Chapter 24
DRIVING DIGITAL TV PLATFORM POLICY FROM THE DTI
The minister responsible for broadcasting policy was Peter Brook at the Department for National Heritage (DNH). The DTI had no remit in broadcasting policy. My only slender card was that I now was the DTI ‘sponsor’ of the telecoms, mobile and broadcasting industries. ‘Industry sponsorship’ was Michael Heseltine’s big idea. But when he first arrived at the DTI, nobody knew what this meant. We were all aware of his famous expression that he would intervene before breakfast, intervene before lunch, intervene before tea, and intervene before dinner to promote British business. Was this a throw-back to the industrial interventions of the 1960s? What did ‘sponsorship’ amount to? We all looked forward to our first introductory meeting. I took two of my team with me, and we were expecting some sort of ‘fire and brimstone’ pep talk from the great man. Instead, he smiled and said disarmingly that he hadn’t a clue what was to be done. Our job was to tell him, and the only way we would find that out was to talk to a wide range of companies.
It suited me to have such an open brief for my digital terrestrial TV initiative as I still needed to work out how to do it. My first port of call in industry was John Forrest from NTL. He showed interest. That was not surprising as it offered a new future business line for them. They ran the network of broadcasting transmitters across the country for Channels 3 and 4.
The BBC were lukewarm. The technical side were very positive. But the BBC policy unit were distinctly cool. They were upset with the Conservative Government’s plans to privatise their transmitter network. A year earlier, the BBC World Service had been thrown off a satellite after having upset the Chinese government. This made the BBC feel the strategic need to own their own route to their viewers.
Amongst the ITV companies, the only interest I could find was from Nigel Walmsley from Carlton. He was very switched on but a lone voice.
This was just enough industry support to allow me to sound out ministers with something that looked plausible. I put up a submission to the junior minister and Michael Heseltine. It laid out the digital TV infrastructure options and suggested the merit in the government’s broadly encouraging all three routes of satellite, cable, and terrestrial TV. It noted the satellite and cable routes did not need any specific help from government, but that digital terrestrial TV could not happen until the government took the necessary enabling measures to make the TV channels (radio spectrum) available to the market.
The submission got a positive response. The junior minister changed from Patrick McLoughlin to Ian Taylor over this period. Ian was ambitious to get the UK into the forefront of all the new digital technologies. What particularly excited him was the prospect that, if digital terrestrial TV succeeded, the UK would be able to close down the analogue TV network and free up spectrum to auction to the mobile industry.
I believe that Michael Heseltine had a bigger agenda. He wanted to gain the responsibility for broadcasting. With his publishing background, he would do a much better job in upping the game of the sector than the minister responsible, Peter Brook. The Prime Minister, John Major, was not inclined to change things. The digital broadcasting infrastructure proposal I was putting forward gave Michael Heseltine a route into broadcasting policy.
The influence of a civil servant in Whitehall is only as big as the political power and influence of his departmental minister. The political power and influence of Michael Heseltine was huge in the John Major government. Michael Heseltine’s power and vision together with my technology expertise gave me the confidence that I could walk through walls – and there were plenty of walls that would need to be walked through to get digital terrestrial TV off the ground in the UK.
The four big impediments were:
(i) The BBC were in no mood to do anything with the government’s being so hell-bent on privatising their TV transmission network.
(ii) The free radio spectrum at UHF was being planned for the new TV Channel 5, and nobody was having any regard to whether enough spectrum would be left over for digital TV. Not having enough spectrum was a show-stopper.
(iii) I had to persuade the DVB standards group to prioritise a technical standard for digital terrestrial TV. The consensus view of the European technical establishment was that the digital broadcasting future would be satellite and cable only. Terrestrial television had had its day.
(iv) Most amazing of all, there was no legal means of licensing any TV channels beyond Channel 5. The last Broadcasting Act had lacked the vision to see beyond a 5th TV channel. This cut out the Channel 3 companies or any other commercial entity from becoming a digital TV broadcaster… which made it all the more bizarre that Rupert Murdoch had such a free, unencumbered route in. And nobody seemed to care.
The first three impediments were well within the DTI’s remit to raise. I was in a car with Michael Heseltine coming back from a visit to an industrial company and explained where the BBC stood. He raised the BBC concerns in Cabinet. Everyone naturally turned to Peter Brook, the responsible minister, to provide the answer. He was caught totally unbriefed and did not have a clue what Mr Heseltine was talking about. Nor did anyone else. The Prime Minister left it to Michael Heseltine and Peter Brook to sort the matter out between them. Mr Heseltine had got his foot in the door. That ended well. Eventually, the BBC emerged fully on board and willing to procure digital terrestrial broadcasting capacity from a privatised transmission network. Payback would come when the next licence fee settlement had to be agreed with the government.
The second challenge was to get frequency spectrum for digital terrestrial broadcasting sorted out. The Independent TV Commission was flat out in the process of organising the competition for the company who would run TV Channel 5. This was going to be a huge policy win for them and DNH… until I came along and threw a spanner in the works.
Spectrum for broadcasting was controlled by the government. The long-established convention was that the policy lead for the use of broadcasting spectrum came from DNH and the technical servants were the engineers in the DTI Radiocommunications Agency. I put up a submission to the President of the Board of Trade (Mr Heseltine), proposing that the President wrote to the DNH Minister, Mr Brooks, to suggest he should instruct the ITC to put the Channel 5 competition on hold until the government was satisfied that enough TV spectrum would remain for digital terrestrial TV. I set the bar high. It was not just enough to get a digital terrestrial service in the UK underway. With Mr Taylor’s support, we needed to replicate analogue TV coverage and allow the analogue TV service to eventually be closed down.
There was fury at the DNH and ITC. TV Channel 5 preparations came to a juddering halt. What few people appreciated was that, whatever the convention, the licensing authority for radio spectrum actually rested with the DTI. I was struck off the ITC’s Christmas card list.
One of the amazing things about radio spectrum is how ‘the impossible’ suddenly becomes ‘possible’ when a minister thumps the table. Within a few months, the Radiocommunications Agency had jigged things around to enable the country to have both TV Channel 5 and digital terrestrial TV.
The third hurdle was to get DVB to prioritise making a new technical standard for digital terrestrial TV. The way I had structured the DVB meant that I needed industry commitment to be expressed in the DVB Commercial Module, and that would unlock the technical resources. Both the BBC and NTL research engineers were solidly behind me, and the work was quickly launched. TDF, the French equivalent to NTL, were also supportive but lacked their ministry backing. But their moral support was helpful.
Removing the technical barriers was going well, and the BBC was onside. I now had to move my tank onto the DNH policy official’s lawn. How were new commercial digital TV channels to be licensed?