“Personally, It would be better for S4C, I think, if it became a channel for the whole of Wales, and not just a Welsh speaking minority. Media and Welsh culture is in trouble, with BBC, SKY and ITV all now ignoring Wales more and more. S4C should represent the whole of Wales and reflect wider Welsh culture. This would not be to the determent of the Welsh language, it would not undermime S4C. Instead it would make S4C stronger and could even help the Welsh language grow.”

I totally agree with this view, Geraint. But I would add to this point and say this, I think there should be devolved broadcasting for Wales in general, S4C should be far tighter budgeted and controlled as a fully Welsh language channel ,taking in sponsorship with their good sports coverage etc and possibly a few co working and collaborative programmes with other english language welsh channels.

There could also be a collaborative channel such as BBC2 Wales or ITV Wales or even a Welsh channel 5 that would have, say 10=20 % of its programmes as Welsh language content programmes, maybe for learners/subtitled or history and disussion programmes /speciaised youth and childrens programmes. Maybe a slice of S4C’s overindulged budget could go towards this 10=20% content on another channel. This would keep S4C on their toes and keep them from slipping into a sterility that seems to have affected them. It would also maybe be a more representative channel for the whole of Wales as Geraint states above but would mean S4C woudnt be undermined as its own thing as well. As long as no more extra public money would go into the extra Welsh language content on another channel and there was general good will towrads it i dont see why it coludnt work.

Failing that I would support a full public funded 50/50 Welsh/English language channel excluisevly for Wales which could be an extremely exiting prospect. People also seem to forget that you can watch or make your own exclusive Welsh, English or any other language channel on the internet or decide exactly what you want to watch there. The point being the power is already with us the people to make our own channels online if we so wish…in theory that is.

I think there are pros and cons to S4C showing Engish language programmes but that option needs serious consideration given the financial situation.
S4C could concentrate on delivering high quality programmes and if this means less hours in Welsh then fill in the gap with high quality English language programmes about Wales and tailored for a Welsh audience.
Such an approach would also enable it to ditch a lot of it’s programmes that are chasing an ageing and declining audience eg it’s farrming output and target audiences that will grow eg Young adults, young parents and youth. It could then roll out a more varied ouput to keep this demographic group tuned in as it ages and it’s interests change.

The fans of Dechrau Canu Dechrau Canmol and any of the plethora of shows which Dai Jones Llanilar fronts will be dissapointed but if they want a Welsh language channel to be there for their grandchildren they’ll need say goodbye to a proportion of the programmes they enjoy today.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east_wales/10481417.stm

Good that jobs are saved. But does rather reinforce Heledd’s concerns about jobs in North Wales.

I disagree, although S4C’s chief objetive is to create good Welsh language programmes I believe it has, as one of the very few Welsh language national institutions, a wider responsibility towards Welsh communities. Specifically as a Welsh language institution it has special responsibility to serve the economy where the majority of their viewers reside. It so happens that the economy in those areas need what economic investment they can get. S4C can’t operate in a vacuum or it will find it self in a generation producing programmes for a community which no longer exists! S4C produces Welsh language tv for Welsh language communities, it’s natural therefore that it’s wider corporate social responsibility would be to do whatever it can to sustain those Welsh communities. One way of doing that is to base as much production as possible in the hands of as much Welshmen as possible.

And I don’t accept that small tv companies produce sub-standard content. I would argue to the contrary. The biggest tripe on S4C is produced by the larger companies who’ve got cash cow regular contracts producing the same old stuff season after season.

Smaller production companies doesn’t necessarily mean better, more creative programming. HTV, the biggest production company during the seventies and eighties, produced some great stuff. Carol Parry Jones commented about her time in HTV as very creative, and she was right. Her comedy specials such as Eisteddfod, Eisteddfod and Ibiza, Ibiza were excellent.

S4C fundamentally is not their create jobs or hold up a regional economy but to provide Welsh Language programming. I can’t see why the channel should give money to companies to do programmes for them just because where they are based, especially if they produce sub-standard content.

The channel faces competition not from other UK channels but competition from other forms of entertainment. While I recognise the channel has made some effort to refresh the contents it offering, there is a need for a major shakeup of media in Wales. Too many people who have become comfortable over the years and have stagnated. S4C, at the moment, have too many old faces who have been doing/presenting the same programmes for years.

I totally disagree. S4C shouldn’t be turned into a bilingual channel it should remain as channel for the “Welsh speaking minority” for that very reason. The Welsh language is a minority language and therefore it could never succeed in the open market place and that’s why the Conservative Government eventually established the channel with public money. The numbers of Welsh speakers has been increasing since the establishment of S4C so if there was an argument for the DCMS to fund S4C in 1980 the argument for them to fund it in 2010 is stronger. (But of course there is a general discussion to be had if the DCMS should transfer responsibility now to Cardiff, personally I think they should).

Having said that, I agree that there is an argument to be made for an English-medium national channel for Wales, but such a’n aspiration should be seen as something in addition to S4C not something to replace it or to be in partnership with. S4C should remain as one institution with one clear objective, to broadcast good stuff in the Welsh language. As Heledd notes, they struggle with this one objective at the moment so let’s not throw responsibility over English broadcasting at them too.

S4C was campaigned for, established and so far run for a specific purpose. To broadcast in the Welsh language. You must remember that some of my friends were jailed during the campaign for a Welsh language channel. So remember the sacrifice before you make your sweeping recomedation that S4C should cease to be an only Welsh language channel.

Ask yourself if you would be willing to go to jail over the call for an English medium nation channel for Wales? Didn’t think so. In the mean time leave the Welsh channel so much people sacrificed their freedom for alone.

Outside of Cardiff! What heresy is this? We live in devolved Wales, Heledd: Cardiffshire.

Many thanks for writing this article it is both timely and far-reaching in it’s conclusions. I would wish here to add a few comments as well as declare an interest. For two year I was CEO of the trade association that represents S4C’s suplliers and prior to that for six years was Head of the EU’s MEDIA Programme office in Wales – both posts gave me ample opportunity to see the effects of the policies of the current regime at S4C on the production sector and the wider creative industries in Wales.

I too feel extremely strongly about how the cutrrent management at S4C have pursued their vision of creating a consolidated sector over the past five years. However in any debate about S4C – and it’s high time we had one – it’s important to seperate S4C’s value as an institution to Wales and the Welsh language from the policies of a particular management regime. Regimes change but the value of television in the Welsh language is enduring and this must be remembered.

The extent and quality of public debate in Wales around S4C and it’s cultural and economic impact do a severe injustice to both the value of the organisation and to Wales as a young democracy. The paucity of this debate grows out of a nervousness surrounding the funding of the channel and possible challenges the funding could face if disquiet with the service was to be sensed by the UK political establishment. In a devolved Wales this is utterly astonishing. Even if S4C continues to be funded solely from Westminster surely we have both the democratic legitimacy and sophistication as a young polity to defend it’s value to Wales.

I can only share my suspicion that both the current management at S4C and the S4C Authority are content with this democratic deficit as it ensures a lower level of focus and accountability on their activities. This brings me to respond to your main point regarding the policy of mainly commissioning ‘larger’ prioduction companies and it’s effect on the creative sector in Wales and the production economy in North Wales.

This policy stems from the belief that lager companies are inherently more ‘competitive’ in terms of attracting work from UK network and international broadcasters and new media markets (a long term strategic goal of the production sector in Wales ) and is rooted in the Welsh Assembly Governments Creative Industries Strategy of 2004 – which has now been discredited and is in the process of being replaced following a review by Prof. Ian Hargreaves. The vision was that the Assembly Government support for the creative industries would be used to create a small number of production ‘powerhouses’ in Wales better suited to winning work from outside Wales. This strategy was to run concurrently with S4C’s strategy of commissioning fewer and larger companies.

It is important to bear in mind here of course that these policies were incepted at the zenith of the political culture that pervaded the New Labour years of a closenes between government and industry and a tendency
for government to ‘choose’ the winners in some industrial sectors from amongst their friends. Coupled with light touch regulatory regimes this New Labour approach to industrial structuring saw the temporary suspension of the usual tenets of capitalism such as open competition and transparency. Of course in Wales the Gramscian post-1999 politics of a Labour establishment trying to claw back it’s grip on civil society and the bonfire of the quangos with what Prof. Kevin Morgan described as being driven more by “control than accountability” created a heady atmosphere for policy making in the creative sector.

To a number of us working in this sector at the time it became apparent that there was what could be described as a rather pernicious element to the manner in which S4C were pursuing this strategy. Some were indeed of the view that it was at least partly motivated by political considerations.

The strategy of creating a consolidated sector has not worked. Network and internationally funded production in Wales is even lower now than when the strategy was launched. Why ? it’s a difficult question to answer but the removal of many of the competitive forces in the sector and the implicit guarantee to the surviving producers that S4C are now dependent on them would be one way of explaining it. Another might be to question the manner in which the companies that have been allowed to survive were selected ? Was it on quality of programming produced ? was it on the basis on entrepreneurial vision ? or was it something else entirely ? It is also fair to say – in the context of this policy as an ‘industrial’ strategy that the financial performance of the production houses selected as these ‘pathfinder’ companies has at best been anaemic.

Serious questions ought to be asked of the S4C management and Authority on these issues. Was it appropriate that public money was used in this manner to force consolidation on a sector ? On the basis of what legal advice did they deem this an appropriate strategy ? Furthermore how can it be explained that in six years not one new company has been formed to serve S4C’s needs (or rather are serving their needs ) despite the fact that the usual economic barriers to entry to in this industry in terms of capital and technology requirements are lower than they have ever been and that the regulatory environment in terms of rights retention favour producers over broadcasters. Can this be explained by the fact that there was a tacit recognition in the sector that S4C were not ‘open’ to new entrants ? If that was the case then they were acting beyond their powers as a publicly funded body in suppressing competition and entrepreneurship.

As noted above it is time for an informed and intyelligent debate. Diolch yn fawr Heledd for raising this and giving us the opportunity to debate it on this site.

Gwion Owain.

First: it is distinctly Welsh and you hear Welsh spoken (albeit with subtitles for us hard of learning!). It’s a quality that Radio Wales has (sometimes) but BBC Wales almost never – apart from a Bore da, when was the last Welsh you heard on the BBC? It would be hard for a casual visitor to our media to know that there was a language other than English – surely the media should reflect that in all its output?

Second: although we are no longer Pobyl y Cwm devotees (it’s gone downhill sadly like most soaps) there is some programming that excels: we’ll be welcoming back this week a great gardening programming, 4Wal has had great moments revealing wales’ heritage (the hotel series a bit off piste we felt!), and some one-offs like the programme on Barley Saturday (we were there!) have a real importance in reflecting (with humour and high entertainment value) the community that is Wales. And then there was Belonging!

One problem – yes, apart from maintaining quality, is how to make good and great programming accessible to monoglot English speakers. Press coverage is not existent – and even the Western Mail’s saturday magazine roundup features are only in Welsh (a BIG bone of contention in this household – but I digress).

I would support some of the views here for a more bi-lingual approach – across both S4C and BBC Wales. It can – with skill and inventiveness – be done without sacrificing either language. Only when we feel completely at home with good television in either language can Wales be said to be a bilingual nation (and that doesn’t necessarily mean, in my book, everyone being fluent in both!). Digital tv (the Red Button) gives us the technical ability to do things undreamt of when S4C was created. Let’s get creative.