Tomorrow, Ofcom will host an interesting event (link here) that explores our converged digital world and how it is impacted by regulation and policy.
It’s an event that will bring together the leadership of BT, Ofcom, BSkyB, Channel 4, NTL:Telewest for a two-day long exploration of some very interesting themes.
We have at least one OfcomWatcher [...]
Conservative MEP Syed Kamall posted this YouTube video, setting forth his opposition to the proposed audio-visual media services directive.
Kamall makes a good point, but not all product placement is so obvious as he portrays. Sometimes it is so subtle and skillfully accomplished that we need the protection of EU regulation to avoid serious consumer [...]
OfcomWatch friend Keith McMahon of Telebusillis offers a skeptical view about where Ofcom is headed with respect to VoIP regulation.
Put in the larger context of the Junk Food Ad Ban and ITV control issues, McMahon says he is ‘worried, extremely worried about OFCOM’.
Comment: I’m not sure Elizabeth Judge has this story correct, so criticism [...]
Ofcom has commissioned the voluntary sector coalition, Public Voice (of which I have been until now the co-ordinator) to run the voluntary sector part of its forthcoming consultation on the allocation of the digital dividend. The commission is a recognition of the potential interest that civil society and voluntary sector groups may have in ensuring [...]
The Sunday Times’ India Knight has critical words for Ofcom over its junk food (HFSS) adverts ban around children’s programming. She writes:
I’m seldom in favour of bans – they presuppose unimaginable stupidity, and I like to cling to the forlorn hope that this country isn’t, in fact, entirely populated by morons – and Ofcom’s [...]
Ofcom today fined Television Concepts Ltd (in respect of its service Look4Love) 175,000 GBP and issued it with notice of its intention to revoke its licence. Ofcom has decided to take action following a number of serious breaches of the BCAP TV Advertising Standards Code and the Television Concepts failure to comply with an [...]
In today’s Times Ed Richards delivers a straightforward and very candid review of the politics and regulatory principles underlying Ofcom’s actions in the regulation of advertising of HFSS (junk) foods.
It’s a well-written piece: Richards skillfully portrays Ofcom as the evidence-based purveyor of regulation having to navigate its way between shrill proponents of one-sided [...]
People may have read recently about Talk Talk’s bad press due to its promotions and seeming inability to provide service or customer service to its broadband customers:
About 100,000 of the 500,000 people who have persisted with their application for the firm’s ‘free broadband forever’ offer, launched in April, are still waiting to be connected, while [...]
I was suffering through Peter Wilby’s anti-Murdoch rant in Comment is Free and came across this nugget in one of the comments:
The joke in glasgow is that if you have only the 5 normal tv channels you’ve got ‘council telly’. The wife cracked up at a works meeting to find out we were the [...]
The Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill – which will merge Postwatch and Energywatch with the National Consumer Council – received its First Reading in the House of Lords on Thursday. A date for Second Reading has been yet for 4 December.
Under the Government’s original proposals, there was a possibility that the Ofcom Consumer Panel [...]
In the domains of financial services regulation and media and communications regulation, new regulatory bodies have recently been formed: the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Office of Communications (Ofcom). Each faces complex challenges in regulating risks; each is evolving a ‘culture of regulation’ that transcends classic forms of regulation, seeking to represent the interests [...]
Ofcom made a decisive move today, banning junk food (HFSS) adverts in and around programmes aimed at the under-16 crowd. You know, the fat kids who sit around and watch too much television. Ofcom deserve credit – it had to navigate in a highly contested policy arena, with great scrutiny over its actions [...]
Ofcom have banned junk food advertising around kids channels and all shows wit6h a higher than average proportion of viewers under 16. After significant consultation Ofcom decided on the balance of the evidence that the best way to achieve its objectives would be a total ban on HFSS food and drink advertisements in and around [...]
Ofcom has today published research which evaluates the experience of UK consumers in telecoms, broadcasting and internet markets. Published alongside it is a policy evaluation document which uses the data to assess the impact of Ofcom’s regulation and the priorities it has set itself.
The research, entitled ‘The Consumer Experience’, highlights many benefits from increased competition [...]
At an Ofcom conference held today to launch the outcome of a new research project under the heading “The Consumer Experience”, the Chair of the Ofcom Consumer Panel Colette Bowe set out a ‘To-do list’ for the new Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards.
The list was:
How should we use the digital dividend
How is digital switchover progressing
How [...]
We will have to await the outcome of the negotiations between the Government and the BBC over the corporation’s future licence fee before the Government will announce details of theTargeted Help Scheme for digital switchover.
Meanwhile a PR campaign, funded by DCMS, is being planned to re-assure older and disabled people that they will receive help [...]
It looks as though the Council of Ministers has seen some sense with regards to the European Commissions proposals for a Directive to update the Television Without Frontiers Directive. They voted in favour of a compromise text submitted by the presidency (Sweden, Ireland, Latvia, Belgium, Lithuania, Luxemburg and Austria were the only countries not to [...]
Today’s New York Sun offers a stridently-worded opinion piece by former FCC commissioner Harold Furchtgott Roth. Roth basically says we should ignore OECD broadband statistics that place the U.S. behind some of its European and Asian friends and instead focus on the underlying structural forces at work in the U.S. – competition between different platforms [...]
Dan Sabbagh takes aim at Europe’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive in today’s Times. Click here for his take. He writes in part:
In Europe, MEPs will begin thrashing out revisions to Television Without Frontiers. The new directive aims to keep up with changes in technology, setting minimum standards in regulation across the EU.
This is a [...]
The consolidated version of the Wireless Telegraphy Act received royal assent yesterday. The Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 The act consolidates enactments regarding wireless telegraphy included in the Wireless Telegraphy Acts of 1949, 1967, and 1998; the Marine & Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967; Telecommunications Act 1984; Broadcasting Act 1990; Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 [...]
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