Returning to Luke’s recent post concerning Raymond Snoddy’s attack on Ofcom… here are my thoughts:

* It’s Snoddy who is wrong in many respects. Reducing public service obligations on terrestrial broadcasters is a good thing. Mostly because–in my opinion–nobody knows what PSB is. Why pretend otherwise? Government or regulatory attempts to define it will always run a dangerous course. In the immortal words of Rupert Murdoch (posted in the OfcomWatch breakroom, above Luke’s framed portrait of Lord Reith):

‘Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.’

What this means lately: Tim Henman and Bob Geldhof apparently need to have their every thought and move televised.

* Snoddy writes: ‘To some extent we have all allowed ourselves to be duped by the new, converged, modern regulator’. Err… I think a psychologist would call that ‘projection’.

* I’ve criticised Ofcom’s thinking on PSB matters as well. Ofcom have ignored the fact that PSB (as it defines the term) is provided in abundance without subsidy. So, while I support the termination of mandatory PSB-style obligations on terrestrial broadcasters, this doesn’t mean I believe a remedial �300 million PSP is necessary. That’s where Ofcom have not made their case very convincingly. Get rid of the stick, sure. But I think the market provides enough carrots.

* But I could be wrong. The tough thing in the U.K. is for anyone to speak of a ‘market’ in television. It’s completely distorted through a devastating scheme of public intervention: massive public subsidy, barriers to entry, content regulation, programming and production quotas, advertising and political restrictions, etc. It’s not really an economic marketplace and it’s also not really a ‘marketplace of ideas’, to borrow the American phrase. Ofcom is working in a highly-constrained environment (political, legal, economic and social) - there are no easy choices for the regulator.

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