-year-plan, one resoundingly empty slogan after another... they express a belief that the system will go on forever... I think it foolish to be too confident on that score."

Paxman explained: "The idea of a tax on the ownership of a television belongs in the 1950s. Why not tax people for owning a washing machine to fund the manufacture of Persil? And how do you justify a tax on television ownership to finance production of material which will never appear on television? And what about material intended for television which is viewed through an iPlayer, for which no licence is required?"

He expressed hope "that good old British hypocrisy - or creative ambiguity - will get us over the contradictions inherent in the licence fee... because the alternatives aren't appealing."

He warned, however: "The BBC is going to have to justify its existence not by the way it broadcasts or the buildings out of which it works, but by what it broadcasts."