Ofcom, like many media regulators, suggest that a correlation exists between media ownership and media content. Meaning, that ensuring a diversity of media ownership in some way ensures a diversity of media content. It is a contestable point (particularly when the inevitable follow-on correlation between media content and human behaviour is added), but [...]
Expect to hear most media policy talk this year geared toward television over internet protocol, or IPTV or television over broadband. You know, ‘the future’.
Today’s bit of news tracks how IPTV fits into the regulatory scheme that requires UK viewers to pay the license fee. The Times suggests this may be a problem [...]
Ofcom has granted permission for ITV to reduce the amount of children’s and religious programming it shows, giving the broadcaster a chance to boost ad revenues and cut costs.
Continuing the shift to a non-PSB broadcaster, ITV will be permitted to show a minimum of eight hours of children’s programmes each week. Although, ITV is expected [...]
The Trade and Industry Select Committee will meet on Tuesday 1 March to take evidence in connection with its inquiries into the Ofcom telecommunications review.
The meeting will be held in the Thatcher Room, Portcullis House.
Morning sitting: Ofcom�s strategic review of telecommunications
9.15 am: Ofcom
Stephen Carter, Chief Executive; David [...]
On the Telecoms Review – Ed Richards, said that the regulator was in the ‘middle of a long and complex process’ and that trying to make the UK’s telecoms sector more competitive was ‘taking longer than we thought’. Urmmmm…
Neelie Kroes, the Dutch free market liberal competition commissioner, has announced that next week the European Commission will launch an investigation on the use that German public broadcasters such as ARD or ZDF make of the licence fee (see article in The Guardian). Although the licence fee itself cannot be seen as an illegal subsidy, [...]
A new group was founded last week in the UK dedicated to influencing spectrum policy toward opening up unlicensed spectrum: Open Spectrum UK is an amalgamation of different community networking groups and non-profit organizations. They came together to submit a response to Ofcom’s Spectrum Framework Review consultation.
They say – ‘The availability of spectrum for license-exempt [...]
Reports suggest that Tessa Jowell has seen off John Birt in the battle over the BBC’s future. The Green Paper on Charter Renewal is to be released next week and will reveal that the BBC will preserve its licence fee for the next 10 years.
Apprently the Prime Minister backed Jowell over the future direction, after [...]
Here is a (maybe not so) interesting observation: While Broadcast reports that John Birt and Tessa Jowell are in disagreement over future systems for regulating the BBC, and thereby delay publishing the Charter Green Paper, the BBC is already recruiting a future support team to assist the board of governors in in their new role [...]
Many of us have worried for some years about the likelihood of the division between editorial and advertorial being blurred in the online world. An article in the New York Times shows how extreme this danger has become.
Apparently:
Business news articles appearing yesterday on www.nypost.com included words that were underlined and in green; when [...]
MediaGuardian reports –
“Ofcom will decide by the end of June whether BT should be broken up in order to ensure that rival operators are able to gain access to its network of local phone lines to provide new services such as video on demand.
At a seminar organised by the regulator today as part of [...]
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The Final Report of a study on information on allocation, availability and use of radio spectrum in the Community by IDATE, Aegis Spectrum and Bird & Bird has now been published (available here).
The purpose is to identify information currently provided on management and use of the radio spectrum by regulators around Europe, and through EU-wide [...]
Philip Graf, the former CEO of Trinity Mirror Group, has been appointed the new chairman of the Broadband Stakeholder Group.
The BSG is the advisory group to the government on the promotion of broadband services and aims for the UK to be a world-leading broadband-enabled economy by 2010.
Graf, who was the author of the recent independent [...]
OfcomWatch received the following message (slightly edited by me) from what I would call an astute observer of current UK media policy. Our person-in-the-know says:
I was talking to a few people and naturally there is a great deal of discussion / debate about the Burns – Birt – Richards triangle and the alleged malevolent [...]
Former Channel Five chief executive David Elstein has bought the international business of the Hallmark Channel in a deal worth around �128m with backing of equity house 3i and Providence Equity Partners, reports Broadcast.
Looks like the UK media regulation community will lose one of its most free-market advocates…
- – Press Release, posted by Breakthroo – –
Report: Broadcast TV and Broadband Video: Collision and Disruption
Author: Stephen Griffiths
Download Full Report (free): http://www.breakthroo.com
Introduction
Examining the collision between broadcast TV and broadband video, involving multiple markets, the report makes sense of: what new – and potentially disruptive – innovations are at play for scheduling or distributing [...]
Following Ofcom�s recent decision to fine Playboy TV UK �25,000 for broadcasting sexually explicit �R18� classified content, many people may have assumed that broadcasting of such content would have ceased on UK television.
Rather surprisingly this is not actually true. BBFC R18 equivalent content continues to be broadcast on many adult subscription channels as it has [...]
The FT continues to stir the pot at Number 10 today with another article focused on Lord Birt.
Birt holds the key to Blair’s kitchen cabinet
The article alludes to Birt’s wider influence inside Number 10. The suggestion is that an unelected ‘freelance’ advisor is weilding disproportionate power inside Blair’s inner circle. But the article goes on [...]
I�m still going through the comments in response to Ofcom�s Phase 2 strategic telecoms review…
The CBI’s comments take a fairly predictable stand, but had some interesting things to say about Ofcom�s overall approach:
[W]e believe that the consultation document still focuses too exclusively on BT�s existing dominant position in traditional domestic fixed-line telecommunications. The document [...]
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