National Assembly for Wales

Well, I think one of the things that I would say is, just to pick up on the point about genres—. So, if we draw it back to Wales for a moment, if you take news, for example, I still think there's a considerable audience for television news on the linear channel. In the last 10 years we've actually increased the number of viewers watching the 6 o'clock news about Wales, over those 10 years, by share and by volume. So, there's something like 50,000 more viewers watching the 6 o'clock news about Wales on ITV than were doing so 10 years ago. So, I think we need to be conscious of the different changes to viewing habits by genre. I think some of the impacts on drama, there's a risk that we translate that into all genres, and we need to take that into consideration, particularly in a Welsh context.

And I think the other sort of aspect to that as well is that the content that we're providing, the trust that sits behind the news that we provide about Wales, for example, is a terrific commodity online. So, again, compared with say 10 years ago, not only are we growing audiences for television news, but that gives us the scale to create content that we can then distribute online. So, 10 years ago our online operation for video news in particular, because the internet was more text based—. Now the internet is all about stories being told through video, it's something that we do, and we're seeing huge growth in the consumption of trusted news about Wales on those online platforms.

So, I think, in all answers to all the questions I think we're going to give, it is a very complex picture. But I think if you draw it back down to Wales, I think the essential point I would want to get across is that the role that television news plays in Wales remains really important for a significant number of people and that there is the opportunity to grow that audience if you get some things right terms of what you do. And then what we have managed to do as well is not only create an audience online for that trusted content, but that has given us the scale to also then provide content for other broadcasters. So, we are then providing current affairs in the Welsh language for S4C.

And as Owen was saying, one of the things that we're very keen to do is to explore how we can tell current affairs stories through the Welsh language for younger people. And, again, we're seeing some very exciting developments through S4C's investment in younger journalists telling stories for younger audiences. So, our coverage, for example, of the Welsh election through the platform that we created—the brand we created online, called Dim Sbin, was really popular with a young audience. So, I think that if you look at it right across the piece, you've got news that is trusted from ITV, which is being, yes, consumed by an older age group, but that same journalism has the potential to reach younger audiences about Wales. If you sit that in the context of the provision of news about Wales in Wales, I still think it makes a really important contribution.

I think it is important to put some numbers around some of these things, just in terms of what people are doing, because it is, as Phil says, a complicated picture. I think what's interesting is that young people consume more of our content on demand. So, about 30 per cent of 16 to 34 tv consumption in Wales is actually on demand, certainly for ITV, for younger people. But, I think also, actually, younger people are still watching quite a bit of linear television, particularly certain genres. So, drama, I think, is a different category, but I think that if you look at entertainment, if you look at sport and if you look at news, you still have pretty decent consumption of linear tv.

Actually, our hypothesis is that that live content—that live channel—is going to continue to have resonance and importance for quite a long time to come. If you look at the numbers, about one hour and 49 minutes, I think, of 16 to 34 consumption per week was actually linear in Wales. Yes, of course, there's twice as much streaming video on demand viewing from those aged 16 to 34 than the average. So, they're doing different things, but I think the linear, live experience, bringing a mass audience together, will continue to be really quite important for Wales and for the whole of the UK.

For all of us, as broadcasting organisations, there's an importance in terms of our ability to bring the whole of the UK together, because we reach, I think, pretty much everybody in Wales, as ITV, every year, and that includes more or less every 16 to 34-year-old, who will engage with ITV in some form—our linear channel—every year.

Just briefly, because I agree with everything that's been said, I would say that if we're going to maintain the success of the public service broadcasters within the UK context, particularly with younger audiences, the intervention required, in terms of regulation around prominence, is critical. It won't happen simply through the creative success of the public broadcasters. We have a strong ecology in the UK because it's been heavily regulated and it's created genuine competition between the public broadcasters, and those public broadcasters have been deliberately given significant prominence on the key consumption platforms.

Ofcom has come up with some very clear recommendations in that space. I think the sooner we can see that turn to legislation to ensure that on all of the key platforms—all of the smart television platforms—the key UK broadcasters have the prominence they require, I think is critical. I think creativity is, obviously, the No. 1 ingredient, but allied with that you require an intervention to make sure people can find the content easily.

David, are you with us?

Diolch yn fawr, Gadeirydd. You caught me in the act then. [Laughter.]

Sorry. I thought you were checking something on your—[Inaudible.].

I was on my device, but it just came up with the BBC's site on football fixtures, which gives you an idea of what interests—

I'm very happy to take questions on that. 

Well, I was on there to see when the licence fee was first introduced because I don't think—. And I was doing that whilst you then called me, Chair. I don't think it's quite as old as the BBC, but it was brought in fairly early—late 1920s, I think, but, anyway, I can be corrected—when the only broadcast services were the BBC's, and I know then ITV came along in the 1950s, and from the mid 1980s, I suppose we just had this proliferation. So, how robust is the licence fee model at the moment? Because we're already going to have a fairly deep debate about it, it seems to me, politically. My assumption is that you'll get through this round, but the next one, that debate may have gone a lot further in fundamentally questioning this type of taxation. So, where do you think you are and what are the most robust arguments, really, to defend the current model?

Well, I think you're right: there are some stages. I mean, it's clear that the new Government wants to look at the particular question of decriminalisation. That's an area that John Whittingdale looked at in 2015, and actually against his original instinct, came to a view that decriminalisation would be a retrograde step; it would be more expensive and create more risk in terms of the secure funding of public services.

Just to remind committee, where we are in the process is that we obviously have the charter through to 2028, but there is a commitment to a review of the licence fee funding level in 2021 in readiness for the 2022 financial year. But I think the BBC view on this is simply that whenever we have gone—and we do this consistently—and given audiences a range of funding options for the BBC, nobody likes tax, but consistently the least worst option is the licence fee. And there's a lot of discussion—'Could the BBC have a subscription model?', 'Could it move to all of those things?'. There are lots of good creatives in the BBC who can do anything, but it wouldn't be the BBC, and it wouldn't fundamentally be an organisation that, in a sense, is uniquely committed, on a UK level, to serving everybody and giving value to all audiences, and that is the fundamental principle of the licence fee. That is why it is effectively levied on every household, because it is a contract in which the BBC reciprocates by ensuring that the portfolio of programmes and services it delivers serves every audience.

And, I think, if we move away from that—and there are plenty of alternative European models to the licence fee structure in the UK—but if we move away from a universal principle that everybody pays a little in order that everybody gets value, I think you would simply change the nature of the organisation. That's a conversation and a debate we should be up for, but I don't think the BBC's universal ethos would remain intact if you fundamentally shifted its funding model.

And do you find—?

Owen.

Sorry.

Just to build on that point, I suppose. The principle of Government intervention is normally around policy and market failure, and I think the Reithian tenets that broadcasting is about—educate, inform and entertain—still hold true and possibly, are more powerful now than they were even then.

We have a world at the moment where people's visibility of information is being constricted. That's the only way you can describe the way that's happening and the way that algorithms typically drive things. That's what they're designed to do. So, I think the fundamental question is: in today's broadcasting economy, is there still a role and is there still a need for the type of services that BBC, S4C and others provide? And I would think that there are still probably fairly clear arguments to say that a lot of the provision the BBC provides would not be provided were they not there.

Now, S4C's in quite an odd position because we've actually been funded by three different models. We've been funded through advertising; we've been funded through a direct grant from the Home Office; and we've been funded, increasingly, and will be entirely, through the licence fee from 2022 onwards, and each one of those has its own merits. But I think the fundamental principle for me is that where you have market failure, if you agree there's market failure, then a subscription model doesn't really tally with funding that type of activity.

Just to note the case for ITV in the sense of how it operates within the broadcasting ecology, obviously, we have to earn it before we can spend it, but we still operate on the principles of universality. So, everything that we produce is made universally available in Wales; it's made available free to viewers, which I think, increasingly, television content is not—or content that's consumed on television is not; and, of course, it's no direct cost to Welsh taxpayers. And I think, yes, of course, there's a really important debate around the licence fee, but I wouldn't want that to overshadow the contribution that commercial public service broadcasting makes, particularly in a Welsh context, because we provide content that has a broad range, that doesn't concentrate on specific genres. As I've said, we produce news, we produce current affairs, we produce the alternative to the BBC's news and current affairs in Wales. But we'll also produce high-end dramas and we'll also produce popular factual entertainment. So, we provide viewers with a whole range of content and the ability to discover content that they might not ultimately have come to the channel to watch. I think that those are also important points to make in the funding model conversation.

And Rhodri, I was going to move on, actually, to the decriminalisation issue, but it was the first thing you mentioned. Presumably, if it is decriminalised, the model is fundamentally weakened—is that your case? Because there's a whole issue of the salience, at the minute, of how pressing the licence fee is on individuals, particularly younger people, but if they had a fairly easy avenue not to pay and then lots of them didn't pay, the whole model would start to get weakened, and it would put you, the BBC, in a very different relationship to—. You say you have a relationship with households, it's almost a relationship with citizens, isn't it, directly, that you wouldn't have if your funding was via just general taxation, for instance?

That's right, and certainly, you can talk to a number of the other members of the European Broadcasting Union who've gone through those changes, where they've moved from licence fee levy to direct taxation. And it does fundamentally change the relationship with Government in terms of the separation that would be healthy in any settlement.

I think the point on licence fee evasion, if you decriminalised, when the independent review was done in 2015, the view was that it would be in the order of a £200 million-to-£300 million-per-annum impact on the licence fee. In many ways, I suspect—and this is my guess—the picture would be worse than that now because of the rise of more of the subscription video on demand services, so I think the incentive might be greater. I think there are significant risks around it.

The other point is that last year, five people were imprisoned for not paying the licence fee in the whole of the UK, and those five were imprisoned for multiple breaches of many different types of utility payments. So, this notion that decriminalisation—and there's an issue about burden on courts, I get that—but the issue of actually imprisonment is an extreme exception and is never, ever for the single offence of evading, specifically, the licence fee.

Just a point on that. I mean, of course, you can have something that's a criminal offence without having a penalty of imprisonment. We've just removed the penalty of imprisonment for non-payment of council taxes on the basis that if someone can't, there are plenty of means of recovering money. If someone has—[Inaudible.]—what on earth is the point, et cetera? So, you could have a slightly varied form of this because—

You could. And again, it's not my area of expertise, but my only nervousness about that comparison is I suspect there's a significant amount of the UK press that would give a profile to decriminalisation of the licence fee that they are not giving to the decriminalisation of council tax payments in Wales.

Yes, but it wouldn't be decriminalisation. All we'd be saying is that you keep it as a criminal penalty, but you just remove the imprisonment element, because if there are only five anyway, what on earth is the point? It adds an unpleasant flavour to something that, although it's a criminal offence, is effectively largely not dissimilar from a civil one.

That's right. The downside of moving to a civil issue rather than a criminal issue is the number of county court judgments that you would have against some of the poorest people in society. Some of the decisive evidence when John Whittingdale's independent review took place was, actually, if you move to a civil basis, what you end up with is a significant number of people who face county court judgments that they wouldn't have faced through the criminal route. 

You might have both, actually. 

You could have both, yes. 

Okay. That's fine. 

Diolch. David. 

I'd like to hear your reaction to the House of Lords select committee report on public service broadcasting that suggested that there'd be a BBC funding commission, or broadcasting funding commission or whatever, that brings a level of objectivity into the current relationship. Do you think that would strengthen the situation, and would it have any effect on these arguments about the robustness in the long-term future of this model?   

I think that the Lords recommendations are strong. I think they're consistent with the BBC's very clear view that we cannot—we cannot—do a licence fee settlement again in the way that the last two have been done. There has to be a level of open public discussion and transparency in the process. This is a civic good and there needs to be a civic discussion about the level of investment that goes into the BBC. So, I think the notion that there is some level of separation in terms of the review of the BBC, and a recommendation on funding being made independently of Government then going to Government and then being received by Government, feels to me a big step forward from the process that we've experienced the last two times.

And just to pick up on that House of Lords report, it sits against a bigger backdrop as well. I think one of the sub-headlines of their report was, 'You will miss it when it's gone.' At the last committee meeting, I used that tsunami sort of example: there's a real danger that, as policy makers and indeed us as broadcasters, our activity is we're on the beach and we're picking up litter, and it's absolutely a noble activity, and it's absolutely something we should be doing, but just out there on the horizon there's a tsunami coming down the track. That's a debate that Ofcom has provoked around Small Screen: Big Debate. There is a big debate to be had about the whole future of the system of public service broadcasting, which obviously includes commercially funded public service broadcasting as well as that supported by the licence fee. 

In our excellent brief here that our researchers prepared, we have got the quote from Lord Hall. It seems almost to reduce the process to parody:

'I feel very, very strongly that this mustn't happen again',

that is, the last way it was negotiated.

'It happened in 2010 over a period of a few days, behind closed doors, and it happened again in 2015.'

So, the whole process is a rushed one. Ministers can deal with the decision-making process and the officials—. It doesn't really seem a very strategic way to deal with these things. But if it is more open and transparent, you've really got to nail these issues, haven't you, about why the model is still robust? Because an open process, presumably, would be open to all sorts of people to go to the commission and say, 'Okay, but it should be much lower and just covering public service and a bit more, like sport or whatever.' 

I don't think the BBC should be fearful of those debates. There were 180,000 submissions in favour of the BBC during that last process. Of course, there are legitimate criticisms of the BBC in some of its coverage, but my view is that it still commands very, very significant support across the country. I think the range of what it does, the depth of what it does, its role in Welsh and UK society—those are arguments we should make confidently. The only other thing I would say is, if the BBC was frustrated by the last two licence fee processes, I expect S4C was even more frustrated.

I was going to ask Owen—[Inaudible.]—mentioned S4C in this context, but presumably that could work in that model of a funding commission as well. What would your views be on that? 

I think a certain degree of objectivity is always helpful in any discussion over funding, in particular. We've had significant cuts in funding over the past decade. The situation is a little more stable now, which is great, but how do you guarantee a suitable funding model, I suppose, is one of the big nirvanas of all government. And I think the fact that, sometimes, these decisions are made behind closed doors is to the detriment of what a proper settlement would be. We have a statutory recommendation that we are suitably funded. You define 'suitable'. So, I think anything that provides more transparency, but also provides a greater surety and that actually links the public good with the public value put on something, is probably a good thing.

I was going to move to ITV, so you may want to incorporate—[Inaudible.] The ITV funding model, I think, for nearly 40 years was a very robust one. I think it's fair to say that, for quite extensive public service obligations, you had a monopoly, in effect, over broadcast advertising, which was highly lucrative and therefore justified the public service commitments. That model is under real pressure, but is it still robust enough, as long as we're realistic, presumably, with the public service obligations to provide a universal service in terms of news coverage and being available to everyone? How do you think this model is likely to be sustained?

Well, 'It's changing', is the answer. The advertising model is absolutely changing. And of course, the primary responsibility, in the first instance, is for ITV, because it's our business and we want to continue to innovate, which we're doing. We're investing, for example, in addressable advertising through the InMobi platform, which is an online advertising training platform. We're looking at investing in ITV Hub, which is clearly an important future source of advertising revenue, particularly as younger viewers can see more and more of their content on demand and through linear simulcast. So, the first responsibility is definitely for ITV. 

I think what I would say, though, is that the backdrop to this entire conversation really is about globalisation. It's about globalisation of advertising, globalisation of content production and globalisation of distribution. And I think what you're going to see over the next five to 10 years, and we're already seeing very actively, is a set of global distribution platforms, not very many of them, which are doing deals globally with a set of advertisers and content providers. I think the exam question for all of us, in a way, in the UK is: how do we create a national broadcasting ecology to sit alongside that global ecology? Because otherwise, the global ecology will win.

The truth is we see, in dealings with the platforms, with tv manufacturers who are becoming tv platforms, as well as Android, which is increasingly powering tv platforms, which is Google, and Amazon, who are about to enter the tv distribution market in a very big way with television sets in the UK—what we see is that they do deals with global players. They've done deals mostly with Netflix, with Amazon, with YouTube, soon to do deals with Disney+ and with Apple TV, for the biggest and most prominent display on your home screen when you turn on your device.

That's a little bit of what Rhodri was talking about in terms of prominence. So, that prominence debate, I think, is going to be fundamentally important as to whether there is space on those devices, on the recommendations, on the things that are thrown up by Alexa and so on, for UK content, for Welsh content, that speaks to a local audience, and a nation's audience, alongside of course the terrific content being made by Netflix and Amazon and others. Those two things need to co-exist, but I think you're going to need to intervene as a state to create that space, because there are asymmetric economics between the global economics and the local economics. 

What I would say also is that there are two other aspects of that. It's not just about prominence—this is a terribly important point, which the Lords did alight on—there's a question about inclusion. So, you have to be there at all. So, just saying, 'Actually, our channels ought to be prominent', is not enough, because clearly there are scenarios in which platforms say, 'Well, in which case, we won't have them, because we've done this deal with the global players, and actually it's very lucrative, it's a global deal, and there's somebody in the UK knocking on the door saying, "We'd like to be prominent", well, that's inconvenient, so we won't have it.' So, I think you've got to be on as well, as prominent.

And I think the third bit is, 'On who's terms?', because you can be on, but what we know about the platforms is—and we know this from what happened to the press, for example, when their consumption shifted more and more online. What happened was that their economics were undermined by the platforms. We know, for example, that Amazon's standard terms globally are to take 30 per cent of your advertising revenue if you appear as an app on their on-demand platform—and, and, and. And that's not just about that, it's about ad skipping, it's about recording, it's about ways in which a relatively small number of platforms are going to increasingly extract increasing amounts of value from national players, undermining the economics of commercial PSBs.

So, you've got to address those three elements, I think. And I think platforms, as the press are absolutely now—. There was a very interesting article by Mark Thompson yesterday—now at The New York Times, formerly of the BBC—talking about how platforms are going to have to make more of a contribution to fund, for example, journalism, going forward. I think the same's going to be true of tv.

Okay. Thank you. Again, Mick Antoniw.

I'll just ask a couple of things that intrigue me out of this. When we're, for example, considering the options available to the BBC—how it operates, what its status is and so on—we know, with the licence fee, you can predict, more or less, the amount of income. You work against that, and basically you get what you pay for. And what you pay for is what you actually want. So, the whole key thing with the BBC, for example, is what the people want the BBC to actually be. And that seems to me to be a crucial part of the payment.

With ITV, you work in a slightly different way, because you're a commercial body, you are dependent on the income you get from advertising. So, it depends on your commercial viability, which means your profitability. So, in order to assess the degree of obligations upon that, you have to assess what the value is. What is the profitability of ITV? Does it make a profit? I get very confused by all this, because I see Netflix—one of the biggest-growing producers of material—and I understand they don't make a profit. You wonder how that can possibly carry on when the house of cards comes tumbling down, if it will come tumbling down, I don't know. But with ITV, we seem to have these debates, but I've never really understood what the level of profitability is for ITV. And that seems to me to be the framework within which we'd assess what the degree of quality of your obligations are.

There are a few things there. I think the first thing is, if you take ITV as a whole, it's a series of different businesses. So, there's a broadcasting business, there's a production business, and then there's a distribution business. Arguably, our production and distribution businesses are not relevant, I think, for this conversation. Because that's just about making programmes for other people. So, that's a bit like—I don't know—if we also had a sideline in making cars. It's a different sort of business, making programmes for Amazon or for whoever we make programmes for, the BBC, for Sky, whoever it is.

If you look at the broadcasting business, we do make money in the broadcasting business, we do make a profit, we are a profit-driven organisation. Inevitably, we've got shareholders who expect a commercial return. I think the question, though, in relation to PSB obligations, because we're competing with a host of other people who have no obligations, the critical question for us is: what is it that we get, as it were, in value from intervention, whether that's prominence or spectrum? What's that worth to us that we wouldn't otherwise have if we were purely a commercial broadcaster?

And the judgment from our point of view is: is that value sufficient to pay for things? Particularly nations' and regions' news, which is very expensive. Is it sufficient to enable us to continue to do that? We'd very much like to continue to do it. We're committed and we want to be a PSB. But the truth is, because we're competing with all of these players who have many of the same shareholders that we do, we need to continue to make a viable commercial return. And it does mean that it's difficult for us to take on obligations that don't make a profit.

I understand that. What I'm trying to get at is: what level of profit do you make? So, on broadcasting, what's your turnover and what's your profit?

The broadcasting business: we make, off the top of my head—I'd have to write to you with what the profits are. We make substantial profits on our broadcasting business, and—

It's just that those figures are relevant.

Those figures are in the public domain; they're in our annual report. Our advertising revenue, I think, was about £1.8 billion or so last year. I can't remember what the exact level of profits is. But of course we make a profit, we make a reasonable rate of return for our shareholders; that's a number in the public domain. But I would suggest that's not entirely the answer to the question.

Because you can look at Sky and say, 'Well, actually, what level of profit do Sky make?', and they make very substantial profits. You could look at any number of other players—Disney or others. Yes, there are people who have a different model—Amazon and Netflix have a different model, which is about sheer growth, and they have a set of capital providers who are prepared to provide capital on the basis of capital growth rather than on the basis of profit and return. So, there are other people in the market operating in a slightly different way. But the result is the same thing. It's all about levels of profit, and therefore people look at us and put us alongside other players.

I do feel a bit like I'm in an episode of Yes Minister a little bit, because I've lost track completely of that, because it just seems to me the core factor is this: in assessing what should be the obligations, the actual value of it is dependent on the profit you can make and the profit you're likely to predict for future years. It's just that I have great difficulty understanding what the quality of the outcome of the discussion with Ofcom and the regulations are without at least having some idea as to what the value of the contracts are. 

I think, from my perspective of that, the way I like—. I agree with you it is really quite difficult to understand. But, if you imagine an ITV that doesn't have the PSB obligations upon it, then that creates your baseline. So, if we have—and we do have and we're very proud to have—the obligations that we have, what is that worth to us in terms of extra revenue? Once you get above that ceiling of 'ITV would make a "profit" in Wales were it not to be a PSB', then really what you're asking is, 'So, by being a PSB, how much is that worth extra to us and how much are we having to pay in terms of the obligations?', and it's that balance between those two figures. So, it's not the overall profitability of the broadcasting business, it's the difference between those two. 

And to reassure you— 

Can we get to the regulation questions, because we are running quite substantially—

Well, yes—. Okay. I was going to come on to Ofcom, and I wasn't sure whether to start off by just putting it bluntly that it's gelignite or—[Inaudible]—in terms of Ofcom, but is the model of regulation of Ofcom fit for the digital age?

Shall I start with that? I'll just start off by—and it's relevant to your question—finishing the previous one, which is actually to reassure you there is a rigorous process of looking at what benefit we get, which we went through with Ofcom around the time that we renewed the licence in 2012-13, where they looked very hard at what's the value of these benefits and what are you, ITV, delivering in return for those benefits, absolutely making sure that we weren't getting anything that was unreasonable or unjustifiable, based on the cost of the obligation and the benefit that we were getting in return. So, there is quite a rigorous process around looking at that to make sure that the public get the best value from intervention. So, to reassure.  

On the model, I think Ofcom, from our point of view, is a highly effective regulator. It's well-resourced, it hires good people, it's shown itself to be quite sophisticated, quite evidence-led, which is important, and we have a high-quality conversation, I would say, with Ofcom. We, frankly, don't agree with everything they do, but that's as you would hope and expect, and we think that—. Nothing stands still—they need to keep working hard and maintain the culture and the approach to regulation that they've had, but we do have confidence in the model of regulation.

So, gelignite for you. What about the BBC? 

Well, I'd cut and paste that answer in for the BBC as well. Clearly, we're under a new regulatory regime since the new charter. It's a pretty robust relationship. As Magnus was saying, it's a very evidence-based relationship, which has always been Ofcom's hallmark.

I think that it's probably just worth saying, in relation to some of the discussions we've had to this point around the growing power of the west coast tech companies in the US, that that will require intervention beyond the remit of Ofcom—and I think the UK Government is currently looking at recommendations—because that's really a trade and industry question of how the UK Government, certainly post Brexit, wants to exercise or how it wants to intervene into that space, and that's not really in Ofcom's gift at the moment.

So, I think, in the broadcast space, the traditional media spaces, we have a really solid and robust relationship with Ofcom. I think there's a regulatory and intervention question beyond Ofcom that is very relevant to the conversation we've had to this point. 

Which is?

Which is, how do you give—? Take the point about advertising: if you look at search engine advertising in the UK, 90 per cent of that revenue is going to Ofcom [correction: Google]; display ad advertising, 50 per cent is going to Facebook. These are extraordinary shifts in commercial advertising that we've seen over recent years, and extraordinary consolidations of data in a small number of companies that have enormous sectoral power. And I think—I forget, is it Justin Furman, I think, that has just finished a review for the UK Government on what regulatory path the UK Government might want to take in terms of its relationship with those tech companies. That is beyond the remit of Ofcom is all I'm saying. So, when we talk about how we protect space for UK PSBs and UK media within this new, global ecology, we would have to go beyond the current powers of Ofcom.

Yes, and it's an environment that's continually changing. Just one final question, because I think you've answered some other points I wanted to ask: obviously, one of our concerns is the extent to which the regulation by Ofcom actually delivers what we want within Wales—that is Welsh language, Welsh English language, Welsh-based material. Obviously, that's varied in terms of the two positions that you have—well, three positions; S4C, BBC and with ITV. Generally, do you think that the regulatory powers and the way in which Ofcom works actually delivers probably what is the best deal for Wales within the environment we're in? 

I think the deal that Wales has is largely a function of the contribution that S4C and BBC and ITV make to that space—it's not a function of the regulation. Certainly, the BBC's contribution to Wales significantly pre-exists Ofcom's taking on the reins of the regulator a couple of years ago. A question I'm often asked is how much autonomy do we have in Wales, in terms of our decision making. I've been in this role for seven years. I can, hand on heart, say that I cannot remember a moment where London, whatever 'London' is, directs decision making on the ground in Wales. So, what we have in Wales—and we're happy to be here, accountable for those decisions we take in Wales, but they are decisions very much made in Wales by the broadcasters independently.

So, are we really just one step away from effective devolution of broadcasting, and would that make a significant change? Is it a significant step forward? Are we ready for that?

I suppose there are a few questions with that whole question of devolution of broadcasting. The formal answer is that the BBC doesn't have a position. 

Yes, of course.

I suppose the questions—

We have to ask it anyway.

Well, of course you do. [Laughter.] I suppose the questions you might want to ponder are—. There's a number. One goes back to the discussion we've just had: if you believe that the fundamental issue facing all public broadcasting in the UK is globalisation, what regime, what regulatory regime, is most likely to be robust in creating space for public media? It's interesting—it's the US federal authorities and it's the EU that have been the most robust in those relationships to this point. The UK is now going to have to step up, on leaving the EU, and take on some of that regulatory oversight. Would devolving to Wales assist in that process or not?

The second question I would ask is a funding question, which is that there's a very significant amount of licence fee income coming to Wales. Would a devolved settlement match or exceed that? I suppose the third question, which is a more philosophical one, is that I think we know that audiences in Wales want both UK services and Welsh services. Give them a binary choice of one or the other and you'll get a pretty short answer from them. So, how do you ensure that there's balanced provision in Wales between distinctive representation of Wales as a nation and that bringing together of the whole UK? That's a non-answer. [Laughter.]

No, no, it was very helpful—it's a very helpful comment.

We'll come on to some more of those issues later, but, John, you've got questions on prominence. A lot of them have been raised, but can you raise some of the ones that you think haven't? 

Yes. Diolch, Cadeirydd. Yes, you've mentioned it, and, obviously, it's a significant factor, isn't it, in terms of public service broadcasters and guaranteeing a strong present and future. So, in terms of prominence and the electronic programme guide, is there anything in particular you would point the committee to in terms of what might need to be changed in terms of that guide?

Do you want me to go? I think that the first thing to say is that the current regime is clearly only about linear broadcast services. And it's served us well, because, if you turn on a television set, you will find the top five services are the main PSB services—S4C is right up there in Wales—and that's a system that serves us well. And it's done two things, I think. The first is to make sure that people can easily access those services. Secondly, it's helped to maintain a mass audience for those services and create and underpin a set of national conversations, which I think we've done well out of as the UK, and the crucial thing is it hasn't actually deterred investment in multi-channel tv.

We have an incredibly flourishing multi-channel market, a flourishing SVOD market. We are in the lead in Europe, actually, in what we've done. So, we have achieved this alchemy, actually, of a balance between PSB, the national conversations, and a set of global services—often US services—which have provided real choice and complement. What we're really saying is you need to maintain that system. It kind of works and it works for everybody, and the way to do that is to make sure that you transition the world of linear prominence into a world of on demand, into a world of streamed services and new ways of accessing content.

So, it isn't just the case that you access content clearly through the new channels now: it's through tiles on the front screen of user interfaces, where you can click on a Netflix tile or a YouTube tile and get into the world of Netflix, the world of Amazon, the world of BBC or ITV. So, it's the front screen, but it's also recommendations, and recommendations are increasingly driven by algorithms, which are often nudged in the direction of commercial relationships. So, it's not entirely that they're neutral—they're actually influenced by a set of underlying commercial relationships, often global relationships, which result in more content from particular players being surfaced. So, I think we need to look pretty holistically at how you do this. 

Now, it's not a trivial challenge, but we absolutely think that it's possible to do it, and to work out a regime that ensures that you transition from a world of linear prominence to on demand and stream prominence. But, as I said earlier, it's not just about prominence; it's about inclusion and it's about the balance, the fair balance, between the platform and the broadcast. Otherwise, the platform would simply take all the value from the content and actually it won't go back into investment in the content in the first place. 

Okay. In terms—. Sorry, Owen, did you want to come in?

Actually, just to build on Magnus's last point there, about the platform taking the value from the screen or the content, so to speak, one of the big myths is that digital makes it cheaper for broadcasters. The amount of money that S4C and others have had to pour into building platforms, to building apps that sit on these televisions, is quite considerable. The is-adeiledd—the infrastructure—that we have to use to service these new technologies is quite significant.

I think Ofcom's approach for the recent consultation for linear is to be welcomed. S4C were very strong supporters of what came from that. I think part of the purpose of the 'Small Screen: Big Debate' is about what's going to happen in the digital wild west, so to speak, for the future. But that is critical to us, because of some of the reasons that Magnus mentioned before, about the fact that these new platforms now are so powerful that they could effectively create an asymmetry of information, excluding people they do not want from a commercial perspective to be visible there—that's one that is very powerful and very worrying for us. We're a small player. We're a secondary channel compared to some of the big boys, so to speak.

The issue for us is that I would love to have the S4C app on every—. We have it on the Samsung tv. I'd love to have it on every LG tv, on every Panasonic tv, on every Sony tv. I would love to have it on the TiVo box, I would love to have it on the Virgin box, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, if I was given the freedom to do so—and that would be fantastic—I couldn't afford to do it, because the amount of money I would have to be diverting from the main screen would mean that it would have a material impact on the type of quality and breadth of programmes that I offer to my core audience. So, there are very, very big questions about the resource implications that come with the freedom that I think we probably need to discuss in the same realms. 

Okay. John. 

Yes, just in terms of internet-connected devices, then, would it be possible to guarantee prominence for public service broadcasters? And, if so, how do you think that might be achieved?  

So, the Ofcom proposals cover internet-connected televisions—so, smart tvs—for, if you like, packaged content providers. And I think—. The BBC's view on that is the Ofcom recommendations are right and the sooner we legislate on those the better, because this is a fast-moving space. If I have a reservation, it's simply that social media is still outside this conversation, and what public service obligations sit against the likes of Facebook or YouTube and what level of ambition we have to ensure that—. Because YouTube, with children particularly, is a really dominant player now. There are no public service obligations sitting against them and there are no proposals on the table for doing that, and I think in the next two or three years that will become more and more of a concern as we start to understand the cultural impact of the amount of consumption that's going on of those services with younger audiences.

It's a very interesting point. We've just launched a new service that you may know about called The Rundown, which is an online service on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook for 14 to 17-year-olds, because we were very conscious that they were consuming news, if at all, in very different ways and not necessarily going all the time to broadcast programmes. What we've done is set up this news service as a bit of a trial, actually, and what's really interesting is it's done in a form that is very familiar to them if they're using Instagram regularly, and actually we've been amazed by how much demand there has been for that. So we've had 8.5 million views of that service since we launched it last September. It's nothing to do with traditional linear television. It's not even to do with our own on-demand service—it's entirely on Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, but it's quite successful, and what it also gives you is the ability to swipe up and go straight into the ITV News website. So if you want to look at a story in more detail, you can go onto the website, and it's cleverly done. We did a lot of research, and what we realised was that if you put it out at 3.45 p.m., the first thing children do when they come out of school, when they're finally allowed their phones again, is look at everything that's happened on Instagram while they were in school, and actually if you can capture them at that moment, they will look at the news service.

So, I completely endorse Rhodri's point: we need to be clever about how we think about these issues going forward because it's not just going to be about this packaging of tv services in the home, very important though that undoubtedly is going to be, and absolutely critical as that's going to be, there may be other things we need to look at too.

Perhaps I could just ask, in terms of Welsh audiences, is there anything distinctive and different in terms of the impact of these prominence issues on the audience in Wales?

Voice activation as well, in terms of the Welsh language.

Back at you. [Laughter.]

Was there anything that you wanted to add?

All I would add from an ITV perspective is that, underlying your question is that sense of the democratic deficit in a devolved Wales: is the electorate as informed as it could be? It's something that we absolutely take very seriously and our view around that is that, if we can increase the number of people watching 6 o'clock news about Wales, then that will be a good thing. And, over the last decade, that is in fact what we have done. So, as I've said earlier, there are now more people watching that 6 o'clock news programme, which is dedicated to Wales, which is dedicated to the devolved settlement in Wales, than were watching it 10 years ago. And then on top of that, as Rhodri and Owen have alluded to, that content, that trusted video content, we now have the opportunity to distribute that to younger people and younger audiences in Wales, and, indeed, beyond Wales. And we are seeing huge growth in that—I think something like 60 million views last year alone—and that's of content that is trusted news, impartial, about Wales. So, yes, of course, I'm not sitting here saying that there isn't a democratic deficit, and ITV in and of itself is not going to solve that problem, but what we can do is make a contribution that grows the number of people who are getting news about Wales, and we're doing that.

Okay. I'm aware of time. Thank you.

Again, I'd just echo what Rhodri's said. I suppose the question in my mind is: what is it that devolution is seeking to fix, or what is it that—you know, what's the problem that devolution is a solution to, I guess? A key question that immediately springs to my mind is that, often, with the devolution of the power to regulate in a certain area, the money flows behind that. Now, in the case of commercial PSBs, that wouldn't be the case. So, yes, you can absolutely see a structure where a body in Wales regulates the commercial provider, but, ultimately, there's no money that follows that. That's about the market in which those commercial operators operate. So, again, back to the question: what tools would that authority have, or the Assembly itself, to influence the market, which then comes back to the wider debate that we've just had, which is that that market is no longer confined by national borders or nation borders—we are now sitting within a global ecology—and how does that work?

I think also, just from a UK-wide perspective, what you wouldn't have, necessarily, are some of the efficiencies that you get, which I think Rhodri was referring to, from being part of a bigger system in terms of cost—in terms of cost and also, potentially, in terms of revenue, because, clearly, there are lots of things that we do as ITV centrally that don't have to be done in Wales. So, finance, HR—there's a lot of activity that's a shared cost, effectively, for the whole UK. And, interestingly, a lot of, increasingly, our competitors are actually sharing those costs across the whole world. So, Netflix has a budget for technology, for example, of $1.5 billion a year. That's a global budget that's spread across the whole world, and so they're at another level of efficiency compared to national players. And you do lose those efficiencies, if you choose—and it's a perfectly legitimate choice to make, but, if you choose to then have a smaller unit, as it were, of regulation, revenue, cost, you do lose those efficiencies in that conversation. 

So, absolutely, to Phil's point, I think you do need to work out what's the money equation here. That's the key question, actually: how do we support this? And that conversation is happening globally, nationally. It could happen on a nation basis, but it's harder to do it there. 

And going back to Rhodri's point as well, which is that all the evidence suggests—. At the moment, ITV, ITV Wales, is the most popular television channel in Wales in peak time. 

I don't accept that. [Laughter.]

Let's not have a fight now. [Laughter.]

I had to get that out in some way, for the record. [Laughter.]

And there are a number of reasons for that. Of course, it's as much to do with that we're the only commercial channel available in Wales, out of hundreds, that is making content for Wales, about Wales, in Wales. But it's also about the wider schedule that is enjoyed by people in Wales, just as much as it's enjoyed by people in Scotland, England and so on. So, again, in terms of what is it that devolution is trying to solve, the appetite from the viewer is for a broad mix of content that does mix UK with Welsh content. So, again, from a devolution perspective, what is it that we're trying to fix?

Okay. David Melding.

The area, obviously, that we ought to try and look at and deserves intense scrutiny is Welsh language broadcasting. I don't know of any federal, quasi-federal or decentralised state where the minority language broadcasting is the preserve of the state, and not the part of the state that has the minority language in it. By any sort of constitutional examination you'd find this a very strange position. So, this comes directly to S4C—and Owen, this is before your time, but I've got the scars on my back from looking at this issue. It's been repeatedly examined in terms of whether S4C should be devolved, and the strong pressure in the 2000s was, 'Do not do anything—leave it in London. The transparency and examination of our budget is fairly light; we don't want it subjected, necessarily, to a much more intense scrutiny process in the National Assembly, which could lead to all sorts of results that you may wish to have avoided'—this is a generic 'you', not a 'Owen would have wanted it avoided'. That's been part of the problem if we're really frank about it, isn't it?

This is slightly before my time, and, remembering we have to keep neutral about this and this is really the preserve of politicians, for S4C, we've had historical fluctuations about a successful relationship with UK Government, I think that's fairly honest to say. At the moment, we have a certain amount of stability, which is very welcome.

If it were to be devolved to Wales, there are clear advantages, some that are probably less so than they were a couple of years ago. The good thing, I think, since I've been here—. We've had the Euryn Ogwen review two years ago now. One of the major milestones, which probably wasn't realised quite as much as other facets of that review, was that it encouraged and welcomed S4C's co-operation with the Welsh Government. Now, that, for me, was welcome. We've made quite a lot of activity and quite a few gains in partnering with both the Welsh Government and other bodies since then, particularly around education and learners, and I think that there may be considerable—. There may be advantages that may come further through devolution, but then you would have to balance them with the bits that we would need to sort out: the funding model—does Wales have a licence fee—the economies of scale, which probably don't effect us quite as much, but we would still need to work out how do we react to the change of environment.

I think the biggest concern might be to work out how—. Although we're a Welsh body, and our purpose, obviously, is the furtherance of the Welsh language, we do two functions, increasingly. One is to ensure that the Welsh language is alive and is part of the fabric of our local communities in Wales. But what we have seen over the past decades is increasing movements of Welsh speakers outside of Wales, and probably one of our biggest areas of growth—running at about 20 per cent a year at the moment—is providing Welsh-language tv to people living across the UK. Now, this is why I say our role is becoming twofold, in that, yes, we need to keep the language alive in our communities, make it a living thing that we can discuss every day, but we are bringing together the diaspora of Welsh speakers across the UK as well. And my only point—and, as I keep repeating, everything is possible—is the fact that you would need then to tie up how the two probably differing regulatory systems meshed together without creating unnecessary bureaucracy across borders, so to speak. So, there are all sorts of areas to S4C. Because we're quite a—. To see us as specifically a Welsh organisation—we are a Welsh organisation, but we do reach out to Welsh speakers wherever they may be, and I think the ability to be able to do that seamlessly will always be a positive.

And, of course, shared governance models are completely common in a decentralised system. Indeed, we have one presently, in effect, on broadcasting, otherwise you all wouldn't be here, I'd politely point out. 

We don't have much time.

I was just going to mention that I do think the funding point—it's not a Welsh language point, it's a general point—is something—

It's material, I think.

It is material. I have seen plenty of documents from Cymdeithas yr Iaith. They point romantically at the Basque Country as an example of multi-channels in Basque on television and radio. The truth is that the funding from the licence fee coming to Wales for national services for Wales—not the Doctor Whos and the Casualties, just for national services in Wales—is significantly in excess of the funding that's going to Basque services, it's just that we choose to deliver it with a single channel rather than three channels, or with one radio station rather than four, and those are decisions we've made in Wales. But the funding is significantly in excess, and, for me, that's the elephant in the room in this whole conversation: in any question of devolution, do you end up with the web of funding and resources to continue to deliver at scale and at quality?

What I'd just add to that is that it is one thing to create the content, but then, as we heard in the earlier session, another important element is bringing an audience to that. Now, currently, ITV does both—it creates content for audiences in Wales and it brings a significant audience to that content. The most watched programme about the National Eisteddfod last year was on ITV. Now, part of the reason is that it was a brilliant programme, but another reason is because it sat in a schedule that is being watched and consumed in huge numbers by people in Wales.

Again, in terms of what it is that devolution is looking to fix, ITV does what ITV does: it makes it universally available to everybody in Wales; importantly, it is free to viewers—and I think that's really important in today's debate about television— and it does it at no direct cost to the taxpayer. I think whenever you're looking at new structures, which, by their very selves, carry inherent risk—creating something new in this environment is incredibly risky, as I think any previous experiment in this will demonstrate, and there's a real risk too that you increase the costs to Welsh taxpayers, and, indeed, Welsh viewers, in trying to achieve the aims you're trying to achieve.

Thanks. Just one final question: you've mentioned globalisation quite a bit, and Magnus even went as far as to say, well, Netflix has that global system of being able to downsize in terms of administration and such because of that global outreach. Am I reading into that that, if you go smaller, into the system that would be if you devolved broadcasting, that would then hinder that progress in terms of being able to compete with the big players, because, of course, they can be much more rationalised in how they do their work? At the moment, at a UK level—apart from S4C, I would imagine—they would have the back-up of a bigger system around them, by virtue of the current structures. Is that how I'm seeing what you're saying?

Absolutely. From my perspective, the synergies that Magnus mentioned in terms of—. Because ITV is a UK-wide broadcaster, it means that the value that does sit within the licence we can maximise onscreen for viewers in Wales. Otherwise, if we didn't have that sort of structure, (1) what channel does it sit on, in terms of just how you reach an audience for that, but then we would then have to spend some of that value in the licence on backroom things, such as human resources, transmission, payroll, et cetera, et cetera—technology. Technology is a big, big driver of the creativity of our industry as well. So, absolutely, that sort of scale on a UK level works to the advantage and the benefit, I would argue, of viewers in Wales.

Okay.

The only thing I'd add to that is that, if you take the BBC, the BBC is used by about 0.5 billion people a week across its UK and global world services. So, as Magnus has described much more eloquently, we're in a global landscape, we're up against huge global competitors. There are inherent advantages to scale. It doesn't mean you can't do alternative models—it doesn't mean there aren't other, maybe, upsides of looking at different models, but all I would say to the committee is: don't underestimate how much scale is important at the moment, in terms of protecting and safeguarding UK public service broadcasting, because we're up against giants.

Maybe the smaller venues. Is it okay if I go in between?

Yes, you can speak in any language.

I think what we're seeing is maybe those smaller—you know, where emerging artists would really kind of start getting their craft dialled in; those kinds of 100-to-200-capacity venues. I think they just struggle, you know? It's like, smaller venues, fewer people and less revenue. Kind of keeping them buoyant and being able to have money for sound systems and promotion and things like that. I think we're definitely seeing little bit of a surge in closures for some of those smaller music venues. Would you—?

I think we're battling a wider context as well, aren't we? I mean, I can't speak for everywhere, but I was talking to these guys who are from south Wales, and it seems like it's the same thing there as well, where it's a cultural thing as well in terms of young people going to shows. So, maybe there's something there that needs to be addressed. And, of course, with social media and the availability of a phone, or whatever. But it's so important, I think, to push those on, and unless you change people's perceptions, which I think is possible, unless you have a hub, and put importance on people coming together and socialising, then—. I think there's that aspect to it as well, is what I'm saying, you know?

There's no shortage of talent. In fact, if anything, I would say in the last few years, bands of all sorts of really eclectic, actually, more than anything—it's not even one genre—I would say that we really should be going to town. We're at a point where it's so exciting, musically. You know, it feels like there's a real kind of—I don't know. In moments of austerity comes, sometimes, the best art, so, you know, we should really be making a big, big—

So, you're saying it's more about the smaller venues that are not there as much; they're closing down or they're not able to sustain themselves.

Yes, and it is a tricky thing. It's definitely a very complicated thing. I think we need to look at models of other independent venues that are successful and take something from them: how do they do it really well? It's definitely not an easy thing to do.

Do any of you guys have a view? Andrew.

Yes, definitely. I think affordability is one thing for getting young people into venues. We were discussing ticket prices and things. When we generally put shows on in south Wales, if it's a three-band bill, for instance—you know, up-and-coming Welsh bands—we never charge more than £10, and quite often, we charge £5, and that's just to sort of cover the costs of the event. I don't think any of the bands, to be honest, are actually making any profit from these types of shows. What do you think, Rhys?

Yes. The only sort of income you see with original bands, in my opinion, is off their own backs with their own merchandise. You don't really get any sort of CD plays anymore down to streaming services, but we take that as a hit, because it's worldwide. But, yes, I think that's the only sort of income a band can get, really, if they do it themselves; they fund someone to create the T-shirts for them and the designs, and then they sell them on the night to create a profit for themselves, but that's probably about it, really.

And in terms of going back to the venues, do you think there's enough of a distribution of different sized venues? I know that there's going to be potentially another one in Cardiff—a big, big venue—but when you're looking at the pyramid, do you think there are enough in Wales for bands to be able to progress through the system, or is it that they have to go out and do some of the big, big gigs?

Speaking for north Wales, I don't feel like there's enough, no. Growing up in Mold, yes, it was difficult and you did feel like you had to go outside, which is a shame. The closest for us, I suppose, was Wrexham, and that was Central Station, which has closed down. And you know, you have Tŷ Pawb now; there are efforts being made, but I definitely feel like there should be more around about where we're from—around the Mold area. You've got Bangor, and Caernarfon, which does have its scene, but I think some more investment in that part of north Wales would definitely be welcome.

And you guys?

There are definitely more venues, I think, as you say, in south Wales. Obviously, with the M4 corridor, it makes it a bit easier for bands as well. I'm from Neath; there's only actually one live music venue left in Neath, which is the Duke of Wellington, which is just a pub and it's free entry. And some nights, that can still be empty and putting bands on. You've got about three in Swansea. The boys are from up Rhymney and Tredegar way. You've got the Ebbw Vale Institute—

And The New Crown as well, which is just a pub.

In Merthyr?

Yes, that seems to be doing okay.

Yes. The owner, George, he started with very minimal stuff there, and he's done everything right and now he's drawing in people like—who's he had? The Calling are there now. He's just had Kevin in—I say 'Kevin'; he was Kevin in American Pie. [Laughter.] He's in a covers band and he travelled all the way over and he played at the Crown. So, George has—I don't want to say 'washed-up celebrities' or anything like that, that's probably the wrong term, but—

They're not up-and-coming people, they're people who have possibly already—

Who've had hits and stuff like that in the past, and who are known to the public eye. And he's doing really well, George—I take my hat off to him.

Heritage acts. David just said 'heritage acts'—that's lovely. [Laughter.] Sorry, Rhys. I interrupted you.

Yes, like we were talking about, the venues around south Wales, within the Valleys themselves, there aren't many that can draw a crowd. But I was talking to these guys—I think there's a love missing for the venues, and you get a lot of owners who don't know the industry, or they don't know the trade. So it would be good for them to study it a bit more to help bands as well.

Yes, if there was something for promoters, maybe, and venues, because the only real market, if you're a musician, I think, in south Wales at the moment, at the grassroots level—. There are plenty of venues to play if you're a cover band or a tribute band, but if you're trying to promote Welsh bands from within, I think it would be useful, as you say, if there was a hub or something, you know, maybe a resource for people to pool all the information together and sort of help each other.

Because I'm also sure that these landlords or promoters, if they put on a show, they want to make a profit, they want to earn their money, so, you know, it does work hand in hand, if they—. Because, we've done some shows where—. Like this venue now, the Ebbw Vale Institute in Ebbw Vale, it's a really good venue and if you could sell it out, you'd have a wicked night, but it's down to the promotion. We've recently played a gig there; there was no promotion, nothing from the venue and nothing from the promoter, it was just us off our own backs. The promoter can't expect to turn around to us and say then, 'It's not a very good turnout tonight', and it's like, 'Well, you are the promoter, so—.'

I know we're going to be short on time and I don't want to dominate, because obviously I'm really interested in this area, but in terms of—I didn't want to leave this question out because we've had it quite a few times: how can you mesh the Welsh language scene with non-Welsh language bands? And I know you guys obviously do songs in Welsh as well, but I think what's been talked about are a lot of silos—you know, people going to Welsh language gigs and then not going to other gigs. How do you think we can combat that? And then the second question is: how diverse do you think the music scene is in Wales?

Well, funnily enough I was just saying about this when we were in the waiting room. I think that it's become the norm now to just have one headlining band and three support bands underneath, but I do think you need to take note from venues in London, because they do club nights where they have almost like a variety night. So, they don't just have the bands, they have other acts from other sorts of genres—it could be dance, anything, you know? The terminology I'd use for it is that it's like having a steak without any seasoning. So, it's just about adding a bit of seasoning to the night, really, and adding a bit of variety for everyone, you know? I think that's what missing to keep it exciting for everyone, because now, it's become the norm, 'I'm just going to watch a band tonight'.

And they're all generally the same genre, are they?

Well, in south Wales—I don't know about you guys—but there's a massive metal music scene. I don't know what it's like with you guys up in the north.

Yes, there's a certain amount.

But that's the face of it all. Underneath that, you have a lot of other genres, but they just don't seem to be coming through the works. It always seems to be metal nights, metal nights and metal nights.

I think blending that—like you say, putting on Welsh language and bands that are English, and mixing the genres—would really be a positive thing. Because there are a lot of young bands coming through, like a lot of indie bands for instance in Swansea, which I haven't seen for the best part of 15 years. There are a couple of bands actually singing in Welsh as well—a band called Bandicoot from Swansea—and I think if you started getting all these bands mixing together and working together towards something—.

I've recently created an online page called Cymru Underground, I've only created it in the last couple of months, and it's purely just to promote Welsh music right across the board. It doesn't matter what genre you are, just send it in and we'll just push it out there. And then using that as a hub for bands to talk to one another as well to say, 'We're all from Wales, it doesn't matter if you're from the north or the south, let's put gigs on in Wales.' Almost like—the idea I had behind it was trying to create something like Cool Cymru in the 1990s, where you're creating an identity of Welsh music. It doesn't matter about the genre, it's all about promoting the talent that we've got in Wales, because I think there's so much talent in all the genres across the board, and it's just not getting out there.

And you're trying to create gigs from that then?

Yes, literally just trying to create gigs where, coming back to that thing, you're mixing the genres. And not only that, creating a dialogue between bands, even saying, 'Well, we get our T-shirts made here; do this.' So, it's making it cost effective for bands. Because the way you've got to look at music, the actual product, is it's free now. The way the industry's become, when you make a CD, you spend x amount of money in the studio, but once the music is out there, selling the music that way is not the way to make money for the bands. So, the best way really is touring and merchandise. And if bands can work with one another and be independent in Wales, then I think it's a positive thing.

Yes, I think getting a network is important.

Network is the word, yes.

Where we grew up, it was quite difficult to get this feeling of unification. You know, I always joke with people that I got told, 'Stop speaking Welsh', but I also got told, 'Stop speaking English.' It was quite divided where we are, I suppose, being a border town. But I do think that if you just—. Music can only do so much, it needs to be looked at throughout society in a wider context. But if you just normalise it and put great artists on, whether they speak Welsh or English, they're just expressing, then that can only be one positive aspect of that.

And also the promotion of something like that, instead of it being fractured. So, you've got maybe your Welsh media and your English media in Wales—that really coming together. I think that's maybe the thing that bugs me sometimes in terms of the promotion. A lot of the gigs in Wales, they're like the best-kept secret. There's some amazing stuff going on. I almost feel like we should be able to put the 6 o'clock news on, and there can be a big segment on sport, but there should also be a calendar of what is coming up; really go to town with being excited about what's coming up. Sometimes, you can see things in some of the Welsh press that are advertising Welsh language shows, and I don't even know, does the Chronicle even—? It just feels fractured. Not all the media is coming together to really present what's going on in these communities in Wales and really getting behind the venues and lifting this. There's a little bit of apathy; lifting that sense of apathy.

And it's part of the values system, isn't it? Typically, the arts is the first thing that gets cut. I think it's short-term thinking, it's not long term. Because you need that expression, a hub, somewhere for young people to express, especially when times are difficult. So, it's way too easy to think that it's not important, that it doesn't put jobs on the table or whatever. It's almost like the key to a dysfunctional society if you don't address those things, because people feel like they're just numbers then. You have to have a chance for people to voice. It actually is the human element. I feel it's so part of where we're getting to now, just in general, with mental health and so forth. There are not enough hubs of people actually socialising. Music is a massive part of that.

That's a really strong point. I'll move on. Mick Antoniw.

One very short question to Rhiannon, right at the beginning you talked about the massive growth of talent et cetera, is there any explanation as to what is behind the massive growth of talent or is it inexplicable?

I think Wales has always had a lot of talent. I think it happens sometimes—. In terms of original talent as well, because you've got all these places that are isolated, and people are making music that's really original. I think that's what's exciting about Wales, even more so than some bigger cities. There's a real sense of being able to find a musical voice that's original, that stands out, that feels like it moves music forward. It's not just a regurgitation of something that's been going on in the city over and over again, you know? So, I think that we have people generally who are quite creative, quite gritty. The nature's beautiful. There's so much to be inspired by, and I think there's enough push for people to create art that's really meaningful. Adam Walton's show is a fantastic show of new talent every single week. I think you can definitely feel it. We travel a lot with the band and we spend a lot of time in the States. We always come back to Wales and say, 'Wow, it just feels that we have a lot more going on sometimes.'

Okay. One of the areas we're interested in looking at is the support for live music, the support for venues and so on. Just as a starting point: have any of you received any specific forms of support in development of your talent and what you do?

In terms of financial?

What, such as arts council funding?

In terms of funding, in terms of support at venues, in terms of promotion, in terms of marketing—anything. We are talking about the music business and so on. Is there anything that you would say: this support has helped to develop what we do, or for us to have access, or to be able to get to venues, or get equipment, or anything like that?

I've applied for quite a few things over the years but never had any luck. I applied for a scheme called Horizons three times. One of the things that would've been quite pivotal for the band I was in—. We spent five years touring around Europe and we played a lot of the major UK festivals. We played Donington, we played Hyde Park with Black Sabbath, for instance, and we played at some of the big festivals as well in Europe. Then, we got a chance to go on tour in America with an established band, and it was a sold-out tour. We would've been playing to 5,000 people a night, guaranteed. We just couldn't afford to do it.

So, I applied to the Arts Council of Wales, but they explained to me that they only will give funding if it's what's called a showcase event. So, the example they gave was an event in Texas called South by Southwest. There, you'd be playing a one-off show. All right, you're playing to industry people. But I tried to give the argument that I'd be playing to 5,000 people a night over a two-and-a-half to three-week period, so I'd be playing to a lot more people. So, that might be something that in the future maybe they'd want to consider.

Yes, that's a shame, because that genuinely could be a career changer, couldn't it? Because you're playing multiple cities, more so than maybe doing the one show.

Yes, rather than looking at it as a showcase, one event, maybe think about the bigger picture. Because one show is not going to break a band. It's not going to make you. It's just a continuous—

You didn't go, then?

We didn't go. By the time we worked it out, with the visas and everything, and even just getting there, it was $10,000 before we'd even left the first city where we would've flown to. But that's just—

Sorry to interrupt you, can I ask a supplementary? That Horizons funding—I know that they were saying it was only for a showcase event, but had they given you the money for the showcase event, was the amount of funding that was available—? Would it have—?

That was with the Arts Council of Wales. The Horizons thing I applied for separately on a few occasions; that was more of a bursary.

Sorry, forgive me, with the arts council funding, would that have actually been enough money to help with the—?

I didn't even specify the total amount. I was just looking for any sort of help just to try and get us there. Anything would have been a help towards it. Because we even thought about taking out bank loans, and then we thought we'd end up in a black hole. So, overall, we had to weigh it up, and it wasn't worth doing. But that's just an example to give you, of maybe something to consider in the future for other bands.  

Is that a common experience for you? Has anyone got any particular examples?

We've applied to the Welsh arts council, I think maybe once or twice, with no luck. It seems, to be absolutely frank, that occasionally there's a little bit of nepotism going on, but that's an impression. I'm not going to say—. We have had a bit of an odd trajectory as well, because I think a lot of people perceive us as having had a career in America, 'Oh, they're fine, they don't need money', possibly, which is not the case. We put on our own festival in Cardiff last year, and all these things require a little bit of help, especially a festival; to get it off the ground is quite difficult.

Is it fair to say that what you're really saying is you don't think that help was available?

It's down to a few things. It is there, but it seemed like it was maybe a bit harder than it should've been.

Is it fair to say that perhaps whatever support there is is not clear enough, perhaps not flexible enough?

In that instance, I would say that that's a very good example. Coming into this, one of the points that we were thinking about—. We were at South by Southwest last year in a showcase scenario— without the behind the scenes; without the support; without the network; without having a release in the States that maybe goes at the same time; without having maybe a record label that's co-joined with a Welsh record label and you've got both sides of the pond working together—those showcases are normally going to have a fairly droplet effect and then disappear. Because they just don't work. It's all a con, anyway. Most bands who go to South by Southwest have already got a label and a trajectory for their career in place. It's just a nice little place to literally showcase them. It's not going to get them a deal or actually advance their careers.

Unless you have something else going on, like proper support, say, like a press campaign and a release to go with it.

There used to be some funding for the Welsh Music Foundation. That came to an end. In terms of venues and so on, there's a little bit of money that's been made available by the arts council in England. Do you ever do any comparison of yourselves with how similar bands in England are? I hate drawing these comparisons, but in terms of are there things available elsewhere that you think would have been really good if we had them within Wales, is there anything like that?

Yes, I think there's some improvement. It seems like now there are, as I was saying before, these arts centres that do a bit of everything: theatre, music, whatever. We were discussing before, maybe if there was—. It seems like there are many venues we've been to that are partly coffee shops, partly breweries. Like you were saying about the 'steak without any seasoning', it's thinking how we have to diversity to keep this thing going. I think maybe we could look into it more like that. I do think the time of just your metal club, just your rock club, just your indie club is becoming maybe quite tough.

What about specifically, though, on the organisational side—that is: equipment, the organisation of venues, the organisation of tours, the advice, the marketing, assistance with perhaps getting production going, producing a DVD—is there any support available like that? Is that something that you think should be there? What do you think would be of benefit to live music and to bands such as yourselves to make a difference?

So, not just within a venue?

Well, it's venues, but of course the venues have issues in terms of equipment. As part of the whole process of going from venue to venue, there's the issue around how you market yourself. There is a business side to what you do. When you perform, that is the end product, isn't it?

In my opinion, especially for poorer communities, some help with rehearsal rooms and equipment is a massive thing, yes. I would say that, for those basics, there should be a good whack of money that goes towards that. It's cutting your teeth and getting out there and playing, as opposed to being tokenistic about it.

Yes, I get a lot of messages from young bands coming through who might have seen my band at a show asking for just general advice. It's stuff that I've just learned, probably like you guys; it's stuff you learn as you go along and the information that I'm able to pass on now is information that I would have loved to have had help with when I was starting out, when I was perhaps 16 or 17 years old—so, how to put a tour together and how to do marketing. Because if you want to be even a half-successful band these days, you do have to treat it as a whole business. If something like that could be done to help young bands especially, coming through in Wales, I think it would be a fantastic facility, just to guide them, just to say, 'Well, you can try this avenue, or you can try this avenue.'

Because what are we talking about? Are we talking about how to develop younger bands? Because we're quite established, but starting off in north Wales, we had to just find our own way, didn't we? We played a lot of shows and, unfortunately, we're going back 12 years ago, so most of the cutting our teeth was done in Manchester, Liverpool and going down to London, and then eventually internationally as well. 

I think one of the hardest things for us in Wales—and I don't know how this has changed, because obviously we haven't been in those circles—is actually having a good release plan and an artists and repertoire presence in Wales and bringing that together. I do think there's an element of that that's quite important. We found it really hard to get a label when we were starting off. We had quite a different sound to, maybe, what was being signed at the time, and I think we're finding that network and getting some support from an A&R perspective. I guess I'm saying A&R, because there are lots of lousy A&R people as well. But I suppose it's that culture of letting a band do its thing—get really good, play lots of shows and do its thing live. And then, once you're ready and you're ready to showcase and be out there, that's quite a sexier approach than sometimes actually seeing a band being developed and it's, 'Oh, now we're ready to show it.' I think that's maybe something that we would have benefitted from in that sense. 

One of the ideas that we were floating around was actually being able to pair a Welsh label with some international labels as well. I think that would be a really interesting idea, if there was a conversation that was happening where international labels were paired with Welsh labels, showcasing bands that are ready to go out on more of an international level and represent Wales on that level and then them being able to move forward. And then, all that stuff like South by Southwest would actually make sense, because they would have a tour booked in the States; they would have a release plan in place; they would have done all their rehearsals and recording and they would have had support to do that behind closed doors; and then, boom, on to the bigger stage and really celebrating what's going on in Wales and getting out there. We found it definitely a little bit hard coming out of somewhere really rural in north Wales and thinking, 'Right, there are no labels in north Wales, how are we going to get signed? How are we going to release music?' I'm going back a decade ago, it's a bit easier with the internet now. 

Okay. Delyth, do you want to—?

Diolch.

It seems that there's an emerging theme that's coming out of a lot of what you're saying in terms of almost an ingrained inflexibility about what venues expect in terms of the fact that all the acts that will be put on will be this specific set and, with funding streams, you have to fit within specific criteria. Are there other ways in which you think that if this thing was also just a little bit more flexible, like you were just saying, Rhiannon, that, actually, rather than a band being expected to fit in from the very start about what their sound is, just being given that flexibility and that freedom to be able to find their sound a little bit more before they have to decide, 'Oh no, we're in this category, we are going to follow this category through, and we're going to play in these venues with these other types of bands, and this is the kind of funding—'? Do you know what I mean? Are there more examples of how you think there could be more flexibility with that?

I think assisting almost the work that goes on behind closed doors is the key thing, because I also think it does a disservice in a way, even though I think it comes from a good place, to have those schemes that almost make some of the artists seem like they're sub-par because it's tokenistic, like, 'Oh, they're the ones that got picked and they're the duh duh duh for this year'. It's almost like branding a band straight away as unsigned. I just think it doesn't help in the end. I think helping them get studio time, help with equipment and rehearsing, even help with getting to some gigs—getting down to London for shows, or whatever—things like that are what I feel are really going to help. And then, it's a general—[Interruption.]

Yes. Sorry, I interrupted you.

No, go on. 

I think every record label and every A&R person will hold a band back until they're really ready to go out there and just show everybody how amazing they are—do you know what I mean? That's the general vibe, and then word of mouth, and people get hold of that. I just think that isn't—. For all the twists and turns that the music industry has been constantly doing, that isn't a bad model—that a band is given the time, the resources to develop, they've got something unique, they're really exciting, let them really prosper, maybe a little bit behind the scenes, and then, boom, give them a platform, allow the media to run with them then and grow with them. 

But to do that, you need to have venues to play; plenty of small venues. 

Andrew, you wanted to come in. 

Yes, just talking again about venues, one of the issues that we were discussing before we came in here as well was that, apart from just doing the obvious music venues that are already established, for instance, you've got Gwyn Hall in Neath and we were talking about the Ebbw Vale Institute and the Muni Arts Centre in Pontypridd. With a lot of those venues, if you want to play them as a band, you've got to hire them out before you start. So, you're looking at maybe £500 or £600 for a young, independent band that's got no money. It's a great facility, but they're not being used, if you know what I mean. We went to try to put one on to do an album launch in the Gwyn Hall in Neath. I think it was £500 to hire the room, but then, they wanted you to pay for the security and putting the bar staff in and things, and then, you know—. You just can't afford it; it doesn't make financial sense to do it. But at the same time, it seems like a waste of amazing venues. The Muni at the moment I think is still closed in Pontypridd. I know they had issues with the way it was being run financially, but— 

Sorry to interrupt, but then the two sides lose out then, don't they, because of, again, that same inflexibility? You have to get over this hurdle. And it means, like you say, that the venue isn't being used, and that's financially not helping the venue but it also—

It's a wasted venue. 

—for the community, it means that young people are not being exposed to the art and the music that they could be. 

You could be putting on an event, making a big thing about it, putting it in the local papers and putting it on WalesOnline, 'This is happening here'. I think if you did that and you made the tickets cost-effective and there was a way of not charging bands to put gigs on, then you could be making events. We could be doing showcase events for Welsh bands—we don't always have to look outside—especially young come bands coming through. I think those sorts of opportunities would be ideal for young—.

I'm just thinking again, you were saying that you guys have been going for probably, like me, nearly 20 years, or whatever. I'm just thinking if those opportunities were available, maybe it would make people from outside of Wales look in again as well, to say, 'Look at the talent that's here again'. Because we haven't really had anything since the 'Phonics, Manics, Catatonia, since the 1990s, and then you had the metal bands coming out of the Bridgend scene. I think there is something in the water at the moment; I think it's only a matter of time before there's another explosion of Welsh music, because the ability and the talent is there, it's just giving them the platform to go and do it. 

Rhys or Samuel, did you want to say anything on that? 

Just pretty much what Andrew was saying, really. It's a shame, really, that there are these venues going to waste—just sat there deteriorating and there's an abundance of talent to showcase in Wales. For example, Sam, apart from the band, he's got a recording studio and he has all sorts of genres going back and forth to the studio, and some of the stuff that comes out of there is really mind-blowing. Some of the artists who go in there, they record their stuff and it's like, 'Oh my God'—they're amazing, so why isn't anything else happening? Like I said, there's an abundance of talent; it's just, for us to showcase it, it's quite hard to do, really.

I think I could—. Actually, because I know Bethan, I could speak to you in the future, maybe. I've told you of the band from Canada. They've become very, very successful now; they're playing arenas. They had funding from the Canadian Government, so the Canadian Government have something in place, I don't know exactly what it is, but it might be something that maybe you can access online and just see how they are doing things. It's worked for them. They've come over, and the first time we toured with them, we were just playing small clubs, 200-capacity, and last month, or the month before, they were out doing arenas with Deep Purple, going around Europe. So, there must be something in there that's working, and the way they do things there. They're getting their music on computer games and the whole thing, really, so it gives bands, then, another revenue stream as well. 

I've read about the Canada situation before, not in great detail, but I know that, if a band announces a tour, the Government—their Government then—will jump in on them and fund their tour, like a daily rate, almost. But also, I think, in Canada, there is like a law maybe—it might be a law or just like a general rule—but every venue out there has no option but to pay a band that plays in their venues. I don't know if that is solid or accurate, but that's what I've looked at before. 

We can look into it. 

Is it the Canadian Government that funds that, then? 

Yes. 

We'll check it out.

Yes, that's worth checking. I was going to ask you a question about—. So, the Welsh Government have Creative Wales—would it be a scheme? Is it a scheme? What's it called? What's the word?

A body.

A body? A thing? It's being launched. Have you been, in any way, part of that? Have you been contacted to be, in any way, part of that? So—

And it's a body for what, sorry?

[Inaudible.]—questions. [Laughter.]

These are all questions that we've been trying to ask. [Laughter.]

We were hoping you were going to tell us. [Laughter.]

It's to develop the creative industries in Wales. It's a part of Government—they're setting up Creative Wales, and they're launching it on twenty-ninth. They've been touting this as the place where creative industries—

Yes. Rhiannon, you were saying that, sometimes, people want to keep artists under cover until it's perfect. The Welsh Government has, maybe, been doing the same thing for a long time. We've been waiting—[Laughter.] Okay. Your answers to me answered that question.

It doesn't sound like you know; do you know what—it is?

No, I take it that you don't.

I don't think I've heard of that.

No, I had taken it that you don't. But that's interesting, considering what Rhys was just saying and what Andrew was saying about the Canadian Government. So, that's interesting.

The last thing I wanted to ask was—. We've been talking a lot about the barriers that are put in the way of bands when they're starting out, and the missed opportunities, like you with—I feel for you so much; I know it was a long time ago, but the fact that you weren't able to go on that tour. The converse of that, then: what would you say was the institution or the intervention from—it could be a group, it could be an organisation, anything—that helped you, that was the moment that was either your breakthrough, or when things were really bad that made you decide, 'No, we're going to keep going'? What was it, if we could highlight it, not just the gaps, but what needs to be done more of, then?

The bands themselves have got to have the determination and be willing to sacrifice everything. That's the first point. The way that we actually progressed was that we did everything do-it-yourself; we released our first album ourselves, and then, it was just a matter of getting reviews in magazines, and like the guys were saying, getting a PR campaign going. But our booking agent, I actually got us signed to a booking agent in America, and they had somebody working in London, and the record label we signed to is German.

And I actually had quite an issue trying to get us radio play in Wales. I felt, sometimes, it was a little bit like banging your head against a wall trying—. Because we were getting played on national UK radio—Planet Rock, and other radio stations—but until we'd actually signed a record deal, and we had a proper PR company from London running our PR, we got played on Radio Wales then. But it wasn't until then. So, I don't know; I just feel like if there's, like you say, a pathway or something there just to give bands a bit of guidance, I think that's half the battle, really. 

We've got to move on to John Griffiths. Sorry, we are running out of time. I know we started a bit late, so we'll go over a tiny bit. But, John Griffiths. 

Can I just—Chair? [Inaudible.]—Radio Wales, there isn't like the equivalent of a community-level music show where you have emerging bands that get played.

It's just the Adam Walton show, isn't it?

Adam's show, but—

All the bands are on Adam's show.

There must be others—I'm not sure. There was BBC Music Introducing, but then that was controversially changed. Because it was going to offshoots of the nations, but now it's just a UK show that sometimes then has different bands from across the UK, which doesn't give the same platform, I don't think, that existed 10 years ago, when you could have that devolved show in Wales where Bethan Elfyn would do her own thing about all the Welsh bands. I still think there's a gap. Do you agree?

I think there's a gap, definitely, in the market for something like that to come through again. Because I can remember the Welsh—

Podcasts are quite popular now, though.

Podcasts, yes.

They seem to be—

There is a Welsh music podcast; there are a couple of guys running that at the moment.

It was really nice to hear the Down the Front guys' podcast back. We played in Clwb Ifor Bach back just before Christmas, and those guys were there, and we'd just released a single, I think two or three weeks ago, and because of that show they followed us, they'd seen we'd released something, and—

What is that show?

Down the Front podcast.

There are a few in Wales—podcasts.

I listened to their podcast, and there wasn't even a mention of a signed band in there; it was all underground, all local bands they were mentioning. Because that's what they do, they go to all the local shows and they try to—. Because they're doing their part, they're trying their best to do what they can on their half, really. It was just so nice to hear. Obviously, it was nice to hear their comments about us and stuff like that, but it was nice to hear them talk about other bands that we know or are on the local scene. Podcasts are a really good way of—it's like another platform to radio.

It's like a radio show that you can access at any time; that's the best way of looking at it.

Yes.

John, sorry.

Diolch, Cadeirydd. It's good to hear that there's a strong pipeline of talent in Wales, as I think you've all said. You've dealt with many of the barriers to talent coming through, is there anything that you haven't yet mentioned that you feel we ought to be aware of in terms of the main barriers to talent coming through in Wales, or have you covered that enough, do you think?

I guess the big one for me—maybe I just touched on it before—is growing it in Wales, being really proud of it, and then really giving it a boost to go national, international, through Europe, into America. I think maybe that doesn't happen all that often. Sometimes, a band can have a profile in Wales, but how do you actually grow your career? Obviously, you can't make any money from just having a career in Wales; that's not going to happen. So, a lot of bands are going to burn out, aren't they? Unless they've got funding, or they're being developed, or they've got a label, then you're not going to make a living from only playing Welsh venues. There's nothing we can do about that at the moment.

So, it's identifying bands when they're at that level, the talent when it's at that level, and then giving them that help and boost to go that much further.

Yes. And that's the sad story; that's a perfect opportunity lost of really being able to take that onto an international platform. We had a very similar thing; 10 years ago, we were about to burn out, about to plateau, didn't know what we were going to do. We took out a loan and we had an offer to do a show in the States, and that's kind of really—

That was a turning point for us.

That was a turning point for us, and that's only because we made ourselves very vulnerable, kind of on the edge. It was a gamble that paid off, but it could have been a gamble that didn't pay off. It could have gone really—

Yes, and you could have made the decision not to take the gamble as well.

Precisely, yes.

All-ages shows: I'm not sure if there are many of those. I worry a little bit about the youth and especially, like I say, the culture seems to have changed quite a lot anyway. Growing up in north Wales in the 1990s—there's a drastic difference in the amount of people who go out to things now, including pubs, shows, and whatever. So, that's obviously a huge thing outside of just music. But I do worry that, unless we expose young people and get them involved—say there's funding for them to get in and have studio time and get into the fun element of just creating music and expressing— then we're going to miss a trick, because they just haven't grown up being used to that and so they don't know any different. That's definitely a concern of mine: that, culturally, it's almost like people become, possibly in many areas, a bit apathetic in terms of going to shows. I think we need to change people's perceptions, and the only way you do that, I think, is by investing in it. 

Okay. We heard earlier from you that sometimes in hard times economically, times of austerity or whatever, talent perhaps emerges strongly. Was it you, Andrew, who said that you thought that in deprived areas there was a particular lack of rehearsal space?

There is. Sam actually had a rehearsal space set up at his studio, but recently, because of the price of renting the unit, Sam's moved to a smaller unit. So, we looked from Tredegar to go down towards Merthyr, and from there there were no rehearsal spaces in Merthyr. I'm from Neath and I live in the Swansea valley at the moment, and you can come all the way down from Merthyr, right down to Neath, and there are no rehearsal spaces until you actually get into Swansea; and that's privately run, and again that's just a converted industrial unit with a couple of doors. So, I think having some rehearsal spaces at a grass-roots level for people in the Valleys—. I think that is definitely one of the—. Because there's nowhere really to practice, is there? There's one place, but you've got to go to Bargoed, the other way, haven't you?

In Sam's case, they were a recording studio and rehearsal rooms. It's just unfortunate, the money they were making was—

The rehearsal rooms that we put together had all the equipment that we got from over the years. We didn't get any funding to start it. So, we had to put all of our guitars and all of our drum kits in a room and just let people use them. Obviously, stuff breaks, and we have to replace everything. It just wasn't financially possible, so we had to cut the rehearsal room and just stick to the recording studio, which is a shame. Because, like you said, we've got to travel to rehearse now, haven't we? We usually come down to Cardiff. And if you're practising once or twice a week, coming down to Cardiff for that, outside of what you're doing—

It's an hour's drive from Neath, and 40 minutes for you, just to have a rehearsal space. If it's a young band as well who don't drive, then you're stuck, aren't you?

It can affect your mentality then as well; it's like it's something other, it's something over there, and you're forgotten about. I think changing that mindset is so important for Welsh bands as well, and artists. Like you say, the talent is there, but unless you instil this mentality that it's possible to make a living out of it, actually—. The world's getting smaller and, if you seriously want to make a living only by music, you have to look wider. Part of that is changing the mindset as well, and part of changing the mindset is caring about it enough to do things like put facilities there.

Yes. There might be opportunities for some of the music venues that are perhaps quiet midweek to rent out those spaces to bands. I never see any of that being advertised. 

That's an interesting aspect. Just in terms of south Wales and the Forté project and the young promoters network, are you familiar with that project? No. None of you?

I've never heard of it. I feel like I should have.

You shouldn't feel bad, because there's also an obligation on the other side. So, please don't feel bad. We're not trying to catch you out.

No. It's more for the project itself to engage with you.

Music education in schools and council music services: what would you say about those in terms of their importance and their health at the moment?

For me, the whole reason why I started playing music was through a youth centre. The senior youth worker got this guitarist in to teach us guitar. He said, 'Look guys, I know you lot are not into this music'—I was only 12 at the time—'but just go in, take part, and you can have a free packet of crisps and a can of Coke or something afterwards.' But it was that that changed it for me. I went in there, and I think he taught me an A chord or something like that, and I hogged the guitar. All my mates were like, 'Rhys, you need to give us the guitar.' And I was like, 'No, boys, I'm playing guitar.'

That must have been probably about June time, and then that Christmas that's when my parents bought me my first guitar. I went on from there to do my GSCEs, A-levels, university; I've done music for years, studying it. And that's what I'm doing today, and I wouldn't change it for anything. So, I think it's definitely—.

You mentioned schools as well. Education: the support was there, from my school, anyway. I thought it was really great. I'm still friends now with my guitar tutor, who's actually in a band that's had some success, Henry's Funeral Shoe.

Did you guys have recording facilities at all in your schools growing up? Did you feel it was modern enough, with the times enough? For us growing up, it didn't feel like that.

You're talking about the 1990s, when I was in school. They might have the facilities now. I don't know.

Probably a different generation, really. I know that right now the schools have all the modern technology, so the Apple Macs and the Pro Tools that they use; but when I was in school that was sort of coming in, we had the normal desktop computers, but we did have music tools like Sibelius and Cubase and stuff like that. So, all that was coming in. I can remember recording, in GCSE, on a tape recorder. That was my first assignment for GCSE, when I wrote my own first song. I just had to record it like that, because there was no other recording facility. But right now, they have dedicated studio rooms in schools; not all schools, but I know that the school I was in has really pushed music there.

We're running fast out of time. John, quickly.

Just very quickly then, in terms of promoters and sound technicians—those sorts of professions—is there anything in particular you'd like to say to the committee about what's available in terms of ensuring that opportunities are available in Wales and that people take those opportunities?

I think we need to look at models that have been successful before and really learn from expertise. So, not just with the promoters, but the same with labels. I think it's absolutely crucial, because it is highly competitive. So, looking at what's been working and why is absolutely key. That's one thing.

I think the point you made earlier as well, saying if there was a feature on the Welsh news; it's just about engaging the Welsh public as well. Because a lot of promoters are having problems, basically, not putting bums on seats; to actually get people out of the house and through the door. Maybe if there's, like we say, some sort of hub, something that becomes part of—I know it's a bit grandiose—Welsh consciousness again, that music and the arts are important things in Wales. Because we've got the talent here.

It is a big thing in Wales, the creative industries in Wales. The creative minds in Wales—look at all the people who've come out of Wales with talent that have made a big name for themselves. There's something about Wales in general. I'm sure everyone would agree with that, even people outside Wales. Wales does produce some brilliant art.

For a small country as well.

That's the perception that we have when we play abroad. People are always fascinated by Wales. They have this romantic vision, rightly so, that it's the land of song.

Shouting about that abroad.

And really shouting about that. There are cities in the States where their entire urban economy is based on them being a music city. Take Nashville and Memphis and all these cities that are bulging with tourists and also with musicians. There's music on constantly when you walk down so many of the streets. I think we could—. We've got a really great basis for being able to create more of that. There are lots of maps of cities that show where the venues are, where the recording studios are.

Welsh Government are actually doing a mapping exercise at the moment.

Are they? Yes. I love maps. [Laughter.]

But we're yet to see that come to fruition. I've talked to lots of people who didn't know that was happening as well. Did you know?

I didn't know.

No, I didn't know.

That's the problem as well.

Yes. If it's there, it creates a vibrancy, and then you shout about it, and the perception is that it's important. But then I think it draws people in as well, doesn't it? Like you said, like in Nashville or New Orleans, or whatever, you just get the feeling that there is—and there is—music going on all the time and then it brings actual investors in. So if you want to think of it purely in financial terms, I think it only does good for wider society, not just music. 

We're going to finish now with some questions on planning, licensing and business rates. I know we have to be very short and sweet, I'm sorry. Who is the specialist on this? [Laughter.]

I have found the session fascinating, but these questions—. Well, the second one I've got for you, you may be more interested in. The first one is really aimed more at promoters and owners of venues, but we have been looking at issues around licensing, business rates and planning—and in particular licensing you may have views on—and that these can sometimes be barriers to venues being feasible at the moment. Have you got any reflections from a performance angle on that? Presumably, you might hear the frustrations that some of the promoters have. 

You mentioned a good point earlier. There's a street in Cardiff with really popular shows, which I can never say right: Womanby Street. Is that right? You look at the experience they've had recently with everything shutting down and, without that street in Cardiff, I think Cardiff would be quite bland. It would be—

It would be far worse off. 

Yes, there would be venues scattered everywhere. That street is quite famous for what it is and is especially popular with bands. As Andrew was saying earlier, sometimes it's down to being accessible. So, having a venue offer you a permit just to park there—. When we played there recently, we had a parking ticket, just for loading in. We think that venues providing permits for the bands playing that night—

Even if it's just a loading permit, just to pull up outside a venue. 

Yes, it would help bands a lot more, instead of us stressing, 'Oh my god, where are we going to park? We've got all this kit in here.' Some of us turn up in our cars, but then you get some bands that turn up in bigger vans and they can't park in a multistorey car park. They're going to have to load out, get a ticket and then park their van on the other side of Cardiff.

The facilities aren't there. Often, you've got heavy stuff like bass amplifiers. I got the bass amp out and I had a parking ticket when I came back. There's no other way around it, and the venues just wash their hands of it as well. So some help with that would be great.

What exactly do you mean by licensing?

Well, we've heard it's very difficult for the under-18 audience, if that's a significant part of your fan base, or people who are interested to explore your music. It means that many venues just won't take an audience that will go under 18, I guess, as well, because they want to sell drink. 

Which is different to theatres and arts venues, isn't it? 

Where they are able to sell drink and admit an audience below 18 as well, as long as they know—

So at the moment, in Wales, there aren't many under-18 venue options, then. Is that correct?

Well, this is what we're exploring. It's fine if you don't have evidence, I'll move on.

I can't think of many myself, and it would be great if there was more of that. For instance, when we tour the States, there's that and there's definitely a market for it. And what a great way to get young people more and more exposed to music. 

It's funny, actually, because earlier my cousin messaged me and he's only 16, and he was asking if I've got any gigs coming up because he'd like to come. I think some venues do take action, like the wristband thing, where different colours show your age and they check IDs and stuff like that.

I know there used to be an under-18s night in the Pop Factory in Porth. 

Yes, that was great, wasn't it?

That was really good. There used to be bands and obviously, the bands, some of them were under 18, some of them were older, but it was a chance for the under-18s to go to see the bands that they wanted to see locally without being shunned at the door because they haven't got ID or they're just under 18, which I think is unfair. Because I think that, at that age, that's the most crucial age to get into music and develop your taste for music, so not being able to go out and see the bands is not good. 

Do I have time for my final one? You don't need to give long answers on this concept, really. Some councils, like Cardiff, have developed a music board, where they discuss all these issues about performance, licensing, promotion and everything, basically, and they involve people, direct stakeholders, and they'll have performers on there or at least they'll have someone representing them. Do you think this at council level, or perhaps councils if you're talking about Neath/west Glamorgan, so it will be Swansea and perhaps even as far as Bridgend, and having some sort of regional music board that’s got all stakeholders, including yourselves or a representative, involved in taking about how to make the whole system work better I guess?

I think it would be amazing.

That would be a fantastic idea.

Let's do it. [Laughter.]

Okay, guys, we've sorted it all out.

Well, we'll have to see how Cardiff perform, but at least they seem to be—. And they have a musical strategy, which they launched recently, or they want to be a city of music. It's a bit like what you were mentioning in Nashville, in Tennessee, obviously being massive in terms of that model.

I've got one question for the record. I know I'm going back to funding, but just quickly. Did any of you get any help from the Welsh Music Foundation when it was in existence?

No.

No. So, setting up something different wouldn't necessarily matter to you, just that the arts council, or a body that's already in existence, could change what they already have to try and make it easier for bands to apply for, yes?

Yes, I think so. Take a different outlook, or if there was a new hub or new Welsh Music Foundation, something that can, maybe, like you say, even where councils can liaise or partners can liaise with each other and just come together and just create a plan for the greater good.