Hepatitis C is a major public health problem—potentially bigger than HIV/Aids. It is estimated that around 450,000 people in Britain suffer from the disease, which can cause fatal liver failure and for which there is no guaranteed cure. As early diagnosis increases the chances of successful treatment, the case for knowing you've got hepatitis C is overwhelming. But the vast majority of people who have it don't know they do—it can be years before the symptoms become obvious (the Body Shop's Anita Roddick discovered this year that she contracted hepatitis C from a transfusion in 1971). So there's a strong case for increasing public awareness and having a widespread testing regime: that way the NHS could avoid thousands of people with liver failure presenting themselves at hospital.
Not many years ago, this kind of story would have been the subject not just of a television programme, but of a television campaign. Such a programme may not have been popular, but making it would have been seen as part of the role of a public service broadcaster. Today there is no such perception. I know, because I have tried unsuccessfully to persuade both the BBC and Channel 4 to make such a programme. One commissioning editor memorably wrote: "We just feel we haven't anything new to say." Well, I thought, 450,000 people have the disease, most of them don't know it and thousands may die.
There are many reasons why few programmes like this are commissioned nowadays. Most people with commissioning powers in broadcasting keep their jobs by choosing programmes that either get the numbers or get noticed. Obviously the target viewing figures for a channel like BBC4 are lower than those of BBC1, but there is still an expectation of a certain audience share. And the competition for audiences is getting more intense by the month, as more channels come into being. In these circumstances it is not surprising that broadcasters shy away from programmes that could make a difference but are unlikely to make money.
The film was financed by grants from the Wellcome Trust—Britain's biggest charitable foundation—and the drugs company Schering Plough. Both gave money to the Hepatitis C Trust, completely free of any editorial conditions. Although many programmes on British television are partly funded by other broadcasters, it is rare for programmes to be funded from outside the television industry—largely because Britain has had such a strong and successful tradition of imaginative public service television.
It is a quite different story in the US. There, documentary filmmakers often expect to raise their funds from sources outside television. Sandi DuBowski's successful film Trembling Before G-d, about gay and lesbian Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, was funded from more than 40 different sources—including a benefit concert. A Lion In The House, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar's four-hour epic about children being treated for cancer, received substantial support from outside broadcasting, but was shown on the PBS network. Organisations such as the Ford Foundation routinely provide money for films consistent with its aims.
Outside funding of this sort is not a route to get easy money to make films that no one will watch: both filmmakers and funders want as large an audience as possible—and television is where such audiences lie. But what outside funding can do is make such programmes affordable. For profit-driven broadcasters, programmes with relatively few viewers can be profitable if they are cheap enough. For all broadcasters, outside funding can make existing budgets go further and offset the potential costs when the outcome of a film is uncertain or the format or subject takes a risk. A broadcaster nearly always pays less for a bought-in programme than for a commissioned one.
For Britain to develop an equivalent to the American model, three things need to happen. First, charities, companies and even individuals need to recognise that giving relatively small amounts to films and television programmes is an effective way of promoting their aims and improving the range and quality of television. Second, broadcasters need to welcome the arrival of a new source of funding and to find a way of matching the aspirations of the funders with their obligations to viewers. Third, programme-makers—particularly outside the big broadcasters—need to become more entrepreneurial, seeing the raising of money as well as the spending of it, and the marketing of a film as well as the making of it, as part of their job.
