OfcomWatch received the following comment from Dimitris Kareklidis:

‘I attended the seminar too and I do agree with all the points you made. It was a useful event that highlighted the weakness of the argument for a PSP. The greatest fallacy of all is the government and OfCom’s, obsession if I may say, with the market failures in the UK media landscape. William Garrood repeatedly reffered to those market failures but when asked by one of the delegates, could not give an example.

It is unclear why the government thinks it is necessary to establish a new publicly-funded media entity at a time when the argument surounding the BBC’s funding model becomes even more important for the broadcaster’s ability to sustain itself. More importantly Channel 4 is aspiring to become a mini-BBC, with its chief executive Andy Duncan asking for part of the BBC’s budget collected through the TV licence fees.

Many economists have argued for the abolition of the TV licence fee, and the establishment of a PSP that would be publicly funded by taxpayers’ money would only infuriate the media industry, the taxpayers and would further distort the media market.

There is no doubt that the BBC, with the government’s backing, has had a tremendous impact upon the UK media market, nevermind its decisions being reviewed by OfCom, and going through a Market Impact Assessment. The matter of the fact is that the main PSB in the UK, the BBC, in its attempt to fulfill its public service remit, has gone well beyond in competing head to head with the rest of the media that operate in market conditions, thus the argument about ‘dumbing down’ that critics have used to attack the BBC in the past.

The BBC and Channel 4 as PSB’s publish content in a variety of platforms, analogue and digital broadcasting, online, print (through BBC worldwide), therefore there aren’t any gaps that a PSP is required to fill.

I suggested during the seminar, after seeing the perfectly balanced argument made by Steve Folwell (Guardian’s Head of Strategy), that the market has the ability to provide public service content, no only through not-for profit, Trust owned, private companies, such as the Guardian, but also by other media. The digital challenge presents the media with the opportunity to serve niche markets that were ignored before, and give them quality content that could also be marked as ‘public service content’ (PSC). I am not an economist, but I do believe there are ways to encourage private media to offer PSC, if not through PSB-private media synergies, supported by both public and private funds, maybe through tax incentives etc.

The point is to avoid further market distruption, and bring media companies to work together collaboratively and provide the market with the PSC required. Who said that providing PSC cannot be done profitably.’