BBC must save soul of television - ITV chief

The BBC'S governors must be made more professional and accountable if the corporation is to provide the creative leadership needed to "save the soul of British television", David Liddiment, ITV's director of channels, told an audience of the industry's leading figures.

Mr Liddiment presented a damning critique of the BBC just as the Government is preparing to decide whether to grant Greg Dyke, its director general, the extra digital channels he desires. Ambition and risk-taking were under threat, Mr Liddiment declared, because the BBC's drive for ratings meant all television channels were moving towards a creeping sameness. "The soul of British television is in danger," he said.

Although the BBC still made landmark programmes, such as Walking with Dinosaurs, those were mere "fig leaves preserving the decency of a nakedly commercial beast" in schedules full of Holby City, Casualty and EastEnders.

Yet there seemed to be no one with the authority to tell the BBC when it was getting its priorities wrong, Mr Liddiment said in the McTaggart lecture, which traditionally marks the opening of the Edinburgh Television Festival. The governors were a small band of industrialists, economists, academics and civil servants who were accountable to no one.

"The BBC's failure in creative leadership is compounded, and to a large extent explained, by its failure of corporate leadership. It is too rich, too powerful and too valuable an organisation to be governed by a committee of part-timers," he said. "We need a new way of governing the BBC that is informed, professional and genuinely accountable."

Acknowledging that he himself had been criticised by ITV's regulators as a purveyor of crime to the masses, Mr Liddiment said he believed that for the future of all television the BBC had to get it right.

He said the BBC was the most powerful and dominant force in British broadcasting with £2.4bn a year of public money, 24,000 employees and 43 per cent of all viewing and listening in UK homes.

"It's a leviathan in a sea of sharks and dolphins. It dwarfs everyone and everything. We're content to keep feeding this beast only for as long as we believe it gives us something valuable the market can't.

"As far as I'm concerned that 'something' is the freedom from commercial constraints to lead, dare, risk and sometimes fail in creative terms."

Mr Liddiment suggested a number of improvements. Most controversially, he argued that the BBC's production arm should be opened up to the market and be allowed to make programmes for others. The industry must also make room for its creative mavericks, and it should not be allowed to claim all the rights to the intellectual property of its creative teams.