Speeches by Kane.

“You mentioned local democracy reporters. What are you doing to ensure that local democracy reporters are truly local? A lot of the problems in local media mean that local media is getting bigger in terms of the areas that it serves. How are you ensuring that local democracy reporters are actually in the areas that they…”

“I do not mean AI; I mean more generally, as we have more streaming players and more of an Americanisation of the way that we are approaching creating content.”

“We could, but just to expand on that, it is about not just AI but the leadership role, and ensuring that as we have more domination from—let me be charitable—an American approach to dealing with the creatives that is different from how we would do it—”

“Can you talk about the leadership role that the BBC plays? We have seen a huge debate about AI and how it is interacting with the creative industries. What do you see as the BBC’s leadership role in ensuring a fair creative world that is profitable for everybody, including the BBC?”

“I will push a little bit more on this. I love the vision and where you are going, but we are trying to get at putting in the policy to underpin the vision. You are not meeting the targets that you have for new IP at the moment. What will you do to turn that bold and welcome vision—”

“No, I do not think you are, but I will take the point that you could have 10 duds or 10 phenomenal successes—it is a risk game. You have the job of trying to work out how to do the risk-reward thing, so I suppose I am trying to interpret how you do that.”

“How do you do that?”

“This may be a daft laddie question from me. Set the scene on what the difference is between a “Doctor Who” brand, in terms of its potential next year, versus something new: IP that you create that grabs everybody’s attention—the next “Doctor Who”. What is more valuable to you longer term: creating more IP or exploiting…”

“I also offer my congratulations for what you are doing to monetise your existing content and your focus on digital. To pick up on things we were talking about last week in the CMS Committee, which was around creating new intellectual property, of your most profitable programmes last year, I think only one in 10 was IP …”

“Tim, do you foresee a world—maybe not for this charter, but perhaps in the future—where we move from household licences to individual licences, given that the younger demographic, in particular, think like that? We are all used to having subscriptions for apps that are based on us as individuals, not as households. Giv…”

“Okay. How is Capita incentivised to increase sales and reduce evasion?”

“It seems really good that you have put milestones in place and you are tying the payments to them. I would hope that with hindsight you would say, “We wish we had done that at the beginning of the contract in the first place.” Is there a lesson for future contracts to do that? You are halfway through the contract exten…”

“You use Capita to do your licence fee collection services, and I think you are halfway through a five-year contract extension with them. That extension requires Capita to make operational improvements and IT upgrades to improve the customer experience and to create these efficiencies. Have you realised the expected imp…”

“Thank you for that, Mr Davie. You spend 4.3% of the licence fee—£166 million—on collection; that was the figure last year. Leigh, what are you doing to ensure that figure represents the value for money that you are pushing for and that you are getting the best results you can for it?”

“Everything starts with one.”

“Do you have a target for increasing the number of electronic issuances?”

“You are required to give a licence if they request it, but 40% saying “Yes, send me one,” seems high to me. Given how many licence payers you have, 40% affirmatively saying, “Send me this,” seems—”

“So is this people requesting them, or is your default position that if they don’t ask for one electronically, you issue a physical one?”

“I want to ask about the money you are spending collecting the licence fee, but I also have a daft question, which I should know the answer to but I do not. In the annual report, it says, “The BBC is taking steps to minimise collection costs, for example by issuing 60.2% of licences electronically”. Why do we issue lice…”

“You won’t be targeting poorer areas for more enforcement action—it will be a universal enforcement action?”