Cameron's blunder over Ofcom

Philip Stephens in the FT says that David Cameron has made a basic error in promising to abolish Ofcom:

The problem is that in promising to transfer Ofcom’s work to Whitehall so it is more directly accountable to ministers and parliament, Mr Cameron has shown he has no clear idea of what it does.
The central charge seems to be that Ofcom’s views on public service broadcasting have strayed too far into realms better reserved for ministers. As it happens, I think Mr Cameron is mistaken, but the details of the argument are irrelevant beside the fact that broadcasting policy accounts for only about 5 per cent of Ofcom’s workload. Moving it to Whitehall would scarcely mean “that Ofcom, as we know it, will cease to exist”. Some 90 per cent of Ofcom’s remit comprises unglamorous work such as telecommunications regulation, upholding broadcasting standards, allocating spectrum, and, crucially, policing competition. All this can properly be done only at arms length from civil servants and ministers.
Unless Mr Cameron tears up the rules of independent regulation – or breaks up the organisation into the several quangos from which it was originally created – Ofcom will indeed survive in something much like its present form. It is curious that someone who once worked in broadcasting could miss this point.

It's Russell Brand's company, Vanity Projects, which should pay the BBC/Ofcom fine

A couple of days ago I railed against the idea of the licence fee payers stumping up the £150,000 fine for the Ross/Brand affair which the BBC has been asked to pay Ofcom.

I am delighted to see that several MPs, including our own Don Foster, LibDem Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, have called for Jonathan Ross to pay the fine. Foster has said:

This money should come out of Jonathan Ross's salary, so that broadcasting does not suffer as a consequence of this error.

I might add that the Radio Two programme on which the offending calls were made, was produced by a company called Vanity Projects which is partly owned by Russell Brand. As far as I know, that company was paid in full by the BBC for all its Russell Brand radio shows including the offending ones.

Wouldn't it be poetic justice if Vanity Projects stumped up some of the fine? After all, it was because of editorial decisions made (or, indeed, not made) by that company (which were not subsequently overturned by sufficient compliance control actions within the BBC) that led to the fine in the first place.

BBC - time to call off the dogs

Because of all the furore over the DEC Gaza appeal decision, allied with the BBC's customary excellent coverage of itself, the BBC has given the Gaza appeal about 100 times more publicity (albeit tangentially via news broadcasts) than these appeals usually get.

Mark Thomson, the BBC DG, gave a tenable defence of the BBC's decision this morning on Today. He said that due to the contentiousness of the aid situation, it would compromise the BBC's impartiality if they broadcast the appeal. With great passion, I don't agree with his view, but I can understand, it given his position.

The BBC, and Sky (who have also decided not to broadcast the appeal) are in a position not completely shared by ITV, Channel 4 and 5 (who have agreed to air the appeal). The BBC and Sky are international broadcasters. And given the amount of criticism the BBC has already attracted on its Gaza coverage, I can understand their sensitivity.

There comes a point where you have to allow the BBC to make up its own mind.

Otherwise, there is no point in having a BBC.

Are we a nation of hypocrites?

I see that the Jonathan Ross has been suspended, with no pay, for three months and the head of Radio Two has resigned over the Brand/Ross affair. I think that is right, and the BBC Trust's strong statement is welcome. (I don't think Brand's resignation was necessary but he behaved in a very dignified way in offering it - and probably did his long-term career a favour by doing so - he is an off-the-wall comedian not a middle-of-the-roader).

If we stand back and compare this to the Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly "Today" episode, the two controversies are very different.

Andrew Gilligan did a live two-way broadcast from his own home at 6.30am in the morning and went over the line. We know the rest.

On this occasion, the broadcast was actually recorded. It is quite breathtaking to consider this. The BBC brass had time to review it and call Andrew Sachs to ask him if he was all right with it being broadcast. The problem was that they played the recording back to Sachs over a mobile when he was standing by traffic, and he actually said, when asked if he was okay with it being broadcast: "Not really".

So this wasn't a broadcaster error, although Ross and Brand should obviously take their share of the blame. It was a producer error.

And then that begs the question: If you leave a 25 year old producer in charge of Ross and Brand in a studio - what do you expect ? And apparently the producer checked it "upstairs" and was given the OK.

So this whole charade is a question of broadcasting management, primarily. So, I think the Radio Two head's resignation is justified.

But let's reflect on other aspects of this strange affair.

Two people complained on the day the broadcast was made. It was only after exposure on competing media outlets that the complaints started racking up.

How many people who complained thought that Sach's grand-daughter was a teenager in pigtails? Probably a large number, I suspect. Perhaps if they considered the following, some of them wouldn't be quite so outraged:

Georgina Baillie, the grand-daughter, is a 23 year-old whose Bebo page describes her hobbies as "pole dancing and luvv". She appears (below) on the page in skimpy underwear. She is in a dance troupe called the "Satanic Sluts Xtreme". Someone has commented on her page as follows:

A few days ago Georgina Baillie was boasting about being mentioned on the show and not upset at all! There is a link to the clip on the Satanic Sluts myspace page posted by them that say's "Russell Brand gives the Satanic Sluts a mention" so it clearly didn't upset her if she was happy to have links to it.So at the time she was clearly proud of it then and the stuff he was saying to her grandfather didnt bother her at the time for her to post a link to it. She was just glad her dance troupe got a mention.

Indeed, over the last couple of days we read and seen quite a lot of Ms Baillie in the Sun.

This doesn't excuse what Brand and Ross did. But it does explain it a little.

There is some hypocrisy here. Millions watch and listen to Brand and Ross. Like many comedians, they cross the line so much they have chalk dust all over their shoes. So do Graham Norton, Chris Moyles and Paul Merton. So did Chris Evans in his previous incarnation. If any number of clips of all those comedians' shows were to be plastered over the Daily Mail and played on News at Ten, the BBC would be inundated with complaints.

For example, a few months ago Paul Merton said that the Duke of Edinburgh had set fire to the Cutty Sark. If that clip had been splattered all over the place there would have been hordes of complaints. He was, of course, joking.

The point is that the BBC should not sack Jonathan Ross altogether unless there is a complete reassessment of comedy broadcasting in this country and we, as a nation, suddenly decide that we want to be complete hypocrites and ban what we, well er, actually quite like.

Nick Clegg gets lobbed a question about Radio One ban

On PM last night Nick Clegg was lobbed a question about the Radio One ban (later removed) on "A Fairytale of New York". Did he agree with the ban? - Eddie Mair asked. I thought Nick handled the question very well.

He said he did not know the song and that there would have to have good reasons to ban it. "Can I listen to the song and then get back to you?" he asked.

Good answer. Should a party leader have heard of an old Pogues' song which is 20 years old.. so old, in fact, that one of the singers has died and the other was last spotted lying under a table in a Dublin pub? Of course not. And the Radio One ban was daft anyway, as admitted by Andy Parfitt, Radio One controller, who lifted the ban.

I suspect this hoo-hah will guarantee enormous sales for the Pogues disc this Christmas.

Bans always do. Ever heard of Judge Dredd? Not many people have. But he had several big hits simply because Radio One routinely banned his "Big" records ("Big Seven", Big Eight" etc). And the Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen" would never have got to Number One if it hadn't been for Radio One banning it.

Newsnight raised an interesting historic note about bans. "My little stick of Blackpool rock" by George Formby got into hot water with the BBC:

The BBC's Dance Music Policy Committee, who were later to ban Bobby Darin's Mack the Knife and the scandal-hit Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg song Je T'Aime... took great issue with George's Little Stick of Blackpool Rock. Ooo-er!

Presumably Gracie Fields "Biggest Aspidistra in the world" (clearly phallic), "Teddy Bears' picnic" (connotations of forestial orgies) and Chuck Berry's "My ding-a-ling" (in many ways a mickey-take of censorship) fall into a similar bracket.