The ‘Bake Off’ is off, then
Two of the great things about being over the age of fifty (well, okay fifty-five) is that one can retain one’s propensity for having firm, not to say strident, opinions on areas of life and commerce in which one was once proficient and/or knowledgeable about whilst simultaneously absolving oneself completely of responsibility for any of them – by the simple expedient of declaring that since it is twenty/thirty or even forty years since last actually ‘practised’ one’s expertise in a professional sense.
I thought I’d mention that before addressing myself to this week’s reported loss by the BBC’s top-rating programme/series The Great British Bake-Off programme to Channel Four, apparently because it could not afford to meet the production company’s financial demands.
First up, I need to remind readers of my view that the BBC is an anachronism in the 21st Century.
As originally set up in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it was the UK’s first and subsequently only (monopoly) national means of broadcasting radio and then later television. Under its first supremo, the autocratic Lord John Reith, and its stirring motto ‘Educate, Inform, Entertain’ it effectively tried and then succeeded to become all things to all men (and women).
Some might say that through its monopoly, others might suggest its enviable reputations for impartiality and integrity and also its desire not to be just a Government mouthpiece, it became the official ‘Voice of Britain’ not only to Britons but to the world at large – and thence also, inevitably, continually fought over by British Governments and their oppositions because, of course, as George Orwell had warned us, any ‘Big Brother’ knows that – if it can control the media – it can largely control the population … and then possibly the world too.
My purpose in mentioning the BBC is to add that, in my opinion, because of its lack of relevance to the modern media world, it should have given up its attempt to be ‘all things to all men’ long ago and simply because a proper public service broadcaster – i.e. providing news, current affairs and other educational or similar programming that otherwise might not be commercially viable – and entirely given up trying to win vast peak-time ratings by buying sporting and other rights, or seeking to mount light entertainment and other populist programming. It should leave those – successful or the complete opposite – to others in the market place who can quite happily be left to live and die by the commercial sword. The BBC should not be judged by the commercial success of its programmes. It should be funded by a budget courtesy of the taxpayer and simply concentrate on making the kinds of worthy programmes that others (in the free market) cannot or will not make because of the commercial risks attached.
Please pardon my above excursion into the realms of public broadcasting policy, but I felt it worth pursuing because it informs my views on the current The Great British Bake Off situation.
For most of its history the BBC has distorted the media marketplace because, funded by the TV/radio licence fee, it can not only big bid for sports and other rights but it has a huge ‘safety net’ of cash which enables it to commission programmes, nurture them, let them to grow and develop etc. over periods which – to anyone else (i.e. in the real commercial world) would have meant bankruptcy quite early on. In other words, the BBC has always had a huge advantage over its commercial rivals great and small. Whereas the latter conceive programme ideas and – if they strike lucky – get one programme’s chance, or one series’ chance, to find an audience and sufficient ratings success to justify a second or subsequent series, the BBC (as a vast monopoly) has always had the luxury afforded it by time and money to take a long term view … knowing that we (the TV/radio licence payers) are underwriting all its failures just as much as its successes.
Which brings me to The Great British Bake Off.
In my view, never mind the line that ‘it’s a quintessentially BBC-type programme’, it’s absolutely the type of mass entertainment programme that the BBC shouldn’t be making at all in the 21st Century.
What the hell was it doing spending – as we now learn – £1 million an episode on a silly little programme about home baking anyway?
That’s all I wish to say about the BBC.
My main subject today is actually the vagaries of programme origination and rights. It’s a vexed topic because the legalities are complex but also obscure.
Forgive me my simplistic approach here – and again, I’d add here the disclaimer that my direct knowledge of copyright law is thirty plus years out of date – but you cannot copyright an idea. There’s even a grey area as to what bits and pieces, bells and whistles … what ephemera and flotsam and jetsam … you can add to an idea which then somehow subsequently allows you to claim that it does attract a degree of copyright enough to give you some ‘ownership’ of the concept in law which you can then defend in court should someone rip it off, replicate it, or otherwise (you think) steal it from you.
Let me give a trite example. There’s been a parlour game that gradually became popularly called ‘Charades’ for probably 150 to 175 years. It was so old that any copyright anyone might ever have claimed in it was expired and/or lost in the mists of time. But from 1979 to 1992, a game show version of it called Give Us A Clue was a highly-successful – and very cheap to make, at one time about £3,000 per programme, fifteen of them being made per week when it was in production – ITV programme. Cheap as chips yet grabbing a massive audience for the time of day it was broadcast: a nailed-on cash cow for ITV. Somehow its originators had added enough ‘new origination’ to the game of ‘Charades’ to make ITV (and others) believe that they had to buy the concept as a programme idea and then shell out a per programme royalty that made some people pretty well off thank you.
But that’s media life.
What is interesting but hardly novel with Bake Off is that the production company (which presumably ‘owns’ the rights to it) was only interested in following the biggest pay-out. That’s completely understandable. Most programmes have a limited shelf-life and you want to milk it for all it’s worth whilst you can.
But although Bake Off is now switching from the BBC to Channel Four (which is apparently paying £10 million more for it per annum than the BBC was prepared to) there was some confusion as to whether the ‘talent’ was going with it. This question mark was soon answered when the co-hosts of Bake Off (Mel and Sue) announced yesterday that they wouldn’t be going with the programme to Channel Four.
This leaves a bigger question/doubt as to whether the professionals (baking-wise) – Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood – would be going to Channel Four either. We await developments on that. If I was La Berry or Mr Hollywood, I’d get my agent to hold out as long as possible (until Channel Four’s pips are squeaking) and then accept the biggest shed-load of money I could persuade them to part with.
But look at it another way. Would a version of The Great British Bake Off that potentially contained neither Mel and Sue – nor indeed Mary Berry or Paul Hollywood – be worth £25 million per annum to Channel Four, or indeed any other broadcaster? It’s a moot question.
Furthermore, just supposing that, at some point in the future not too far away, the BBC ‘originates’ another TV series (clearly not called The Great British Bake Off, but something else) based around a baking competition – looking strangely similar but also (shall we also say?) quite different from the Bake Off in its setting and structure – that has Mel and Sue as its presenters and then – oh, I don’t know, say Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood – as its ‘professional’ baking judges …
Would Channel Four then feel that it had been sold a pup? Would the Bake Off production company be able to sue the BBC for plagiarism, stealing the concept … whatever … or not?
Or would the BBC be fully justified in doing any and all of the above without fear of censure, simply because – it’s as plain as a pike staff, isn’t it? – there surely cannot possibly be any way in which the Bake Off production company (or, if this is the case, anyone it bought the rights to Bake Off from) could claim that it owns the copyright – and/or indeed any other legal rights – over the concept of any television programme ever made in the future about a baking competition, can there?
