This article was written by Maggie Brown, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 13th August 2012 17.25 UTC
S4C, the Welsh-language public service broadcaster, has stabilised after two rocky years, but questions remain about its funding and relationship with the BBC.
Lord Patten, chair of the BBC Trust, and S4C Authority chair Huw Jones on Friday announced a 10 week consultation on a draft operating agreement, raising fears of close BBC scrutiny over S4C, an inevitably junior partner.
This agreement stems from the hurriedly negotiated October 2010 licence deal in which the BBC agreed to start paying for 90% of S4C’s reduced budget from April 2013, until the current charter expires in 2016. But that requires a framework of accountability, giving the BBC Trust a system of oversight.
The nub of the consultation is whether the agreement “secures the proper balance” between accountability to the BBC Trust, as steward of the licence fee funds, while “safeguarding the editorial and management independence of S4C services?”.
It states that the BBC Trust will undertake an annual performance assessment of S4C, examining whether it is maximising its reach, programme quality, impact, value for money and efficiencies in running costs. S4C will deliver an annual report. There will be a joint partnership board, meeting every three months, with equal numbers of representatives from S4C and the BBC. The BBC trustee for Wales, Professor Elan Closs Stephens, will play a key role.
But already raising hackles is a clause that states: “Where both chairmen are not able to resolve… any serious breach… the BBC Trust may, in extremis, reduce or withdraw its funding.”
This also leads to several issues just outside of the consultation’s scope. The BBC’s annual commitment is due to fall from £76.3m in 2013 to £74.8m in 2016.
But the government’s reduced contribution, starting at £6.7m a year, is left blank for the final two years. It is unlikely the Welsh Assembly will fill that gap. Nor is there any security about funding for S4C after the BBC charter expires.
TAC, the Welsh independent producers’ body representing more than 40 companies, said the draft represented a “crucial moment” and that it is “vital the detail was absolutely right”.
Iestyn Garlick, chair of TAC added: “There is an awful lot of good, but there is a perception S4C is a junior partner. It doesn’t appear like a 50:50 agreement. Whatever decisions S4C makes, the BBC Trust has to ratify.”
Garlick is worried about the “in extremis” power awarded to the BBC Trust.
S4C’s new chief executive, Ian Jones, gave the Owen Edwards memorial lecture last week at the National Eisteddfod, the annual festival of Welsh-language culture, and used it to plead that S4C’s “full comprehensive service” needed adequate funding. He also said he is prepared to share buildings with the BBC, and open new centres in Welsh-language strongholds in west and north Wales, to end the perception of S4C being captured by the Cardiff elite.
Two years ago S4C was depicted as a wounded Welsh red dragon. It was unprepared for a traumatic reversal in financial fortunes when it was unceremoniously stripped of government funding, which had previously grown every year linked to inflation. S4C was forced to accept a 24% budget reduction in the 2010 public sector spending cuts.
The S4C Authority did not help its case by descending into chaos – sacking the S4C chief executive, Iona Jones, without explanation, in July 2010 – and by failing to engage with Welsh politicians, while evidence mounted of zero-rated programmes.
Angry Welsh-language campaigners responded by rushing to S4C’s defence throughout 2011, picketing BBC Wales, protesting across the principality and accusing the corporation of betrayal.
The protests reminded politicians that S4C had worked well for three decades as a piece of social engineering. Meanwhile S4C started to stabilise, under the new authority chairman, who recruited seasoned chief executive Jones, representing fresh talent in the small world of Welsh-language broadcasting.
He joined S4C in January from New York-based US cable broadcaster, AETN, and has wasted no time reinstating the role of commissioning editors, cancelling Clrlun, the HD service, expanding online provision, creating a Twitter feed for non-Welsh speaking parents, so they can learn with their children, while committing the bulk of funds to peaktime programming.
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