This, courtesy of "The Guardian", is from the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture.


At the moment the BBC seems to be the furthest ahead in understanding that our new world demands new eco-systems. Under the vision and leadership of Mark Thompson, the BBC has been the market leader for building new relationships and services with creatives from every sector. Be it the early groundbreaking Backstage initiative for technology engineers, to the new experimental digital service called Space for British artists, to the recent promise of Project Barcelona, Mark has taken the very purposeful view that experimentation and collaboration with those that make the stuff that connects the BBC to its audience is a good thing.

Ours is a business of mutuality - all of the tribes gathered at this festival are reliant on the health of each other: the commercial broadcasters need each other to be in rude health to keep the ad market buoyant; the BBC needs ITV and Sky to thrive so that they can maintain a position of equality rather than dominance; all channels need a vibrant and competitive production sector to ensure they gain the benefit of a strong creative community, one able to make long term investments in talent and ideas, and one honed by diverse experiences and the need to constantly improve; we producers need a diverse and vigorous UK channels market. While the main PSBs have not increased their original spend over the last 2 years, thankfully Sky and many multichannel operators are now contributing hundreds of millions of pounds creating a renaissance for British scripted series.

Let me put it on the record that I am a current supporter of the BBC's universal license fee.

It's what mandates its unique purpose it continues to act as a strategic catalyst to the creative industries of this great country. Though, I do imagine that George Entwistle's biggest challenge may be to demonstrate how efficiently that funding is being spent on actual content on behalf of the license fee payers.


"The Independent" has a report here.