World Service boss on financial pressure, selling ads, transmitting news via brainwaves, and Newsnight's 'brio'
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| Peter Horrocks, the BBC's director of global news. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian |
by John Plunkett - The Guardian,
Peter Horrocks is
almost certainly the only BBC executive
to have broken into song on a Ghanaian TV chatshow. The man in charge of the
World Service had been invited onto "Ghana's equivalent of Jonathan
Ross" when a member of his team let slip his penchant for music ranging
from Jersey Boys tunes to Bach's St Matthew Passion. "They said, will you
sing something, and the band started to strike up," remembers Horrocks.
"I hadn't prepared so I made something up, a spontaneous rappy kind of rhyme about being in Ghana."
From tomorrow, the
World Service will be singing a different tune when the BBC takes on
responsibility for funding the global broadcaster, which was previously
bankrolled by the Foreign Office – a switch born out of the controversial
licence fee settlement in 2010 when it was handed a number of new financial
burdens including the World Service. It is not the only revolution being
overseen by Horrocks, the 54-year-old former editor of Newsnight and
Panorama, as his organisation is about to become the first BBC
licence fee-funded operation to take advertisingand
sponsorship. Both changes have proved contentious.
Former World Service
managing director John Tusa dubbed it a "facile"
rush to commercialism, while the National Union of Journalists said it
was "extremely dangerous and foolish". MPs on the Commons
foreign affairs committee said they "strongly opposed" wider
commercialisation of the World Service. Horrocks counters by saying the
overseas audience is more relaxed about advertising than the UK audience, and
adds that the BBC World News TV channel, which he also oversees as director of
theBBC
World Service Group, has taken advertising for more than 20
years without any loss in credibility.
Extra commercial
revenue is "one of the answers" as the BBC seeks to realise director
general Tony
Hall's ambition of a global reach of 500 million people by 2022, he
argues. The BBC's international news services now have a record worldwide reach
of 256 million (192 million via the World Service in its various forms,
including digital). Horrocks describes commercial income as a
"top-up" accounting for 2.5% (around £7m) of the World Service's
£245m budget. But under current plans it could go as high as 10%, and with
downward pressure on the licence fee, will there inevitably be the expectation
it does more? "Potentially," he says. "Even it gets to 4% or 5%
I think we will be doing quite well. It's not that easy to get advertising in
Somalia."
Selling adverts in
Russia, where audience numbers have soared during the crisis in Ukraine, is
more straightforward. "We're not doing stories because advertisers tell us
to," he says. "We're simply doing journalism the BBC believes in and
also selling advertising to help support a stronger editorial operation. What
could be wrong with that?" Horrocks wants his journalists to "think
about making sure their content and products are really attractive [so] people
want to advertise alongside it". He insists: "It's not about making
content to the specifications of advertisers. Editorial values absolutely come
first."
The switch from
government to licence fee funding prompted fears that if the BBC faces further
downward pressure on budgets – surely inevitable – it will be the World Service that suffers rather
than a domestic channel such as BBC2.
"Of course there may be people who make those arguments," concedes
Horrocks. But he argues that licence fee payers directly benefit from the World
Service's role as an ambassador for the UK and from its journalists who
increasingly contribute to the BBC's domestic output. Plus, it has nearly 2
million listeners in the UK every week (including its overnight broadcasts on
Radio 4).
He also sees
incorporating the World Service as making the case for the licence fee
stronger. "The BBC flies the flag for British content and British
knowledge. Which other British content organisation has penetration in Europe
or Asia or the US? Everything else is American. When the World Service is part
of the BBC offer, I think it will make people stop and think, hang on, if you
want to make the BBC smaller because of a political point of view or a
competitor's point of view, you are also going to damage Britain's global role.
Think twice about doing that."
Unlike his predecessor,
Horrocks does not have a place on the BBC's management board, as the World
Service is represented at the corporation's highest echelons by director of
news and current affairs, former Times editor James
Harding (who beat Horrocks to the top job last year).
MPs were appalled, suggesting a "steady erosion" of the global
broadcaster's influence within the BBC. Does Horrocks think he should be on the
board? Asked three times, he each time declines to say (so I presume yes).
A BBC lifer, Horrocks
was previously its head of TV news and set up its multimedia operation, now the
centrepiece of New Broadcasting House. He also oversaw Panorama's Jimmy Savile
investigation (and, coincidentally, its Hutton programme a
decade earlier). It caused huge embarrassment for senior BBC management
including Horrocks's then boss, Helen
Boaden, by examining why Newsnight dropped its Savile report.
Horrocks and Boaden,
now director of BBC radio, are said not to get along. "I don't want to
talk about individuals, it's not appropriate," says Horrocks. He told the
Pollard inquiry that he felt "embarrassed" that the Newsnight report
did not air. "I said to the [Panorama] team in both the Hutton and Savile
case, we just do our job, we look into it and tell it as it is without fear or
favour," he says. "I pulled things out of the [Savile] programme that
I felt went too far in terms of criticism of the BBC because they weren't
substantiated. But where we had criticisms that were evidenced, we put those
in."
Post-crisis, he thinks Newsnight, under newish editor Ian Katz,
the former Guardian deputy editor, has got "real brio. It
sometimes falls flat on its face, that's fine. There are some daft things in
there but some incredibly intellectually breathtaking things as well. He is
breaking stories and getting noticed, just exactly the kind of Newsnight I
tried to lead."
Colleagues
characterise Horrocks as "intense, deadly serious, absolute quality, a
proper journalist" and "one of the awkward squad … he never really
played the BBC game". Horrocks responds: "I don't go looking for
arguments either." After government cuts to the World Service's budget
three years ago which cost 550 jobs, Horrocks will reverse that tide this year
with £8m of investment helping to create 130 roles, many in TV and digital including a global version of Radio 1's
Newsbeat. The launch of a new North Korea service is "still
under consideration", with Horrocks "open-minded" but cautious
about the practical issues surrounding reception, among others. A further £15m
of savings will be needed in the following two years, likely to cost around 100
jobs and further cuts in shortwave transmissions. Its current annual spend of
£245m is guaranteed until the end of the licence fee period but Horrocks wants
it to go up with inflation.
The prospect of the
decriminalisation of the licence fee, given cross party support by MPs last
week, could mean further financial pressure. "We can all understand why
the strength of political concern has grown so quickly about people being sent
to jail [for non-payment, up to 70 people a year]," says Horrocks.
"Small numbers but still significant for not paying for a cultural
product, that's a mismatch we can all understand. It's interesting that
parliament, having expressed that concern, said it needs to be thought about
really carefully." The BBC has said any more could cost it up to £200m a
year.
Question Time
presenter David Dimbleby and Horrocks's former colleague Roger Mosey have both
suggested the corporation should be cut back. "Those are their
views," says Horrocks. "When I leave the BBC, whenever that might be,
I intend to be the sort of person who will be supporting the BBC."
In an internal BBC
publication sketching what BBC News might look like 20 years hence, Horrocks
suggested the possibility of reporters "filing to audiences via
brainwaves". If he's not 100% serious, neither is it a joke. "The
technology for that obviously isn't quite here yet, but you can control
prosthetic limbs through brainwaves," he reasons. "I think it will be
possible for thoughts to be published or transmitted by brainwaves. What hasn't
happened, and is probably still a long way off, is people being able to
receive. I characterise this as Robert Peston or Nick Robinson in your head,
and not everyone felt completely comfortable with that idea."
Curriculum vitae
Age 54
Education King's College School, Wimbledon;
Christ's College, Cambridge (history)
Career 1981 BBC news trainee,
working for Newsnight, Breakfast Time and Panorama, becoming deputy editor 1992 editor
BBC election night programme, editor BBC2's Public Eye 1994 launches
Here and Now, BBC1, editor Newsnight 1997 editor, Panorama,
and edits election night2000 head of current affairs 2005 head
of TV news 2007 head of multimedia newsroom 2009 director,
World Service 2010 director BBC global news, now renamed World
Service Group
Source: theguardian.com
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