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The fate of public service broadcasting was transmuted into an existential threat to British culture, politics and prosperity at the RTS Cambridge Convention this week.
“This country is staring down two alternative paths,” said Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy in a keynote to the Royal Television Society. “We can fall apart or we can rise together. We can drift into a future where only some of us can be seen and heard or we can choose to build a society that is inclusive enough to respect - and civilized enough to embrace - different debates and dissent without being destroyed by either.”
Introducing the two day conference, BBC Director General Tim Davie said, “We’ve spent years talking through the angst of digital transition and despite it all this industry continues to be a success story. But now it does feel a little different. A lot seems at stake.”
Davie stressed what he believed to be the importance of the BBC not just to UK GDP but to cultural influence and global soft power.
“What is the place of the UK on the world stage? Are Western democracies able to deliver in the modern world? Can we preserve civilized debate, trusted information, and a secure participative society? How should the UK compete against or partner with US and Chinese media companies and the AI giants who are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on supercomputing power?”
The latter was a nod to Microsoft’s announcement of a $22 billion investment in UK AI, quantum compute and data centres.
Nick Clegg, the former deputy PM and Meta’s former policy chief, was scathing of the deal. Describing the UK as a “vassal state technologically” he said; “We’re exhausted as a country, fearful of the future. How do we resuscitate the spirit which is flagging in the country? Why can't we create the trillion dollar tech company of the future? Why can't we keep our tech entrepreneurs in the UK? That can't just be turned around by governments [and] it’s not going to be done by sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley.”
BBC urges sustained investment
The creative industries have been singled out as one of the key growth driving sectors that the government is prioritising in its industrial strategy. Media and Entertainment contributed £29 billion, or over a quarter of the total creative industries, to the economy in 2024 and PSBs have the potential top contributed nearly £10bn by 2035, provided they invest in “creative capital” according to research presented by Rachel Wolf, Founder & CEO, Public First.
Davie urged for a clear and urgent growth plan. “Without it we will be managing decline,” he said.
“It will require sustained investment from the industry and from PSBs, as well as enlightened strategic thinking on how to enable this from government.
“If I have one message it is we've got to get on with it at speed to make sure we have the right policy and regulatory environment in place quickly to incentivise growth and attract investment.”
The Culture Secretary called on the TV sector to do more to create consensus and chastised broadcasters for failing to do enough to commission regional content.
“Last year [at the RTS Convention] I asked for much greater urgency to diversify TV work and move commissioning out of London to ensure that the whole nation is reflected in the stories told. Can anyone say they’ve done enough? When what constitutes news and culture is determined and commissioned by a group of people who are drawn from just one background and one part of our country. It's a conversation that too often excludes not just some of us, but most of us.”
Acknowledging that PSBs are “fighting with one arm behind its back” and that “regulation has not kept pace with the media revolution” she vowed to “fix those foundations.”
Regulating for PSB prominence on streamers
This included a suggestion that the government would regulate to ensure PSB content was given prominence on online platforms.
“The Media Act [2024] ensures Public Service Media (PSM) has prominence on smart TVs, but we want to go further. We support Ofcom’s recommendation that PSM content should be prominent on major video sharing platforms. If we need to regulate, we will.”
This isn’t just about securing an audience for UK broadcaster content on YouTube or better commercial returns, Nandy said, but to prop up the visibility of journalist-led news.
“We want to empower audiences so they can distinguish between news and misleading or false content. The lines have blurred in recent years which has eroded trust in our media and democracy.”
“It's about ensuring that the standards we expect from our PSM are reflective across the whole of broadcast media. So that polemic isn't presented as fact and people trust what they see. The lines between editorially curated and user generated content, between content providers and content platforms are no longer clear.”
That includes combating AI generated disinformation with Nandy insisting that the government would build a regulatory framework that works for “world-class creatives and publishers” balanced with support for “responsible innovation and growth” in the UK's AI sector.
There was also a nudge toward a future merger of public service broadcasters.
“There are limits to what the government can do to tilt the scales back in favour of PSM without action from all of you,” she said.
“Ofcom have called for more ambitious partnerships amongst PSM providers – and with others in the sector – to support their sustainability and benefit audiences. We agree.”
Warnings over reliance on big tech and social media
Clegg bemoaned the “one-way traffic” of Big Tech acquiring British innovation and talent.
“The moment our companies develop any scale or ambition they have to go to California because we don't have the growth capital here. We don't have the scale of market – because we foolishly took ourselves out of the EU. We’ve defanged ourselves because of adherence to transatlantic relationships.”
In the room were three US media entrepreneurs with investments in UK media who each spoke of the necessity to work with global streamers and social media and of the risks in doing so.
“Fundamentally, tech companies are going to be the enemy,” said Joe Ravitch, co-founder and partner at US investment bank Raine. “You're not just creating content from a UK or European market or selling product into a U.S broadcaster anymore you're delivering it into global platforms. You just need to make sure you're getting paid for it. There are numerous examples of platforms like Roadblox and YouTube which offer an enormous opportunity for monetization.”
Arguing that the “hegemony of long-form entertainment” had passed Kevin Mayer, Founder and Co-CEO, Candle Media said TV networks are being eclipsed by viewing on other platforms.
In a reverse of decades of entrenched media strategy he advised making social media the primary platform and broadcast a secondary outlet.
“I love the idea of taking social media and finding brands, stories, and personalities, and extending that traditional media.”
Candle Media acquired British children’s content produce Moonbug for around £2.3bn in 2021. It has the second biggest YouTube channel in the world with 12 billion views a month yet Mayer also highlighted the vulnerability of relying algorithms that could change overnight.
“Social media have the central ability to control the media experience of the audience. YouTube is hard to deal with at times. Monetization is lumpy. They tweak the algorithm. You have to be careful but the power and global nature of those platforms is undeniable.”
Last year, US venture capital firm Redbird IMI bought super-indie All3Media for £1.15bn. The maker of Traitors and Race Across the World posted a loss of £113.5m for 2024 but CEO Jeff Zucker, insisted, “We're still big believers in great quality scripted unscripted content. That's why we placed such a big bet on All3Media. We believe mixed economy of digital and traditional media will exist for a long while.”
His Bit Tech warning was around the AI. “When we want to invest one of the key things we look at is how our those companies are using AI to their bottom lines. AI will create new things we want to watch and it won't involve a lot of people in its creation.
“AI is going to fundamentally upend everything [but] there's still going to be a need for great movie stars and great TV stars. Maybe not as many, but there will still be a need for them. And let's see if AI can really write with the same emotion that the great screenwriters do. They don’t yet.”
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