OW received an interesting letter today from United for Local Television (ULTV). It is a complaint letter to David Currie of Ofcom. The substance of the complaint is this:

‘According to the public minutes of the 124th meeting of the Ofcom Board, held in Belfast on 20 May 2008:

“The Board agreed to delegate authority to the Chief Executive, the Partner, Content and Standards and the Partner, Strategy and Market Developments to approve the final version of the consultation document for publication in the autumn.”

From the statement above, it would appear that the Ofcom Board had substantially reached conclusions on the contents of its second consultation document before the first phase consultation had even closed (on 19 June) or responses to this consultation had been considered. It appears that, as early as May, the Ofcom Board chose to relinquish its responsibility to review the detailed policy proposals due to be published for consultation in September, instead delegating authority to just three individuals. If true, this would imply that Ofcom was intending to drive forward a pre-determined policy agenda, regardless of being in the midst of a public consultation process and before reviewing any of the responses to that consultation.’

My take: This does not look good — for two reasons.

1. As ULTV claim, it looks like the substance of the forthcoming PSB review had been agreed by Ofcom and it was merely a matter for the Board to allow senior management to write the document — as of 20 May 2008. The consultation still had a month to run. Ofcom has left itself very open to the accusation that it engaged in a sham consultation. I personally think Ofcom are usually open-minded, but the regulator needs to be very careful that it shows due care during a consultation period to remain engaged on the substantive issues. ‘These are the only options — what do you think of them?‘ is the type of consultation Ofcom should strive to avoid.

2. As part of my research I have been studying Ofcom’s board structure and corporate governance. The notion of a majority non-executive board was already on shaky ground from a number of academics and management experts. So, these types of developments shed light on that. Why shouldn’t three expert senior managers at Ofcom finalise and write the document? One theory about majority non-executive boards is that they serve as a check on the power of management. This might be particularly important with Ofcom because it is a non-majoritarian regulatory institution. So it’s very interesting to see a majority non-executive board tell management it has the final say over a major piece of policy.

So, this is a trap for Ofcom. Either the PSB review materials were basically final before the consultation closed and Ofcom may have engaged in a sham consultation. Or the PSB review materials were still subject to significant revision and therefore the board may have shown that majority non-executive management structures don’t always effectively govern management.

Or maybe there is another explanation — I’d like to hear it…

ULTV have other, substantive complaints about local television. I tend to agree with their position. Local TV in the UK stinks … at least in Oxford. I had heard that Ofcom were going to do more work on this in the next document, so hopefully ULTV’s concerns will be addressed.