UPDATED with additional quotes 09.20 a.m. PT: “The era of government stoking culture wars is over,” promised new UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy this afternoon as she delivered her first keynote in the role.
Nandy passionately set out her case for a “reset” of the “relationship between government and media” following a “dark and divisive decade where we have found multiple ways to divide one another.”
Using her first speech to promise an end to the culture wars propagated by the previous Conservative government, Nandy, whose mum used to run Granada’s news coverage and whose step dad made investigative docs, swung firmly in behind the nation’s public service broadcasters (PSBs).
“For too long the Tories came to conferences like this and talked about recognizing the value of PSBs while undermining trust, assaulting credibility and sewing uncertainty,” she told the RTS London. “Our government will be different. We are wasting no time in handing you the tools for what you need. When warring tribes construct their own realities it costs us dear.”
Nandy revealed she has just written to Ofcom over the regulator’s review into the VoD market and the need to maintain the prominence of PSB content.
She said she wants PSBs to be alive and kicking “well into the latter half of this century” and this begins with “fundamental questions facing the future of the BBC,” as she reiterated a commitment to the licence fee funding model at least until the 2027 charter review.
“For too long ministers have patched up [the licence fee] with the pressure to commercialize sitting uneasily alongside the BBC’s ability to provide content for all audiences,” she added. “This is untenable. The importance of obligations placed on the BBC especially with the World Service show the vital need for sustainable public funding.”
She was speaking after former BBC Chair Richard Sharp, who urged the BBC to make “tough” decisions in order to spend more on TV shows.
PREVIOUS: The new UK Culture Secretary will this afternoon say the entertainment industry should be “shamed” by being “one of the most centralised and exclusive industries” in the country.
Delivering her first major set-piece, Lisa Nandy will say her department is prepared to introduce “rocket boosters” in order for it to commission more shows from across the UK and from working-class voices.
She will pose the question to TV commissioners in the room at RTS London: “If you aren’t commissioning content from every part of the country – towns and villages as well as major cities – why not?”
Nandy’s speech will come after research found that just 8% of those working in the film and TV sector are from working class backgrounds, while broadcasters have been under pressure to make more shows outside of London. Last month, Sherwood creator James Graham‘s Edinburgh MacTaggart address moved the debate front and center by querying why working-class representation is so low.
“Eight per cent – the proportion of working class people in TV,” Nandy will say this afternoon. “Twenty three per cent – the proportion of commissions made by companies based outside of London. Thirty per cent – the fall in trust in media over the last decade. None of this is inevitable.”
She will say both her department and the TV industry can “do our bit,” “with a new relationship based on respect for one another.”
Nandy is speaking on the same day as the likes of Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, who has just opened a new studio in the Midlands.