Ofcom has published its Public Service Broadcasting Report [pdf] which aims to provide an evidence base for monitoring the delivery of PSB. The designated PSB broadcasters are the BBC, ITV1, GMTV, Channel 4, Five, S4C and Teletext.

The report’s purpose is to enable both Ofcom and its stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of the current position of PSB delivery, and how this has changed over the last five years. Ofcom has said that these reports are “particularly valuable in the run up to digital switchover.”

They found (and check out the language they use – emphases added) that:

• The BBC performs particularly strongly across many of the elements of Public Service Broadcasting. BBC One’s strengths are in delivering news and big national events, while BBC Two performs well for stimulating knowledge and learning.

• ITV1 is appreciated for its quality drama and regional identity; its provision of peak-time first-run originated Drama and Soap is also significantly higher than other channels.

• Channel 4 is rated most highly for engaging, high quality and challenging programmes; 16-24s rate Channel 4 more highly on virtually all PSB measures than the audience as a whole. (Contrast this with this article by Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian yesterday where he claims “Channel 4 has never been … harder to love. And now one of its own founders has claimed it has ‘lost its soul’.”)

• Five’s output is less strongly appreciated by regular viewers in general terms, reflecting the relative size and salience of the channel. However, when looking at appreciation of individual programmes, it gets strong support.

The UK Television Landscape

Take-up of digital television continued to rise in 2006, driven mainly by the growth of Freeview. In September 2006 73% of households watched digital television on their main set, a 7.9 percentage point increase on the previous year.

Net advertising revenue (NAR) fell by 8% in 2006. In contrast, subscription revenues rose, resulting in subscription revenues exceeding NAR by £1bn.

(Un?)Informing our understanding of the world

Average annual hours of viewing to news, across all individuals in the UK, dipped sharply in 2006 to 91 hours, from 98 hours in 2005. However, this is likely to be in part due to a decrease in the overall hours of output from 7,311 hours in 2005 to 6,879 hours in 2006. Hours of news output do shift considerably from year to year depending on the news agenda.

We’ll have more comment on the report over the next several days. Watch this space.