Guy Dampier is a British writer and researcher.
The Government confirmed this year that it won’t sell off Channel 4, despite having previously said they would.
This is only the latest twist in the seemingly endless saga of the Conservatives and their confusion over what to do with public sector broadcasting.
In principle, many Tories are free marketeers, and therefore inherently oppose the statist nature of the BBC and the compulsion of the license fee.
Yet others are more emotionally-driven, and are attached to the idea of a national broadcaster, especially one with a story which interlinks with the mythic view of the Second World War. This group tend to be especially defensive of the unimpressive BBC World Service, despite never using it, because it is connected in their minds with the idea of the BBC as a beacon of freedom.
Channel 4 is a more curious beast, being publicly-owned but run for profit. This doesn’t appeal to free marketeers, and has none of the emotional attachment of the BBC to their counterparts, having been obviously left-wing since its founding.
(Although focusing on the bias of Channel 4 News obscures that most of its programming consists of (repeat) cooking and property shows.)
Everyone, however, seems to agree that British TV isn’t doing well. When HBO and others first created so-called prestige TV, there was a wave of introspection as to why Britain couldn’t match it. The success of Scandi Noir then showed that Britain was not alone in punching above its weight culturally, even if the genre has faded as the aesthetic novelty wore off.
Finally, streaming services have emerged and out-competed terrestrial stations, with increasing numbers of millennials not even owning a television – although even they face being outflanked by Generation Z which prefers YouTube and Twitch.
Despite this, very little has changed since. British TV audiences remain middle-aged, and any increases in technical quality are outmatched by American streamers like Paramount and Disney, who can outspend even Netflix.
To give some idea of the disparity, under £700 million was spent on high-end TV in Britain last year, while Amazon is spending $1 billion on just one series: Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Thus British producers face a very real worry that their audience will die off, while younger generations go elsewhere.
So what is Britain to do? Well, the UK does have an excellent technical base (underpinned by tax breaks) which attract many foreign production companies. The Government also has a surprisingly large amount of control over the creative industries, with varying levels of influence over the BBC, Channel 4, and the many film funds.
However, Conservatives have failed to develop a strategy that uses these levers, instead threatening the BBC or Channel 4 with funding cuts or privatisation amidst stale talk about the possibility of a British Netflix.
While this appeals to free marketeers, it misunderstands the industry. The streaming giants are largely loss-makers, funded generously because whoever does end up dominating the market will make a lot of money.
If a privatised Channel 4 tried this, they’d struggle to raise the capital. Instead it’s more likely they’d be bought by a US company looking to save money by merging their backroom operations in Britain.
Labour have announced a new commission to look at the BBC but it’s telling that its remit is focused on BBC independence. It will likely try to insulate the BBC further from government control – which will only doom it in the long term as the sclerotic BBC leadership are clearly incapable of meaningful reform.
Only one of the questions the commission will examine is focused on performance, and that is nebulously about “digital”, so will likely mean even more outdated Netflix comparisons.
The Government should therefore look east, towards South Korea. Although Squid Game on Netflix was their breakout hit in the West, the country’s dramas are globally popular, to the extent that when a South Korean president visited Mexico in 2005 he was confronted with a crowd of locals demanding South Korean TV stars visit them.
(If you want to get a handle on how glossy they now are, I’d recommend trying Hyena, Inspector Koo, The Glory, or My Country.)
It’s no hyperbole to say that South Korean film and TV is now both better-made and globally more successful than its British equivalents – this despite the relative obscurity of Korean history and culture. They achieved all this in only three decades.
How? By applying an industrial strategy to the creative industries from the 1990s onwards.
This was rooted in the same development economics which took South Korea from being a country poorer than most of Sub-Saharan Africa in 1953 to one of the most sophisticated in the world. The government subsidised the industries needed to create an industrial base and skilled workforce.
To get around the inefficiencies implicit in subsidies, they funded a range of firms, so that they could direct money to the successful and strip it from the unsuccessful. They focused on export discipline too, reasoning that any firm which couldn’t sell overseas wasn’t worth funding.
When it came to the creative industries they did much the same, building a strong creative base, encouraging competition, and subsidising offering programmes to foreign countries at cheap prices so they could get a foot in the market, and raise prices to market levels once they had an audience.
Early films like Shiri, JSA, and Musa deliberately focused on genres with wide global appeal such as action and historical adventure; you didn’t need to know much about Korea to enjoy them. Television often adapted popular Japanese manga and focused on longform soaps, which were cost effective and popular.
Don’t think that means shrieking telenovelas though; many of the most popular are the so-called chaebol dramas, about the power dynamics of Korea’s leading family-run companies. It’s as if Britain was gripped by dramas about thinly disguised versions of James Dyson.
In contrast, the British creative industry is often artisanal, with a romantic attachment to the idea of the creative process.
It is also markedly insular, with commissions more likely to be focused on winning admiration at the dinner party than dominating the global market; most British films and TV shows have commercially unappealing concepts.
If Britain truly wants to be a soft-power success, then the Government should be more interventionist and more capitalist, subsidising more productions while fostering competition – all driven by a focus on achieving overseas success.
Like South Korea, rather than competing with streamers when we lack the finances, we should be focused on providing them with programmes that the world wants to watch.
Guy Dampier is a British writer and researcher.
The Government confirmed this year that it won’t sell off Channel 4, despite having previously said they would.
This is only the latest twist in the seemingly endless saga of the Conservatives and their confusion over what to do with public sector broadcasting.
In principle, many Tories are free marketeers, and therefore inherently oppose the statist nature of the BBC and the compulsion of the license fee.
Yet others are more emotionally-driven, and are attached to the idea of a national broadcaster, especially one with a story which interlinks with the mythic view of the Second World War. This group tend to be especially defensive of the unimpressive BBC World Service, despite never using it, because it is connected in their minds with the idea of the BBC as a beacon of freedom.
Channel 4 is a more curious beast, being publicly-owned but run for profit. This doesn’t appeal to free marketeers, and has none of the emotional attachment of the BBC to their counterparts, having been obviously left-wing since its founding.
(Although focusing on the bias of Channel 4 News obscures that most of its programming consists of (repeat) cooking and property shows.)
Everyone, however, seems to agree that British TV isn’t doing well. When HBO and others first created so-called prestige TV, there was a wave of introspection as to why Britain couldn’t match it. The success of Scandi Noir then showed that Britain was not alone in punching above its weight culturally, even if the genre has faded as the aesthetic novelty wore off.
Finally, streaming services have emerged and out-competed terrestrial stations, with increasing numbers of millennials not even owning a television – although even they face being outflanked by Generation Z which prefers YouTube and Twitch.
Despite this, very little has changed since. British TV audiences remain middle-aged, and any increases in technical quality are outmatched by American streamers like Paramount and Disney, who can outspend even Netflix.
To give some idea of the disparity, under £700 million was spent on high-end TV in Britain last year, while Amazon is spending $1 billion on just one series: Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Thus British producers face a very real worry that their audience will die off, while younger generations go elsewhere.
So what is Britain to do? Well, the UK does have an excellent technical base (underpinned by tax breaks) which attract many foreign production companies. The Government also has a surprisingly large amount of control over the creative industries, with varying levels of influence over the BBC, Channel 4, and the many film funds.
However, Conservatives have failed to develop a strategy that uses these levers, instead threatening the BBC or Channel 4 with funding cuts or privatisation amidst stale talk about the possibility of a British Netflix.
While this appeals to free marketeers, it misunderstands the industry. The streaming giants are largely loss-makers, funded generously because whoever does end up dominating the market will make a lot of money.
If a privatised Channel 4 tried this, they’d struggle to raise the capital. Instead it’s more likely they’d be bought by a US company looking to save money by merging their backroom operations in Britain.
Labour have announced a new commission to look at the BBC but it’s telling that its remit is focused on BBC independence. It will likely try to insulate the BBC further from government control – which will only doom it in the long term as the sclerotic BBC leadership are clearly incapable of meaningful reform.
Only one of the questions the commission will examine is focused on performance, and that is nebulously about “digital”, so will likely mean even more outdated Netflix comparisons.
The Government should therefore look east, towards South Korea. Although Squid Game on Netflix was their breakout hit in the West, the country’s dramas are globally popular, to the extent that when a South Korean president visited Mexico in 2005 he was confronted with a crowd of locals demanding South Korean TV stars visit them.
(If you want to get a handle on how glossy they now are, I’d recommend trying Hyena, Inspector Koo, The Glory, or My Country.)
It’s no hyperbole to say that South Korean film and TV is now both better-made and globally more successful than its British equivalents – this despite the relative obscurity of Korean history and culture. They achieved all this in only three decades.
How? By applying an industrial strategy to the creative industries from the 1990s onwards.
This was rooted in the same development economics which took South Korea from being a country poorer than most of Sub-Saharan Africa in 1953 to one of the most sophisticated in the world. The government subsidised the industries needed to create an industrial base and skilled workforce.
To get around the inefficiencies implicit in subsidies, they funded a range of firms, so that they could direct money to the successful and strip it from the unsuccessful. They focused on export discipline too, reasoning that any firm which couldn’t sell overseas wasn’t worth funding.
When it came to the creative industries they did much the same, building a strong creative base, encouraging competition, and subsidising offering programmes to foreign countries at cheap prices so they could get a foot in the market, and raise prices to market levels once they had an audience.
Early films like Shiri, JSA, and Musa deliberately focused on genres with wide global appeal such as action and historical adventure; you didn’t need to know much about Korea to enjoy them. Television often adapted popular Japanese manga and focused on longform soaps, which were cost effective and popular.
Don’t think that means shrieking telenovelas though; many of the most popular are the so-called chaebol dramas, about the power dynamics of Korea’s leading family-run companies. It’s as if Britain was gripped by dramas about thinly disguised versions of James Dyson.
In contrast, the British creative industry is often artisanal, with a romantic attachment to the idea of the creative process.
It is also markedly insular, with commissions more likely to be focused on winning admiration at the dinner party than dominating the global market; most British films and TV shows have commercially unappealing concepts.
If Britain truly wants to be a soft-power success, then the Government should be more interventionist and more capitalist, subsidising more productions while fostering competition – all driven by a focus on achieving overseas success.
Like South Korea, rather than competing with streamers when we lack the finances, we should be focused on providing them with programmes that the world wants to watch.