Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom

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In the United Kingdom the term "public service broadcasting" refers to broadcasting that is for the public benefit rather than for purely commercial concerns. The communications regulator Ofcom, requires that certain television and radio broadcasters fulfil certain requirements as part of their licence to broadcast. All the BBC's television and radio stations have a public service remit, even those only broadcast digitally; but aside from this, only those stations broadcast on terrestrial analogue television - the regional Channel 3 companies (the ITV Network), GMTV, Channel Four (S4C in Wales) and Five - are obliged to provide public service programming as they can be viewed freely almost anywhere nationwide. Commercial radio generally has fewer requirements imposed upon it, normally requiring only a minimum level of news.

The BBC, whose broadcasting in the UK is entirely non-commercial, is most notable for being a public service broadcaster and its first director general, Lord Reith introduced many of the concepts that would later define PSB in the UK when he adopted the mission to "inform, educate and entertain".

With the launch of the first commercial broadcaster ITV in 1955 the government required that the local franchises fulfilled a similar obligation, mandating a certain level of local news coverage, arts and religious programming.

The next commercial television broadcasters in the UK, Channel 4 and S4C were set up in 1981 by the government to provide different forms of PSB. Channel 4 was required to cater to minorities and arts, S4C was to be a mainly welsh language programmer. Neither was required to be commercially successful as Channel 4 was subsidised by the ITV network and S4C received a grant from the central government. Channel 4 was restructured under the Broadcasting Act, 1990 to be a state owned corporation that is now required to be self-financing.

Most other national broadcasters do not have such requirement imposed. ITV has been attempting to reduce the requirement to broadcast unprofitable PSB programming, citing the increased competition from Digital and Multichannel television.

Ofcom has recently been consulting on what direction PSB should take in the futureTemplate:Ref

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Broadcasting Research Unit's definition

  • Geographic universality - that the stations' broadcasts are available nationwide, with no exception (a criterion failed by Five).
  • Catering for all interests and tastes - as exemplified by the BBC's range of minority channels (BBC2, BBC Radio 3, and various digital services), but also by the commercial Channel 4.
  • Catering for minorities - much as above, but with racial and sexual minorities etc. (e.g. Channel 4, S4C, BBC Asian Network).
  • Concern for national identity and community - this essentially means that the stations should in the most part commission programmes from within the country, which may be more expensive than importing shows from abroad.
  • Detachment from vested interests and government - in other words, programming should be impartial, and the stations should not pander to the desires of advertisers or government. In practice however, such impartiality is questionable, even with the BBC. Even when a station is removed from corporate and government interests, there may be a sense that it panders to a particular social group (i.e. the Middle class that ascribes the values PSB aims to disseminate).
  • One broadcasting system to be directly funded by the corpus of users - i.e. the licence fee in the case of the BBC.
  • Competition in good programming rather than numbers - quality is the prime concern with a true public service broadcaster. Of course, in practice, ratings wars are rarely concerned with quality, although that may depend on how you define the word "quality".
  • Guidelines to liberate programme makers and not restrict them - in the UK, guidelines, and not laws, govern what a programme maker can and cannot do, although these guidelines can be backed up by hefty penalties.
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See also

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References

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