The Price of Plurality - Stakeholders - Ofcom

40David Puttnammarket should be welcomed wholeheartedly, and is full of excitingpossibilities; but surely the role of policy making is to look closely atwhat the market isn’t, or is unlikely to provide.Last year the BBC explicitly recognised that people in the UK wantto retain their belief that television is a safe haven of impartiality andintegrity. There seems little reason to suppose that, as use of newmedia increases, the demand for those standards will fall away.Indeed, it is likely that in a more complex and noisy marketplacepeople will want to know where they can seek out and fi nd contentthat they can be sure will provide the core values traditionallyattached to PSB.This raises signifi cant and complex issues for any forthcominglegislative process, and there are a number of questions that will needto be addressed:• How do we maintain a plurality of quality service providersonce the leverage of privileged access to spectrum has fallenaway?• How do we sustain genuine ‘plurality of voice’?• How do we encourage a range of content offering clear‘public value’ with reach, scale and impact online?• And in seeking to extend public service values into a newmedia age; how do we make sure the UK doesn’t miss out onthe benefi ts of the future, without doing irreparable damage towhat is, at present, a fairly ‘rich’ marketplace?We must fi nd a way of reaping the benefi ts of choice, whilstsafeguarding the depth and breadth of plurality in all its forms. Onevery front our focus has to be twofold: to avoid undue concentrationof supply; and to look to maintain a variety of services that embodythe quality, scale and impact that we have demanded in the past.The challenge to this present generation of policymakers is to extendrather than compromise those values we placed at the heart of thelast Communications Act.ReferencesOFCOM (2007a), New News, Future News, http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/newnews/. London: Ofcom.OFCOM (2007b), Ofcom Communications Market Report 2007, http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/cmr07/. London: Ofcom.PACT (2008), Pact: The Production Trend Report for Out of London, January. http://www.pact.co.uk/uploads/fi le_bank/asset_3087.pdf. London: Pact.