Highlights from Humphrys' lecture

Humphrys is known for his tough-talking style

BBC broadcaster John Humphrys has given a no-holds-barred lecture on the perils of reality TV and the future of public broadcasting at Edinburgh Television Festival.

Here are some key points from his speech for the prestigious McTaggart lecture.

REALITY TV

So-called reality television - why do I say so-called? Because reality implies authenticity and honesty. And whatever some of this stuff may be, it is not authentic and it is not honest.

This is not just bad television in the sense that it's mediocre, pointless, puerile even. It's bad because it is damaging.

Programmes that are recognisably reality television make up a relatively small proportion of the output, but their influence has been out of all proportion to their number. They have infected the mainstream of the medium.

What about the effect of reality television on society as a whole? It does a number of things. It erodes the distinction between the public and the private, which is a profoundly important aspect of our culture.

Much more worrying is its coarsening effect. That's partly because of the sheer vulgarity. But it's even more that it turns human beings into freaks for us to gawp at.

CELEBRITIES

Then there is the cult of celebrity. It's always been with us, but never has the bizarre belief in celebrity for its own sake been promoted in such a way.

One senior figure in BBC television told me there seems to be a view that serious programmes can be made marketable only if they're stuffed full of celebrities. They have to be "fluffed up". Is David Beckham really the obvious choice to talk about God in a serious programme?

But at least Beckham has done something. There was a time (long ago, I know) when he scored goals. But now celebrity has become a value in itself and not an offshoot of fame earned by doing something remarkable.

It fosters a set of values that are utterly shallow and kills real ambition in the most impressionable. We tell kids what matters is being a celebrity and we wonder why some behave the way they do.

ON PROGRAMME QUALITY

The quality of the best television is not just as good as it ever was. I suspect (and whisper this quietly) some of it is even better. Television at its best is very, very good indeed.

But - and you can guess what's coming - there's the rest of it.

A vast amount of the rest is simply mediocre. For me that includes all the stuff that Jimmy Mulville of Hat Trick calls lifestyle porn, which gobbles up so much of the airtime.

What astonished me was not that such television is being made (you'd need to have been on another planet not to know that) but that some of the broadcasters who sent me tapes reckoned it was the best of the past five years.

Your Face or Mine; The Pilot Show; Banzai; Breasts Uncupped; Nip/Tuck - if they really think that sort of rubbish is the best, God knows what they think is the worst.

I said that the good television of today is probably better than the best television of the old days. The bad television of today is worse. It is not only bad. It is damaging. Meretricious. Seedy. Cynical.

SOAP OPERAS

I'd read enough about them in the tabloids to believe that they would fit my definition of harmful - especially given that they're broadcast pre-watershed. But it's a bit more complicated than that.

Of course they're meant to deal in the currency of social realism, but is everything really quite as grim and violent as they portray it? Characters in EastEnders seemed never to walk past each other with a smile and a nod (as they sometimes do in real life even in the East End of London) but with a snarl and a threat.

John Yorke, the former executive producer of EastEnders, argues that there is an essential moral seriousness at its core and it's really no more than the Bible stories in a modern setting. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far (Dirty Den as St Peter?) but he had a point.

ON COMPETITION

This is the most competitive era the industry has ever lived through. Talk about stating the bleeding obvious.

Everyone's fighting for the same audience and, as Mark Twain said about land, they're not making any more of it.

For the first time subscription is pulling in more income than advertising - and the advertisers want their money back.

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING AND REGULATION

We believe in something called public service broadcasting and that must form part of the future.

It's (Ofcom) planning to remove proscriptions on taste and decency and replace them with guidelines on harm and offence. Much better.

THE BBC

We should not be fearful of standing up to those in power. That is our job: to be fearless in the face of power. It is our job in a pre-Hutton era, a mid-Hutton era - a post-Hutton era. In any era.

And what it means is that we should approach politicians not with an attitude of cynicism, but of scepticism. We should subject them to rigorous and relentless scrutiny. That is what the public wants and that is what the public has a right to expect.

We need more, not less, investigative journalism.

Public service broadcasting can and must make an important contribution to the democratic process. It can do it only if we are not cowed by those in power.