[Update: An alert reader just pointed out that my reference to the ‘recent speech by Richard Hooper’ was incorrect - the speech was made by Ofcom’s Robin Foster. My bad. So, in true Orweillian fashion, I’ve amended the post. We’ve always been at war with Oceania.]

Ofcom just published a recent speech by Robin Foster on advertising and television funding issues. It’s an interesting and useful presentation, except for one portion where Foster off-handedly claims:

As any broadcasting economist will tell you, [advertising] also creates a very imperfect market. The programming it funds will tend to be made to appeal to mass audiences at the expense of minority tastes, it will tend sometimes to be bland rather than controversial, in order not to put off viewers. It risks encouraging programming which appeals to a lowest common denominator.

I think Foster greatly overstates the risks and tendencies of advertising-funded television.

Ofcom is supposed to be an evidence-based regulator. We noted back in December 2004 that the Satellite & Cable Broadcasters’ Group demolished this antiquated thinking with the empiricism and analysis in its Phase 2 PSB review consultation response. The SCBG’s own research — and McKinsey & Co.’s September 2004 report — both reveal that privately-funded programming is not the ‘bland’ / ‘lowest common denominator’ stuff that Foster describes. Basically, the SCBG response demonstrated that privately-funded, themed channels often beat PSBs at their own game. Many of these channels are primarily advertiser-funded.

If Ofcom wants to receive the industry’s and the public’s confidence in its research and analytical capabilities, it needs to reconsider these tired arguments about advertising-funded television. They simply don’t comport with the evidence. Foster is partially correct: There is a risk of any broadcaster–however funded–to be bland and appeal to mass audiences. The BBC has certainly been accused of this more often than the Discovery Channel.

Am I wrong? Comments to blog@ofcomwatch.co.uk