UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1071-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

TELEVISION BROADCASTING IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Tuesday 27 October 2009

Senate Chamber, Stormont, Belfast

MR PETER JOHNSTON, MR MICHAEL WILSON and MR STUART COSGROVE

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 29

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 27 October 2009

Members present

Sir Patrick Cormack, in the Chair

Rosie Cooper

Mr Stephen Hepburn

Mrs Iris Robinson

David Simpson

________________

Memoranda submitted by BBC, UTV and Channel 4

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Peter Johnston, Director, BBC NI; Mr Michael Wilson, Managing Director, UTV; and Mr Stuart Cosgrove, Director of Nations and Regions, Channel 4, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Could I welcome you most warmly, Mr Wilson from UTV, Mr Johnston from BBC and Mr Cosgrove from Channel 4. We are very grateful to you for coming. This inquiry really arises out of a meeting that we had earlier in the year with Mr Wilson and his colleagues who drew our attention to their concerns and we promised to look into this matter. We have received a number of written submissions and we are, of course, open to receiving more written submissions from anyone who chooses to send them. We have got three public evidence sessions today while we are in Belfast. We have this one, which will finish at 12.30 because two of my colleagues from Northern Ireland have to return to Westminster as it is the turn of the DUP to have what is called a Minority Day on the floor of the House in Westminster. They have their own special motion, so clearly they must go to take part in that debate. Obviously we had no knowledge of this when we fixed this up. This afternoon we are seeing representatives from Ofcom and the journalist unions. We may or may not have further public evidence sessions. We are having one with the Minister next week but, apart from that, we may or may not have further ones. We will be aiming to publish our report during January. That is a rough idea of the timetable for you. Do any of you want to say anything by way of opening statement before I begin the questioning?

Mr Wilson: No.

Mr Johnston: No.

Mr Cosgrove: No, thank you.

Q2 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Could I ask you the simple and obvious opening question which is how important is television broadcasting in Northern Ireland and what makes it unique within the UK?

Mr Wilson: Firstly, thank you to the Committee for looking at this issue. We do see it as fundamental to our business but also it is important for the devolving democracy of Northern Ireland that institutions such as the Assembly Building are scrutinised by journalists with integrity, with significant training and, indeed, the product that they deliver is watched, it has volume and reach in terms of the audience that it broadcasts to. Northern Ireland in particular is important because of the appreciation by our audience evidenced from both our own figures and Northern Ireland's figures that show both significant approval and volume in the population that watch our services. Our major concern is that the policies being put forward at the moment by the two major political parties in Westminster, because broadcasting is a devolved issue, currently damage what is a very good service offered by the BBC and UTV within this region, and that is why we have a concern. The Conservative policy is broadly to have city stations and, again, to reiterate one of my earlier points, we believe that city stations will not have the depth and reach of journalistic skills to scrutinise national institutions. The Labour policy is for an Independently Funded News Consortia where I think although there are a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon saying these are a good thing, there is a lot of detail in how these should be awarded and how they would be made up that is still unknown. At the moment we would like to know more detail before anybody jumps headlong into Northern Ireland and changes what is already very good provision.

Q3 Chairman: Do you wish to add to that?

Mr Johnston: Just very briefly a few observations. Why is it important? One, the public purposes in Northern Ireland are at the forefront of our mind in producing content for the audience here. Obviously we have been through difficult times and we have a very developing political process so, as Michael said, news and political programming is very popular with audiences in Northern Ireland in general. Beyond that some of the other cultural programming, whether it be comedy, entertainment or history programming, sometimes has significant challenges in a place like Northern Ireland but is very important and well valued. The other two things I would say are simply all the research from Ofcom, from ourselves, from a range of sources, shows how popular and what the demand is like from the audience for local programming for audiences in Northern Ireland and we are always nearly consistently the highest level of demand, if you like. How widely we satisfy that, and some people will like some programmes more than others, is the complex nature of it, but that would be the other key point.

Q4 Chairman: Yes. Mr Cosgrove?

Mr Cosgrove: Just to make one key point of differentiation for Channel 4. Channel 4 is a pan-UK broadcaster with no specific opt-out service in Northern Ireland or, indeed, any of the nations and, therefore, that creates a fundamental difference. The other significant point of differentiation is that Channel 4 is a published broadcaster and through regulatory licence and remit our requirement is to source all of our content from independent producers and third parties rather than having our own in-house production. Those two key differences mean that Channel 4 is fundamentally interested in the high end quality of its output and the point of its innovation and differentiation in the UK market.

Q5 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. The next question, and then I will bring in Mrs Robinson, concerns the first two gentlemen more than Channel 4 for the reasons that you have just indicated. At the moment, how much of your network production currently comes from Northern Ireland?

Mr Wilson: To explain UTV's relationship with ITV, ITV is a federation. It used to be 16 licences and it is now ITV plc in England and Wales. Scottish television - STV - owns the channel provision and the licence and UTV own the licence. In terms of size, we are about 2% of the ITV network. We sit on something called the ITV Council which is the governing body of ITV Network. The Council is meant to deliver the programming and business strategy for ITV. However, clearly with 2% of the clout it does not get us through the door in terms of having any influence on the programmes that are commissioned by ITV. What UTV tries to do instead is introduce independent producers to ITV commissioners. In my time at UTV we have had at least two meet and greet sessions where we invited all the known independent producers in Northern Ireland to meet with the ITV Regional Programme Fund and as a result I know that at least one programme went to development and at least one programme was commissioned. In my opinion, and probably in the wider broadcasting community in Northern Ireland, while ITV does not do enough out of Northern Ireland that which it does UTV has had an influence in commissioning.

Mr Johnston: Focusing purely on network production from Northern Ireland, not the local production which we have touched on, historically the position has been that not enough of the BBC's output has been made in Northern Ireland. It has typically varied between half a per cent and 1% of the overall mix given it is 3% of the population, if you want to use that as a crude measure. You are probably aware from other sessions in the other nations as well that last year the BBC set a new strategy and set of targets to drive that level of production from Northern Ireland up to 3% by the end of 2016 with a staging post at 2% more quickly than that. Where we were at last year, if you looked at the evidence on the ground you would have seen a couple of projects, but we recognise not many and not enough. This year, as we currently stand today, I am aware of eight network TV commissions from the local independent sector and a range of in-house production with ten Panoramas and a range of other programmes. Also, on drama there is a better story this year and this is a very important genre. We have had two major BBC Network productions, Five Minutes of Heaven and Occupation, both filming in Northern Ireland, and one about Northern Ireland as well. It is difficult how you plan progress being made but there is more to be done.

Q6 Chairman: Bearing in mind what you said earlier, Mr Cosgrove, do you make a conscious effort to have programmes that emanate from Northern Ireland?

Mr Cosgrove: Yes, indeed. For us, it is probably worth breaking the challenges down into two components. Under the terms of its licence Channel 4 is required to source in this current year 35% of its overall output outside of the M25 region, so therefore outside London. That is about £115 million of spend. Within that, I think a relatively small amount is actually spent in Northern Ireland which is something that (a) we are conscious of and (b) we have been seeking to address. Six weeks ago we announced a special Northern Ireland Commissioning Task Team which I lead on with the Head of Channel 4, Julian Bellamy. However, the curious thing about Northern Ireland is that it has quite significant talent, world class talent. One of the only Oscars ever won in Northern Ireland was last year with Channel 4's Hunger. The issue for us is not always necessarily to do with the specificity of talent, but rather if you are looking for volume supply, in other words for shows that return and meet the quantitative measures that you have identified, that is a much harder challenge and one that we are genuinely engaged with.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Q7 Mrs Robinson: Some of my questioning has been addressed but I would put the caveat that I am disappointed about the proportion, I think it is very low. I just wonder how realistic it is among you gentlemen to increase production and representation of Northern Ireland in your networks. Following on from that, is there a sufficient talent base for TV production in Northern Ireland? I know you have just given us an accolade there of how good ---

Mr Cosgrove: Although I would like to come back to that because for us it is one of the keys to unlocking the challenge. I think we could do with more companies in Northern Ireland, but that is a separate matter.

Mr Johnston: As I said, I agree that historically the levels have been too low in Northern Ireland. If you talk to some of the companies involved people would still think progress painfully slow, and TV tends to be like that a bit, that is the nature of commissioning and the scale of budgets involved. I would say we are beginning to see quite dramatic progress this year. So far, in the projects that have been delivered there has been no question about the quality and, in fact, those two dramas were some of the best quality dramas we have seen this year. If you are proactive and positive about it, it is possible to develop and deliver those kinds of numbers we are talking about to get it to the 3%. We do need to do that carefully to make sure that we deliver well and that helps everybody if the projects that are commissioned are deemed to be a success; everybody shares in that success. We have tried to ameliorate some of the risks that you are alluding to by having a strategy of a wider range of genres to look at so that there are more opportunities across a range of different programming outlets than historically has been the case in Northern Ireland. As Stuart said, there are undoubtedly some great strengths and in drama there is a tradition of some very powerful pieces of drama and writing. One of the reasons we are building in current affairs as part of our network delivery from the in-house team is because of the historic strength of current affairs in general from Northern Ireland from across the broadcasters. We have to be very conscious and careful about the stability of the sector, if you like, and that we create something sustainable here. Just picking up on Stuart's last point, there are four companies who have now set up a base in Northern Ireland as well. Personally, I would not be very supportive, we need to be very careful about massive companies coming in and drowning everybody else, if you like. That would not really help us with what we are trying to achieve here on economic and cultural benefits particularly. The new companies which have established are very good and interesting models. For example, Kudos, one of the best drama companies in the UK, has formed a partnership with a local company, Generator. They made Occupation and had a great experience in doing so and are now looking for new projects with local writers, et cetera, to build on that. If you can do it in steps like that which make sense and which people buy into and support that is better than a crude approach to it.

Mr Cosgrove: If you were to analyse it this would be broadly true of all of the nations and regions and cities outside of London, that the challenges you face in terms of bringing up the level of your performance are actually two-fold. One is to do with the scale and size of production and, therefore, the amount of money that is invested in it. Television generally is on a journey of scaling up. Shows tend to be bigger, grander, more live, more complex, more online, so as shows grow in size you need companies that can deal with that kind of scale. The second element is returnability. Shows that return and return and return obviously bring more economic value than one-off programmes. In lots of these finding the right supply base for those types of challenges is difficult even in London but certainly difficult in the other cities, including Belfast. My real instinct here is that there are a number of already existing extremely strong companies in Northern Ireland, companies like Double-Band, Waddell Media, whatever, who historically have produced for all of the broadcasters on the channel. Green Inc Productions would be another. These are people who are working in the Republic, in London, in the States, so there is no question about their ability and quality to do it, but often it is the case when companies are working on major projects it becomes much harder for them to scale up to do another big one as well. There are challenges of size and they are ones that the sector is aware of.

Q8 Chairman: Mr Wilson, would you like to add to that?

Mr Wilson: I think what we want is a strong and sustainable independent production sector for Northern Ireland. In UTV the way to do that is to work closely with them at grass roots level, to deliver programming for local television, to learn the core skills and hopefully pass those programme makers on to network production which is more likely to be BBC or Channel 4 than ITV at this moment in time. UTV is working very successfully in doing that. This year we have worked with about 15 or 16 companies and we are giving an opportunity for their first broadcast items and it looks good on their corporate CV, if you like. We have had faith, we have invested the time and energy on what are often very low budget programmes but it gives them an experience of professional television and a lot of these are people who have come out of a corporate environment or certainly on two of the programmes we are showing next week they have come straight from education. We have given them a taste of the real world and are passing them up the line. In terms of what influence can we have, I would say the figures I have given to you are probably the best ambassadors in Northern Ireland and we put the most work in to try to deliver greater network content from Northern Ireland, but it is a big door to knock on and I think we all accept that.

Q9 Mrs Robinson: I take it that was a yes, we have a sufficient talent base in Northern Ireland, but I would be biased and think there is. Could I just ask two other questions? Are targets and quotas the best method for ensuring Northern Ireland receives a fair deal in terms of viewer choice and commissions? If not, how do you think plurality and fair distribution of commissions can be guaranteed?

Mr Wilson: I do not know anybody who turns on the television to watch quotas and targets, they turn on the television to watch quality programming. What we need to do is to encourage good ideas, develop them at a local level and pass them on. If you look at some of the formats that we are working with, UTV delivers the two most popular regional programmes on the ITV network, Lesser Spotted Ulster and Ultimate Ulster. Neither of those programmes came from quotas and targets, they came from great ideas. Northern Ireland has those and greater access to commissioning editors rather than quotas and targets is required.

Mr Johnston: Clearly even though targets and quotas are a blunt instrument they can sometimes have unfortunate side-effects. We have taken the approach in this last year of setting some strong targets because sometimes very complex and big commissioning systems, like in network television, require a degree of focus and proactivity which may not naturally happen otherwise. What you hope, of course, is once you have done that for a while over time it becomes more naturally competitive based. The other thing to be clear about is even in setting targets and establishing these plans, it is still incumbent on the programme makers to deliver good ideas that subsequently work for the audience. That is ultimately the measure.

Mr Cosgrove: I would not disagree with any of that. Possibly it is also a proven fact that certainly in Channel 4 when our targets were first established and, therefore, the directorate I look after was established, we moved from an economic shift from 60 million of activity outside of London and we are now 120 million. Clearly there has been a significant shift away from London towards the nations and regions. We have that blunt instrument purpose that can be useful but once you get down to the finer detail, if you like the heart surgery of work, targets can be too blunt. It is often the case when you are dealing with real talent issues that if someone, for example, is a significant film maker or writing talent and they choose to relocate themselves to another region then to some extent the money can follow the talent and it is not always the case that you can deliver equality across all the different regional centres of the UK. If you take one example in the north-west of England, the Manchester region, where Channel 4 historically has been very strong, partly to do with the success of Brookside in the 1980s and 1990s, our biggest returning soap, Hollyoaks, is in that region and studio for that reason. It is by some way one of our biggest spending shows outside of London. It is in Manchester, not in Newcastle, not in Belfast, not in Glasgow. Sometimes that is a matter of fact rather than something that we can directly affect ourselves.

Q10 Mrs Robinson: What effect would basing programming commissioners in Northern Ireland have, and what would be the problem with doing so?

Mr Johnston: Undoubtedly what you are putting your finger on is that commissioning decisions drive everything else, there is no doubt about that. Having commissioners aware of the talent base and opportunities is very important. What we have chosen to do in the new plan is we have appointed some new commissioning executives, one of whom who is in factual for the independent sector is dedicated to the independent sector here. We have got two others in other areas shared with Scotland. The implication of that was somebody who was physically here more often to engage with companies to create that communication flow, but they are not the final commissioner. Any commissioner who is sited anywhere in the UK has to commission for the whole UK on the basis of it being network production. There are ways and means to do it differently.

Chairman: Do either of you gentlemen have anything to add? Thank you. At this point, could I give the apologies of the two other Members from Northern Ireland. Lady Hermon is attending the funeral of a close family friend and will be with us this afternoon. Dr Alastair McDonnell is declaring his candidature for the leadership of his party.

Mrs Robinson: You will be covering the story!

Chairman: He hopes to be here this afternoon.

Q11 Rosie Cooper: Notwithstanding that Hollyoaks and Brookside were based in Liverpool and not Manchester, coming back to Northern Ireland there is a great view that Northern Ireland is hardly visible in the UK on TV screens. I would like to ask you how your programming portrays Northern Ireland, how you gauge that portrayal and in terms of production and portrayal is the regulation and monitoring of that too light touch or not tough enough?

Mr Cosgrove: Is this for Channel 4?

Q12 Rosie Cooper: Right across the piece.

Mr Cosgrove: I think portrayal is an infinitely more complex issue than targets, to be honest, because we get into then very difficult challenges about how nations or regions consider their history, their culture and the dynamic within them. Again, bouncing back off the ropes, the reason I used Manchester rather than Liverpool was that is the way in which Ofcom measures as the north-west.

Q13 Rosie Cooper: Absolutely, but you could not have a native Scouser allow that one go!

Mr Cosgrove: Absolutely, I accept your point and it is well taken. If you take another show from that area, Shameless, which has been another huge success for Channel 4, we went through quite a difficult period of time with the local community and, indeed, the local MP who did not recognise the portrayal in that series as being an accurate portrayal of that region. It was the fact that it was representing a kind of robust English underclass in ways that were not necessarily the local MP's first thought of their constituents. In the process of doing that it raised the question about whose portrayal, and for us the issue is the portrayal of creative talented individuals. When Steve McQueen makes Hunger we do not expect that it will necessarily always be popular with every single MP in Northern Ireland because it is dealing with the subject matter in a unique and innovative way that by its nature is already divisive within the culture. You have to be really careful that the portrayal is not taken away from the eye of the creative entrepreneur and placed into the territory of the political classes, which I think would lead to an area of creative box-ticking that I do not think would work.

Mr Johnston: Portrayal is a very complicated issue and there are many layers to it in terms of defining it. On your opening statement that people would feel Northern Ireland had not been portrayed as well across the UK, I think probably people would feel there has been too much portrayal of The Troubles, that there was an over-dominance of that being the representation of Northern Ireland. The BBC Trust did a major study a year or two ago about how UK network news portrays the whole of the UK and the conclusion was not well enough and there were a number of initiatives that emerged. Certainly the recent Interim Report concluded there had been more portrayal, not necessarily just more portrayal of economic and health and other issues, from Northern Ireland to the whole UK audience, so there is a process that is improving that. Where network production can be of great benefit to people here is when it is set here, physically filmed here is advantageous too, there are economic benefits and, indeed, some cultural benefits. When it is about topics of this place we tend to think of the more difficult areas, but things like Coast on BBC2 coming to Northern Ireland showcasing the environment and the place of Northern Ireland is something we get positive feedback about. As part of our network supply plan that we are working on, as I said, trying to find projects that can do that job is an important objective. It is a very difficult area in which to set crude targets because you are very much into the mix of the commissioning process of what would be a valuable topic to do, what is the right UK-wide version of the story, if you like, how do you encourage that, and that requires confident programme makers in Northern Ireland who have been supported through the process coming up with those ideas and then commissioners having the faith to commission those. Certainly all the evidence I have ever seen is although people have often said there is not an appetite for this, I think there is a big appetite across the whole UK for the whole UK to understand the full UK. There is lots of research that suggests that.

Mr Wilson: I can only comment in relation to the UTV programmes that we commission rather than ITV because they are local programmes for a local market and I would hope our portrayal is fair and offers a diverse view of life in Northern Ireland. That is the key commissioning criteria. Any programme we commission must reflect a modern, diverse Northern Ireland. If it gets over that hurdle then we can look at the content and the other elements of programme production. Yes, although I would agree with my colleagues that portrayal is difficult, our audience can vote on that because they are so close to the programmes that we produce. As I have already said, the audience figures back up the success we have had with making a lot of the programming.

Q14 Chairman: Rosie Cooper did ask you about regulation and you did not seem to touch on that. She did ask that in terms of production and portrayal is the regulation and monitoring of quotas sufficiently light touch. Would you like to briefly touch on that?

Mr Wilson: In terms of the local programming we annually return to what we call the spend and the volume of programming and we have the greatest programme quota of any of the ITV regions and many times we call it a floor rather than a ceiling and exceed that quota every year. With current affairs this year we are producing 50% more current affairs than our Ofcom licence says that we need to as a bare minimum. We would like to see more flexibility in how we deliver our local programming, but in terms of the regulation of that programming I think it is fair.

Mr Johnston: It is an important topic to continue to monitor and debate. The example I quoted of the BBC Trust review of network news provision of the BBC across the UK is an example of doing that kind of monitoring. It was not just about Northern Ireland, obviously Scotland, Wales and other English regions. We decided that we could improve it so an action plan followed that. Whether it needs very restrictive targets and that kind of thing, it is quite difficult to do that in this territory through the commissioning process, but an alertness to the importance of it and making sure we make progress on it is important.

Mr Cosgrove: We are measured monthly and through an annual transmission model which measures both volume and value of the commissions and that would be reported monthly to Ofcom and then aggregated into our annual performance. We also do an annual performance review as well which tends to be able to go into those areas of portrayal that are not necessarily always captured by issues of volume. For example, in Northern Ireland we had a fantastic award-winning episode of The Secret Millionaire where a Northern Ireland millionaire went underground in Dundee and the portrayal was one that portrayed that person and Northern Ireland in a hugely philanthropic way, but it was not made in Northern Ireland and did not count as part of our production volume. We are measured more by volume and amount of programmes rather than the specificity of portrayal per se.

Q15 Chairman: Thank you. Before I bring in Mr Hepburn, could I just ask you a general question. It is often said that good news is no news and watching television as I do, which is not as regularly as most people, it does strike me that there is not sufficient emphasis on the truly unique beauties and qualities of this part of the UK. If I did not come regularly to Northern Ireland I do not think that I would have much idea of this part of the UK, save that it had been that had been torn asunder by The Troubles and was dominated by political factions, et cetera. That is in itself a distorted impression. What could you say to that?

Mr Wilson: While being critical earlier of ITV's commissioning out of Northern Ireland, one of the great successes was a peak time programme called Britain's Favourite View and the former motor racer, Eddie Irvine, chose the view across Strangford Lough and in a very beautifully shot eight minute film we saw the wonders of Strangford Lough.

Q16 Chairman: Eight minutes?

Mr Wilson: At peak time on a Sunday night. That is quite a significant period of time.

Chairman: That rather makes my case.

Q17 Mrs Robinson: It does, but they chose the right place.

Mr Wilson: The viewers across the United Kingdom also appreciated it and it got into the final. I think it was the second most popular view in the United Kingdom. In terms of showing a different side, while ITV does not do a great deal the work that it has done has been very popular.

Q18 Chairman: Perhaps you could do some more.

Mr Wilson: As I said, I am not a commissioner for ITV. I would encourage that.

Q19 Chairman: I really would put it to you that in the rest of the UK there is a profound ignorance of the beauties and positive side of Northern Ireland. I really do feel, as someone who lives in another lovely part of the UK, that if I did not have this job, if I was not a Member of Parliament, I would have very little knowledge of what this part of our Kingdom has to offer. It is quite beautiful and marvellous in so many ways and yet the vast majority of the population of the UK is profoundly ignorant of this. You, gentlemen, in your varying capacities have a duty to address that ignorance, and I hope it is one that you will respond to.

Mr Johnston: I would share that. I absolutely want to see the diversity of Northern Ireland reflected to the UK audience as best as we can. There are some examples of things we are beginning to do that can help. We are now making The One Show, which goes out at seven o'clock on BBC1. Next year we will be producing 40 of the films for that from Northern Ireland. There is a range of topics inevitably but our emphasis is we want to make sure as many as possible of them showcase life here effectively to the UK audience.

Q20 Chairman: Positively.

Mr Johnston: Exactly. By the nature of that programme it is very different. It might be about news but there are other challenges in that it has to be a valid news story obviously. I share the ambition and we are making some progress but there is more we can definitely do.

Mr Cosgrove: I would agree with that and broadly agree with what you were saying, Chairman. I think the emphasis for us would be on the word that Peter used, which was the word "diversity" rather than beauty. Channel 4 is not charged necessarily through its licence, its remit or, indeed, its custom and practice to always be searching for beauty in life.

Q21 Chairman: It might be rather better if it did!

Mr Cosgrove: That is a fair point and there is a lot of beauty on Channel 4. Let me just give you an illustration of what I mean. We are working on a programme just now which is on a really rich and largely unknown success story in Northern Ireland around the local dance music scene, particularly youth culture and hip hop. I know, Chairman, you are not the target audience for this particular programme.

Q22 Chairman: How did you guess!

Mr Cosgrove: I think it is probably Iris who is more inclined in that way! It is the case that it was this young talent who came to us with an idea. They had been filming for four or five years on the streets of Belfast and one of the dance groups in it, who are a Belfast break-dance crew, were the World Champions over two years. They have turned this form of street culture into something that is world class and is actually art, if you like. Working on that is diversity about Northern Ireland. It is not necessarily about scenic beauty but it is about creative and cultural beauty in ways that we have to respond to. It is for that audience and for our audience.

Chairman: It is now strictly come Hepburn!

Q23 Mr Hepburn: Just on the digital switchover, I wonder how much of a risk would digital switchover be for commercial Public Service Broadcasting in the region? Specifically, obviously digital switchover will mean an increase in the number of channels and pressure on the amount of advertising, et cetera. What sort of threat is it? Do you see the implementation of a regional fund as some way of getting round it?

Mr Wilson: In terms of the extra channels that the digital future may offer, Northern Ireland has been unique in the United Kingdom in that for many years there has already been overspill on the RTÉ channels, TV3 or the Irish Language channel. If you like, we have been in a multi-channel world a lot longer than the rest of the United Kingdom. We are also now at a point where, by your definition of quality, Chairman, Northern Ireland is about on par with the rest of the United Kingdom and my personal view is we will reach a digital plateau where as soon as we get to DSO things will stabilise. One of the things that will help us stabilise is volume of high quality public service content and the places that the audience have always found that will be the places that they find it in the future, although we may be offering it on different platforms, both television and online platforms or on-demand. In terms of commercial challenges, yes, it does increase commercial challenges but they are challenges that we are used to living with and we are in a place where we are strong enough and we offer advertisers a platform that is popular enough to maintain their spend with us. In terms of the fund, the UTV licence runs out in 2014 and our position is, and will remain, we believe this year and next year will be the toughest years in the current economic cycle but we believe that we can maintain our current news in terms of quality and volume. In fact, last year we increased our volume of news. Our news requirements in terms of the Ofcom licence went down but we launched our own news at 10.30 in the evening which has proved both popular in audience terms but opinion formers and commentators have also made very positive comments about the content and the additional choice that programme offers. That programme is here to stay and will be here, as the best forecast I can make, until 2014. Northern Ireland does not need a pilot for news. UTV is the most watched regional news in the United Kingdom and we are committed to it. Where UTV would absolutely encourage public funding is in a wider non-news fund which would allow us to expand programmes such as Lesser Spotted Ulster and Ultimate Ulster, and other broadcasters would have access to it as well. We hope at the grass roots that would encourage independent producers to come up with ideas that at the moment might not get on-air. I would hope that the network broadcasters could avail themselves of it with some more network representation. If we are talking about public funding let us end the debate on news: it is not needed in Northern Ireland, UTV is utterly committed and it is high quality well-watched news. In terms of non-news we would actively encourage a fund and believe it would benefit the audience, the broadcasters and the independent production sector.

Mr Johnston: Very briefly, because it is less appropriate for me to comment given the nature of the question, what I would say is I think the audience in Northern Ireland has been well-served by plurality in the past and possibly more so than many other parts of the UK due to the strength of UTV, as Michael has said, and other broadcasters here too. Whatever happens, there are tough financial circumstances that we are all facing in different ways, but particularly commercial broadcasters, as you said, with the ad revenue issue. It is important that we protect and maintain that. Is a fund outside of the news a good idea? Again, I would want to know a lot more about how it was funded and the structure element, how it would operate and all of that. What I can agree with is the principle of the best range of local programmes for local audiences because there is the evidence there that they are popular with the audience here, so there is a demand. We should not neglect what we already do well and we should make sure we protect and enhance that wherever possible.

Mr Cosgrove: I broadly agree with all of those remarks. Michael Wilson's remarks about the plurality of a fund that is non-news would be something that Channel 4 would welcome. The direction of travel of our new remit that has been shaped as part of the process of Digital Britain and the Digital Economy Bill is clearly that Channel 4, whilst maximising commercial revenues on its main channel, can also deliver its public purposes on the most apposite and suitable platform, whether that is online, on E4, Channel 4 or whatever. It is really important to understand that within the portfolio world that we live in where there are so many new channels and often what happens is the audience is disaggregated into their different age groups or time availability. For example, E4, our entertainment channel, is the best channel in Britain for reaching young people and clearly if it is the best channel in Britain for reaching young people then it has a role to play in creativity and diversity. We would welcome that, but they are tough times.

Q24 Mr Hepburn: Can I go to the ITV/BBC partnership. Whilst, on the one hand, it does seem eminently sensible to pool resources on, say, news programmes, on the other hand does it not suggest an intent to put less and less money in because you pool the resources and thereby take away an element of plurality of service?

Mr Wilson: To answer your question it might be useful to explain where partnership is in other parts of the United Kingdom. BBC and ITV in England and Wales discussed plurality and came to heads of agreement and then ITV believed there was not a great enough transfer of value from the deal and as far as I am aware there is no partnership in England and Wales between the two organisations working at a practical level. In Scotland, the BBC and Scottish have heads of agreement and it is early days to see where the partnership is. Peter and I have spoken on more than one occasion about a partnership on a number of levels. We have agreed to move forward in terms of partnership in training and the use of operational resources. Meetings have yet to take place with department heads to push this forward but we believe there is a partnership that can benefit both our organisations and the audience. To return to your question and talk about news content, I am almost 20 years a journalist and I have very strong views on plurality. The moment you start to use somebody else's footage that plurality is eroded and while I am not saying that at some point in the future we may have formal discussions about sharing news content, the strength of UTV and the BBC at the moment means that sort of partnership is not something that is necessarily right now in Northern Ireland.

Mr Johnston: I absolutely agree with the way Michael has summarised the position. What I would say is undoubtedly elsewhere there are other challenges and issues and the BBC has made its partnership offer in good faith as a way to help maintain plurality. It would be wrong for that to lead to a diminution as you have described it, so in discussions about that I would have thought that would need to be the starting point really. As Michael suggested, historically we have got into some degree of sharing physical and technical resources, training, and there is more we can do there for the whole industry, not just our two organisations but others in it and beyond it. There are other important areas to talk about where, as Michael described earlier in response to that, there is a very different position in Northern Ireland with news provision and cost-wise from elsewhere so we have a different approach as a result.

Mr Cosgrove: By its nature Channel 4 is a partnership organisation. The biggest partnership we have is actually with the independent production sector who supply all of our programmes and also have the principal ownership of rights within those programmes outside of the UK transmission market. That is the fundamental partnership that we have. ITN currently produce Channel 4 News and, indeed, there is also a news independence fund embedded within that contract which they have access to as well. The second key partnership that we have been engaged in has been in dialogue with BBC Worldwide as part of a strategic partnership and that dialogue remains ongoing and has some significant potential. Last week we announced a further partnership with YouTube to take a lot of our programmes into the global net space where we derive not only an income from advertising but a greater reach for some of UK public service programming via the web, IPTB or whatever. Locally, here in Northern Ireland we have a very strong ongoing partnership with the screen agency and Northern Ireland Screen and Richard Williams and his team who have worked with us on some of our biggest shows: Hunger the shown I mentioned earlier that won the Oscar, a big Mo Mowlam drama that we have got coming up later this year in our schedule and a very big project next year that we will be announcing this side of Christmas. We enjoy really strong partnerships with the local screen agency and I think they are one of the best in Britain in terms of finding ways of partnering broadcasters where there is shared value. Usually for us it is to do with hiring talent development or investing in new talent or whatever.

Q25 David Simpson: You are very welcome, gentlemen. Whilst this morning we have been dealing with the restructuring and partnerships and the future of broadcasting, you will know that in Northern Ireland things are a bit more controversial than on the mainland. Maybe some of my questions will be pointed towards Peter. When it comes to the broadcasting of the Irish language, where do you see the future of broadcasting for Ulster Scots in this day of equality? Where do you see that moving?

Mr Johnston: A couple of years ago we looked at all of these issues in the round. We did a big piece of audience research and developed a strategy for how to approach the different, I would argue, issues of providing content of interest in Ulster Scots and Irish. What we concluded from that research was we have committed to increase resources for both but it takes on different forms in the two areas based on the volume of research we got and on an assessment of the supply base. We are in the process of increasing what we do for Ulster Scots through radio and creating a new online presence and making the archive more available where that is there. What we found in terms of people with an interest in Ulster Scots from that research was there was a definite and distinct appetite for programming of cultural relevance to people in those communities. There was less of a distinct and separate demand for language programming per se on television. From that research, on the Irish language side there was an appetite for further Irish language television output. We are in the process of investing more in both areas but we are doing it on the basis of that body of research in terms of what are the right media, what are the right ways of defining it in terms of what manifests itself on television, radio and online. That is one of the issues with this whole debate, of course, that it manifests itself in lots of different ways. We want to ensure that those cultural and linguistic traditions are reflected appropriately across those media. There are different stages of development, supply and all the rest of it that come into play in both cases and we are taking those into consideration and have increased that investment as a result. The simple figures based on that plan are approximately a million spent on Irish and about 400,000 on Ulster Scots across the three media. That is based on the assessment of demand need from the audience. Inevitably, because it is quite a political/culturally area, what we tried to do was some unique research to plan what we did in response to the demand that we got from the audiences in the different interest areas, including the broad general audience as well in Northern Ireland. The truth of the matter is when Ofcom and others have done research people will often point to indigenous language provision being much lower in Northern Ireland than it is in Scotland and Wales. There are a host of historical and other reasons for that that we can all imagine. The truth is we have a broad Northern Ireland-wide audience who were surveyed on this matter and there was less of a priority placed on that provision, but undoubtedly we recognise there are important groups within Northern Ireland who have a passion and an interest in both cases so we have tried to design our portfolio based on that.

Mr Cosgrove: As you pointed out, it is not the principal remit area of Channel 4, but since Ulster Scots is the only language that I have any fluency in I would like to make one comment. I think it is an area of media that is uniquely well-suited for the new forms of digital and participative media, particularly online. We are working on a project just now with a young company who have got an innovation called Wordia which is actually a global dictionary of words, new words or whatever. We are talking to them about how it can be specifically used in an Ulster Scots context. It is user generated so you can put films up there that you make or whatever. It is very purposeful. If I was to take a word like "stoor", a thin film of dust, something like that is actually used philologically in Scotland and Norway, and you can trace the philology of a language as well as its use in the current times. In that case, in the Wordia project we are working on it shows you that making a half hour documentary is of less value than building a platform within which a language can be cultivated, better understood and better analysed. We will probably do it within digital reader context.

Mr Wilson: UTV, as you are aware, is 100% English language output. We try across our output to reflect all the cultures and diversity within Northern Ireland and recently we were the broadcast sponsor of the Belfast Mela and for the first time we have been in discussion with the Ulster Scots Agency and the Irish Language Broadcast Fund about projects for next year because the diversity of portfolio is important as we move forward.

Q26 David Simpson: I think it was Stuart earlier on who talked about the portrayal of Northern Ireland across the whole of the United Kingdom and perception. Peter, you will realise that there is a perception out there in Northern Ireland that the BBC in some ways are very biased when it comes to the Nationalist or Republican side of broadcasting. Rightly or wrongly, that is a bit of a perception inside the Unionist community. A journalist recently spoke to me and the journalist was from the Unionist community and he described the BBC in Belfast in their experience as "the coldest media house for a Unionist journalist" that they ever walked into. "An experience more chilling than a greeting at a Sinn Fein press conference". What would your opinion be of that? Maybe it is not easy to answer.

Mr Johnston: Let me be very clear about this. I have heard that perception portrayed from both sides feeling equally strongly about that, from politicians primarily and some associated interest groups. Over many years we have done a huge amount of audience research and ranged widely in talks, including in that recent survey I mentioned about the Irish language and Ulster Scots, and that is not what the audience believes in the generality. When we do our research we are very careful. A core purpose of ours is impartiality. I have never seen any audience research evidence that that perception is shared more widely in the way it is portrayed to me. There may be occasional pockets or times in doing what we do and undoubtedly for all of us it is difficult in Northern Ireland to cover a broad range of topics and for some representing a particular topic or interest is anathema and for others it is the absolute heart of what they are about. It is not an easy task. For any BBC journalist impartiality is at the core of what they are about. I have to say I have heard that portrayal and you say it is perception. We have done lots of research and I do not see that coming through. In terms of the take-up of the programmes, the popularity of Radio Ulster or television programmes, some will speak for themselves in that regard and in terms of the balance of these programmes it is a very, very good range of balance, including urban and rural as well as the other traditional ways of dividing people up. I cannot comment on the experience of one individual, I have no idea who it was and do not know enough about the motivations or otherwise of the individual or the experience of the individual. Certainly that is not what I want it to be, there is no doubt about that.

Q27 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Could I bring this to a close and ask a couple of general questions. I hope that you will all assent to the proposition that it is your collective and individual duties to do what you can to serve the people of Northern Ireland by giving them as broad and diverse a range of programmes as possible, and at the same time to inform the rest of the United Kingdom of the unique nature of this part of the UK. Would that be a reasonable proposition to make, that that is what you would subscribe to?

Mr Cosgrove: Yes, in all its diversity.

Mr Johnston: Absolutely.

Mr Wilson: Yes.

Q28 Chairman: Thank you very much for that. In that context, do you think the changes that are imminent, and in particular the proposed Independently Funded News Consortia, are going to enable you better to discharge those duties or are they going to make it more difficult for you?

Mr Wilson: That is a very good question. I absolutely agree with the sentiments of the question and in terms of our local programming I think UTV does exactly that. We have concerns about the consortia. I do not think we yet know enough about the mechanism for awarding or the mechanism for bidding to be able to comment fully. We would welcome the Department giving clarity as soon as possible. I know the Digital Economy Bill will be published within the next few weeks and we hope that we will get clarity then or around then. Our number one concern is that when people come to Northern Ireland and watch UTV news from outside Northern Ireland they see the amount of effort, the strength of the journalism, the quality of the coverage for the full half hour at 6.00 and the full half hour at 10.30. In Northern Ireland there is almost not a recognition of how different the service is from both ourselves and the BBC from other parts of the UK. We have hard news for half an hour, we do not get to a feature at eight minutes past six with some pop star coming into the local concert hall and you often see that in regional news in other parts of the United Kingdom. I think there is a great risk that something that is not broken could be damaged. Am I complacent and saying it could not be improved? No, I am not, the potential could be there for improvement, but if you look at Digital Britain that is looking for content delivered on all platforms, and UTV is doing that. We went through a very painful corporate reorganisation last year through voluntary redundancy by one person, we reshaped our news gathering and that news gathering element is online, on radio and on television, and we believe that a lot of the issues of heritage costs that are often talked about in ITV have been done away with. The capital costs of our studios and outside broadcasts disappeared ten or 15 years ago and there is no issue there. While not complacent, we struggle to see how anybody could serve the audience in Northern Ireland better than UTV. Anybody who is taking public money has got to deliver a diverse service and get a significant share of the audience. Small city stations, community stations, while absolutely serving a purpose will not deliver the reach, the audience and the scrutiny that a devolved nation requires.

Q29 Chairman: Thank you very much for that. Before I bring the others in, I am aware that this is your 50^th anniversary and you will be celebrating it with a series of special programmes next week. Could I congratulate you on your 50 years and thank you for what you have done during that period.

Mr Wilson: Thank you, Chairman, we appreciate that.

Mr Cosgrove: It is probably worth restating that Channel 4 News offers a pan-UK service and traditionally across the years has been devoted to in-depth news and to some extent is perhaps more international in its outlook than many of the other news services. Because Channel 4 News does not opt out of particular nations and regions then it has a very different role to play within the range of news services offered in the UK, so Channel 4 would not be at the forefront of a news consortia bid or whatever. That is not to say that we might not have a role to play within digital media. If you look at the role of regionality, I think a good example I would give would be one from South Wales. I do not think it is the role of Channel 4 News necessarily to represent the affairs of Bridgend and Glamorgan but when 32 young people die over three years of suicide in Bridgend and Glamorgan that is of substantial interest to everybody in the UK and needs to be dealt with in-depth and well, and that is the role that Channel 4 News plays specifically.

Mr Johnston: I absolutely support the continuing plurality of provision in Northern Ireland, the tricky bit is about how best to do that and crucially how to fund it as well. In terms of the models, we do need to be sensitive to the circumstances in Northern Ireland and the strengths that exist and how you develop and protect those. Undoubtedly, we have an independent sector we work with as well, as Stuart has mentioned, which produces just over 35% of our content. Making sure that all of the organisations are healthy in the future is important. Where I would have stronger views on the BBC's position is as how best to fund and continue that. Clearly we need to be careful that we do not simply move money from one place to another and the overall net impact is negative rather than a positive one. We need to ensure that we genuinely increase, improve and protect plurality by whatever model is appropriate.

Chairman: Thank you very much. Thank you for coming and thank you for the evidence you have given. The Committee will want to reflect carefully on what you have said and we shall make our report. I hope there is one thing that would unite us all, and that is we need to have continuing quality broadcasting in Northern Ireland that reflects the special characteristics of Northern Ireland and we need to have quality broadcasting within the United Kingdom that enables the people in the rest of the UK to appreciate the unique significance of Northern Ireland, just as it is important that the people of Northern Ireland should be able to appreciate the significance of the other parts of the UK. Thank you very much indeed.