The Price of Plurality - Stakeholders - Ofcom

42John Whittingdalealong with growth in broadband take-up, and with the completion ofdigital switchover in 2012 virtually all households in the UK will be ableto receive a wide range of these services.However, alongside this there is evidence that the existingarrangements for supporting public service content are comingunder pressure. In particular, concerns have been raised that ITV,Channel 4 and Five will reduce their provision of public servicecontent as audiences fragment and their market share declines.The pressure on the current system is already becoming obvious – forinstance, commercial broadcasters are seeking to scale back theirlevel of provision of UK-produced children’s content and regionalprogramming. In this climate, there may need to be different modelsof intervention and funding if viewers and listeners are to retain accessto specifi c types of public service content.A model for sustaining public service content infutureGiven these developments in communications markets, includingpressures on the traditional PSBs and the growth in market provisionof public service content, it is appropriate to consider the extent towhich the traditional model of public intervention and funding ofpublic service content is sustainable, or desirable, in the digital age.The Select Committee’s report therefore set out a new frameworkto help the Government decide whether to intervene, and it alsooutlined how public funding could be better distributed to improvevalue for money and encourage more effi cient and plural provision ofpublic service content.A framework for considering interventionPlurality in the provision of content has long been a fundamentalGovernment objective, as it brings together the benefi ts ofcompetition, different services and a diversity of viewpoints toconsumers. If the Government’s objective in the broadcasting marketis to ensure the plural provision of public service content, the factthat providers without any public service obligations currently providea huge amount of this content suggests that an additional test isneeded to consider whether the Government should intervene.In 1999, Gavyn Davies, then chairman of an independent reviewpanel commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media andSport (DCMS) to consider the future funding of the BBC, identifi edthe precondition for intervention via public service broadcasting. Hisreport (Independent Review Panel 1999) concluded that the naturaldefi nition of public service broadcasting is that it is broadcastingwhich, for one reason or another is desirable, but which the marketwill not provide or will provide in insuffi cient quantity and addedthat “it is impossible to argue for a public service broadcaster unlessmarket failure can be shown”. The independent review panel statedthat: some form of market failure must lie at the heart of any conceptof public service broadcasting. Beyond simply using the catchphrase that public service broadcasting must ‘inform, educate and