Part SevenBest Left Unsaid
PART 7 – BEST LEFT UNSAID (the failures)
Over the next three chapters, I give two examples of projects that failed. In one I played a leading role and the other I chose not to get involved in but had a ringside seat. They are included to give a realistic picture of leadership in innovation.
PART 7a – Broadcasting Satellite Plan
Quote: “You can make a plan too early” (Section B Rule The Ten Rules — Rule 77)
Context
A World Administrative Radio Conference, meeting in 1971 to find new spectrum for space telecommunications, hit an impasse between those wanting spectrum in the 11.7-12.5 GHz band for an exciting new prospect of broadcasting satellites and those who already had large numbers of point-to-point radio relays using the band. The compromise was that a world conference would be held in 1977 to allow the broadcasters to make a plan to meet their future needs for satellite broadcasting. It would involve each country being given a designated orbit slot and a number of TV channels. The theory was that the radio relays would then be
re-planned in the gaps that were left.
Chapter 32
THE 1977 BROADCASTING SATELLITE ORBIT PLAN
The very first big international job I was ever given was to be the chairman of a CEPT expert working group (R28) set-up to coordinate the views of European governments for this World Radio Conference to make the broadcasting satellite plan. Experts on the working group came from all the public broadcasting organisations across Europe, and we bonded very quickly as a team. The developing countries were a force in UN bodies, so that took me to Khartoum, Rio, and Kyoto to sell the European position for an orbit plan. One of the key messages was an equality of opportunity between those wanting to move quickly and those (e.g., developing countries) who were likely to be late arriving… if they ever arrived at all. The US opposed this and promoted a ‘first come first served’ approach. I clashed strongly with the US experts. They did not want an orbit plan to be made. The developing countries liked my argument better. It was an easy win. A plan would preserve their future broadcasting satellite option.
The way the USA politics played out in the conference was that ‘the Americas’ were to have no plan, but all the countries in Europe, Asia and Africa remained keen to have one. The conference elected me to chair the working group to make it. Opinion was polarised between those who wanted each country to have equal shares (five new satellite TV channels) and those with extravagant demands for either the number of new TV channels or demands for very large beams to cover other countries. Luxembourg were particularly disruptive in this regard, as they had been in an earlier period of sound broadcasting history. Radio Luxembourg had begun broadcasting to Britain in 1933 as one of the earliest commercial radio stations… much to the annoyance of successive British Governments. They were not alone in 1977 with external broadcasting ambitions. The Nordic countries wanted a common broadcasting area and Saudi Arabia wanted a broadcasting satellite beam covering all Islamic countries. The Soviet Union was strongly opposed to any attempt by countries to cover more than their national territories. But covering national territories brought out every territorial dispute in the world. It was politically very fraught.
My strategy to deal with the extravagant demands was to place the quality of the TV picture as the prize from the new technology and to create two plans very quickly showing the choice of five high-quality national TV channels versus a larger number of channels and external broadcasting demands that would be ‘unviewable’ owing to so much interference. The ITU computer system was not ready and the conference were content for us to make the demonstration plans on the TDF facilities in France, providing the ITU system was used to make the final plan. The two demonstration plans revealed the outcomes expected. I then left it to the diplomats to do their bit to persuade countries to scale back their demands. It worked a treat.
We were now ready to make the final plan. It was all going so well Then it all fell to pieces. The ITU computer system was not up to the task. It was taking 36 hours of continuous processing for each run. Requirements kept changing. Most developing countries were putting the test points all over the place instead of inside their own borders. Luxembourg were up to no good trying to sneak-in a larger beam. No wonder the interference levels were high. There was even a Russian beam missing by pure oversight. The plan we thought was ‘the plan’ turned out to be a disaster. The conference was in an uproar, and I was in the eye of the storm. But my European team held together. We went into a 36-hour overdrive together. The French TDF provided a link to their computer in Paris as a working tool. A BBC engineer took on a doctor’s surgery for all the developing countries’ complaints (many being misunderstandings). He happened to be a doctor (Dr Phillips). It fell to me to explain to the North Korean delegation that the South Korean satellite beam running along the 38th parallel was not going to fry their troops. A German expert managed to find a way to squeeze the lost Russian beam back in. The ITU Secretary General got access to the more powerful WHO computer. Swedish experts stepped in to clean up the data. The only breaks over 36 hours were quick trips back to a rented flat, snatching a few hours of sleep, a quick wash, Jocelyne helping me put on a fresh shirt, placing a sandwich in my hand and pushing me out the door.
We defied the odds and delivered a really good broadcasting satellite plan within hours of the deadline.
A mightily relieved Plenary Assembly adopted it in the Final Acts of the conference. It was traditional, in the closing stages of the ITU Conference, for the Heads of Delegation, one by one, to congratulate the Chairman of the Plenary Assembly for a successful conference. One of the US Delegates could not contain himself any longer and was given permission by the US Ambassador to speak. He said that without my skill and leadership there would have been no plan and proposed that the plan be known as ‘The Temple Plan’. (Ref: conference doc 386E). What was remarkable was that the American who spoke had been my biggest adversary at the regional seminars. In my mind, it was a greater tribute to him than to me.
That 36 hours working in complete harmony with a tiny team from many European countries, under such enormous stress and sharing a common goal was one of the most exhilarating moments of my career. It gave me, for the first time, a sense of European identity.
The achievement was a triumph at the time but was to finish in the dustbin of history. It fell victim to advances in technology and changing markets. The time between the plan being made and the broadcasting community being ready to go for satellite broadcasting was far too long. The high-powered broadcasting satellites, on which the plan had been based, became redundant. Five more TV channels seemed almost over the top in 1977 but in an age of dozens and soon to be hundreds it was no longer what the market wanted. Who has ever heard of ‘The Temple Plan’ today? The approach the US had advocated now governs the way broadcasting satellites secure their orbit locations. I had won the battle but lost the war.
My influence on satellite broadcasting nor Luxembourg’s ambition to disrupt did not end in 1977. My next incursion was one of the most improbable things that ever happened – a few loose words tossed out on my way to lunch were to change satellite broadcasting in Europe. In 1987, I was in Brussels in the EU Council Building for a boring meeting on trade barrier stuff. It finished early, and I left to find the canteen. On the way down a long corridor, I saw a group of eight or ten people outside a meeting room, shouting at each other in an intense argument. I only recognised one – a previous boss I hadn’t seen since the early ’70s. I paused to say hello, and, in doing so, I caught the drift of the argument. The EU Commission had tabled a draft directive to force all Europe’s satellite broadcasters to use a new analogue TV standard called MAC. There was wide agreement for this. But many countries used telecommunications satellites to distribute TV to cable TV headends. The issue was how to distinguish one use from the other. Without thinking, I said, ‘Why don’t you link the regulation to the radio spectrum band the ITU has allocated for satellite broadcasting?’ Purely by chance, as I spoke, there was a lull in the argument. Everyone heard what I said. To all but one of them, it was an off-the-cuff remark from a complete stranger. In an instant, they were back into the meeting room writing the new regulation around my casual suggestion. The idea itself was sensible. The flaw was the lax enforcement of the international radio regulations. Luxemburg was Europe’s Achilles heel. It had lost the battle in 1977 for external satellite TV broadcasting but over a decade later had found a way to win the war. My definition provided a loophole around the directive that Astra and BSkyB were later to exploit to disrupt the market. See Chapter 23.
Whilst my 1977 Satellite Broadcasting Conference plan failed to be implemented, the experience gifted me two rare personal watershed moments:
First the conference revealed to me what I was exceptionally good at – leading, through diplomacy, in an international technical field. The next five years in the Home Office Police Department, as a Deputy Director of Engineering, had me yearning to get back to what I knew I was good at. It led me to secure a transfer to the DTI Telecommunications Division in 1984.
The second watershed moment was to remove the blinkers of what I could achieve. It. happened in 1976 in a bar in Kyoto in the run-up to the Conference. I was representing Europe at an ITU seminar for developing countries. The top Japanese government official invited me out for a drink in the evening. He took me to a bar, and we sat down in a room for just the two of us. Two pretty young Japanese ladies came and sat beside us. Alarm bells were ringing in my mind. Only a few months earlier, before a trip to Moscow, I’d been lectured by somebody from MI6 on the perils of ‘the honey trap’. But this was not Soviet Russia. Where exactly was this evening heading? Much to my relief, he just ignored the girls, who lit his cigarette for him, poured our drinks, sat beside us smiling and kept our drinks topped up. He knocked back five whiskies before I had finished my first one and became progressively more boastful with each glass. He told me that senior civil servants, like him, ran Japan. All the politicians were either corrupt or fools. It was his privilege to shape the future destiny of Japan. I had risen from a technician apprentice on the factory floor and, up until then, all I had seen above me was the next step-up. Suddenly, I could see the sky. I too could shape my country’s destiny in my field. That seed of new found self-confidence was to germinate in 1984, and, unlike the Japanese official, I was lucky to work for some British ministers who were neither corrupt nor fools.
(Note: Ministers used to come and go frequently in the DTI. More than a few had their judgement, even common sense, incapacitated by political ideology. Most were honest, hardworking, and very well intentioned. A few were outstanding, and it was really frustrating to see them move on.)
Retrospective – How well did it turn out?
The 1977 Satellite Broadcasting Conference delivered a good-quality satellite orbit/frequency assignment plan against all the odds. But it was 10 years in advance of market developments in broadcasting satellites.
All the high-powered broadcasting satellites, using the channels assigned to them under the 1977 plan, failed commercially. Part of the failure was due to their governments trying to introduce a new analogue TV standard (MAC) at the same time. France and Germany made the additional error of totally neglecting to create a line-up of compelling TV channels to pull the technology through.
The route to satellite broadcasting via low-powered telecommunications satellite, with a lower cost base and using the mature PAL TV standard, won the battle in the marketplace. This rendered the 1977 broadcasting satellite plan redundant. I’d won the battle in 1977 for the plan but lost the war to ‘first come first served’ due to technology advances. In contrast Luxembourg lost the battle in 1977 for their large beam but finished-up winning the war with their successful Astra satellite platform now beaming over most of Europe.