Politics and the Media: Conservative Interview

ATV Network talks media with Conservative Shadow Culture Minister Ed Vaizey...

The BBC seems to be a hotbed for heated discussions and how the corporation is run is always under scrutiny. What are your plans for the BBC?

We believe there is much the BBC could do to cut waste and bureaucracy without cutting programming budgets and we argued against a rise in the licence fee this year. For example, the BBC spent £13.8 million on taxis between April 2007 and March 2008. We also think the BBC should have waived its automatic inflation-rate increase in the licence fee last year. We wholly oppose top-slicing, preferring to return spare money to licence-fee payers.

We want the BBC to be fully transparent and for the National Audit Office to conduct a full audit of BBC expenditure including on star and executive salaries. If elected, a Conservative government would want to reform the governance arrangements of the BBC and abolish the BBC Trust when the next BBC Charter is renewed. We would also like the BBC to concentrate more on high quality public service programme rather than some of its more commercial online activities.

Is it time for Channel 4 to become privatised and join the commercial sector fully?

No. We think Channel 4 plays a key role in providing public service competition to the BBC.

We have the news consortia project in which bidders put forward how they can supply local news, is this something you would push forward for all regions?

No. Using the licence fee to prop up regional news simply casts a failed regional TV model in aspic. It would actively prevent the emergence of new, local media models, making broadcasters focus their energies on satisfying politicians not reaching viewers. We do not support these provisions in the Digital Economy Bill. And we do not support the pilot schemes. The contracts are not due to be signed until May. Anyone looking to sign one should understand that we’ll do all we can to legally unpick them if David Cameron enters Number 10. And if they haven’t been signed, we won’t be doing so.

This is because we want to see the emergence of a radically different, improved and forward-looking local media sector. Not just local TV, where we are about the only major developed country not to have proper city-based TV franchises. But profitable, hungry and ambitious local radio, local newspapers and local websites as well. We will do this by sweeping away the cross-media ownership rules at a local level. This will allow local media operators to follow viewers, as they increasingly switch platform at a moment’s notice, whether from TV to radio to mobile or to online. It will allow a consistent and strong new offering to advertisers: go with us and we will reach consumers in a defined geographical area whichever platform they use.

We will not stop there. The cost of TV news production has fallen dramatically thanks to changes in technology. But we will seek to lower the costs for new entrants to local TV even further by creating space for a new national network to provide prime time viewing for local TV affiliates. This means that local TV operators will only have to fund a few hours of local news daily, not expensive 24 hour news. It will also mean – critically – that as in America advertising on local TV franchises can be sold nationally as well as locally. This will not be easy and no one is predicting the emergence of profitable local media organisations overnight. But only by putting in place the building blocks now, can we offer real hope for a sustainable future for independent media, something that I believe to be of profound democratic importance.

STV and ITV have had a difficult relationship over the past few years, do you have any comments on how the issue should be resolved?

We believe deregulation will help the entire commercial TV sector, including that in Scotland. If we got rid of cross media ownership rules, deregulated commercial sector, STV or a new entrant would be able to do something commercially viable. The offer of public money has simply stopped this thinking.

SKY News: IMAGE: Barco As it stands, television has to be impartial to the best of its abilities, would you welcome a change to spice up the TV landscape (Fox News for example) ?

No, Sky News knows that audiences want it to remain an impartial news channel. It is not pushing to relax the impartiality requirement because it's very happy with it."

The 2012 Olympic Games, are we on track for everything to be completed and will sport development continue in schools and communities afterwards?

Everything is on time and to schedule at the moment. Our plans to reform the Lottery will help build a lasting sporting legacy from London 2012 and we are also looking forward to the report from Kelly Holmes’ legacy taskforce which we set up last year. - says Hugh Robertson, who is spokesperson for the Tory Party on the Olympics.

Originally uploaded on Feb 2nd as an exclusive preview for our ATV Insider Members. For further information on the ATV Insider scheme/to become an ATV Insider please click here >>

ATV News would like to thank Ed Vaizey for taking part in the interview.

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