What's this PSB Review about then?

By Rhona Parry

So why are we doing this review? Well the short answer is that Parliament - via the Communications Act 2003 - asks us to review PSB at least every five years. We have to do two things:

Firstly, we have to report on the "extent to which the public service broadcasters have delivered the purposes of public service television broadcasting";

And secondly, we have to make recommendations with a view to "maintaining and strengthening the quality of public service broadcasting in the future".

Now that might sound relatively straightforward, but there's a lot for us to do if we want to do the job properly. That's why we are splitting our PSB Review into three phases:

• The first phase, published today, sets out our initial analysis and presents a range of options for the future.
• Once we've received feedback, we'll publish a second document ('Phase 2') in the autumn which will hone down the options for the future.
• And once we've got some feedback on that, we'll finally make our minds up early in 2009.