Ofcom PSB Review Consultation Document Released

It’s glossy, it’s colourful, and it asks the burning questions (’is television special?’)… It’s Phase I of Ofcom’s PSB consultation, available here. I’ll likely have more thoughts later, but here are some initial reactions and notes:

* Responses to the consultation are due no later than June 15, 2004. See pages 81 and 82.

* This document, which looks like it had a lot of money and effort put into it, was buried in Ofcom’s website. I had heard it was released, but I find that even someone very familiar with Ofcom’s website (me) has to dig for important documents. It should have been prominently featured in the ‘what’s new’ section of the website.

* Boy, if you ever wanted to know, for example, the average number of hours spent watching arts and classical music programming (figure 29, page 47), you’ll find portions of this document riveting. Otherwise, just accept Ofcom’s factual assertions and skip to the questions presented and the underlying (and sometimes questionable) theories. Actually, you can skip right to pages 81-82 for a completely distilled version of Ofcom’s views.

* Figure 31, page 49: Only 27 percent of respondents felt it was important that the main terrestrial channels provide ‘popular programmes from America’. Liars!

* After reviewing the document, my basic feeling is one of over-reaching. Ofcom sound more like executives managing a television network than regulators with a limited mission. Part of this, of course, may be my over-reaction to the content-laden analysis, which is something we don’t tend to see from the FCC.

Stay tuned to OfcomWatch for more on this important topic…