As Britain takes its news media to task, an American import, the Public Broadcasting Service, hopes to make a name for itself by offering a sober antidote to the tales of tabloid newspaper excesses that have been leading the news bulletins of late.
This month, as a public inquiry delves into the intrusive Fleet Street reporting techniques that have shocked many Britons, PBS introduced a new channel in Britain, its first international television venture.
Does Britain, home to the BBC, one of the most respected broadcasters in the world, really need to import serious television from the United States? When many Britons think of American television, they imagine silly sitcoms or the “fair and balanced” output of Fox News — owned by the same company, News Corporation, whose newspapers are first in the firing line in the investigation into the hacking of celebrities’ mobile phones.
“It’s very different from people’s perception of what an American TV channel is like,” said Richard Kingsbury, general manager of the new channel, called PBS UK.
The channel is available on British Sky Broadcasting, a satellite TV system with 10 million customers, where it joins more than 700 other channels. PBS is also available via a cable system, Virgin Media, with four million customers.
PBS has moved into Britain after other United States channels made the leap, and it has entered a crowded market. In the category that analysts refer to as factual programming, United States imports like the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and National Geographic have long been available in Britain, alongside myriad offerings from local broadcasters.
“That’s the question that you have to ask, really — is there a market for it or for channels like it,” said Tim Westcott, a senior analyst at Screen Digest in London. “What will set PBS apart is that it has a different perspective. It is maybe slightly more in tune with European tastes than some U.S. programming.”
PBS UK came about largely because of the persistence of David Lyons, a Canadian entrepreneur who founded the Quadra Group, a company with investments in the energy and media industries. While growing up in Calgary, he watched PBS because the feed from one of the network’s member stations was offered by a local cable system.
“Everyone always marveled at it,” he said. “I think it is the most extraordinary American archive, detailing the life of the country and the continent.”
After moving to Britain 16 years ago, Mr. Lyons said, he missed the channel.
“As part of a wider civilization of English-speaking people, it was important that we understood each other better,” he said. “There were a lot of misunderstandings.”
A few years ago, he started speaking to officials at PBS, which is based in Washington, about setting up a channel in Britain. Eventually, they agreed to create a joint venture between Quadra and PBS Distribution, which oversees international sales of PBS shows to other broadcasters.
“We did not have the financial resources for such a venture, so we are fortunate to have David Lyons as a partner,” said Jan McNamara, a spokeswoman for PBS in Washington.
The new channel is basically an edited version of the PBS that American viewers see, and also has programming on science, history and other topics. It differs in one significant way, though. PBS UK is a commercial venture and, as of the new year, it plans to include advertising.
The channel in the United States has no ad breaks and is financed by the United States government, corporate sponsorships and viewer donations.
Other public broadcasters use similar arrangements to try to generate revenue internationally. The BBC, which is financed mostly by a license fee on British television-owning households, sells ads on its channels outside Britain, for example, even though its domestic outlets are ad-free.
Gareth Hutchins, business director at MindShare, a media-buying agency in London, said PBS UK would “have its work cut out for it” to attract advertising, which is being sold for it by a mainstream British broadcaster, Channel 4. But he added, “There is certainly room within the market for a channel tailored for reaching an upmarket, cultured audience.”
Even though the channel is only a few weeks old, Mr. Lyons is already thinking about enhancements. One option, he said, might be to create a British version of the “PBS NewsHour,” complete with a London studio and staff of journalists.
Britons already have a number of options for television news, including 24-hour news channels from the BBC and from the satellite broadcaster Sky, as well as the nightly bulletins from the BBC and commercial channels. Yet there is no American-style cable-TV free-for-all; unlike Fleet Street newspapers, British television news shows operate under a regulatory requirement for fairness and evenhandedness.
“I think England, even though there are all these media here, has an appetite for this kind of journalism — totally straight and objective,” Mr. Lyons said.
Mr. Lyons said he was also considering bringing PBS to other regions where English is widely spoken, including Africa, India and Scandinavia.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/business/media/pbs-introduces-new-television-channel-in-britain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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