1.21

Our vision for the future delivery of public service content is driven by the ongoing needs of the audience, as access to digital television becomes universal and take-up of new platforms continues to grow. It is for a system which:

• delivers high levels of new UK content meeting the purposes of public service broadcasting;
• provides public service content which is innovative, original, challenging, engaging and of consistently high quality;
• is available in a form, and on a range of platforms to achieve maximum reach and impact;
• ensures competition for the BBC in each public purpose with sufficient scale to achieve reach and impact;
• exploits the distinctive benefits of different delivery platforms; and
• supplies diverse content which meets the needs of all communities within the UK.

Audiences value competition for the BBC in provision of public service content, which will require new sources of funding in a digital age

Comments

Ofcom's vision generally sounds good to me.

But it is a set of normative preferences. We should all keep that in mind. Nothing about Ofcom's vision is that controversial in my opinion, but nothing about it is sacrosanct either.

Audiences have content-related needs, so Ofcom are right to focus on that. But audiences are also taxpayers and workers. For example, nowhere in Ofcom's vision are cost-effectiveness and fair dealing mentioned. This is important. We see occasional headlines about outrageous taxi fares at the BBC, huge salaries, wasteful expenditure, etc. Audiences are right to be skeptical about new funding when much of the existing PSB funding appears badly-managed.

If the vision for the future requires funding of some sort and Ofcom say that is generally an issue for Parliament and government -- it means it is an issue for the body politic.

In these belt-tightening times, I'm not sure there is a huge appetite in the body politic to see-out Ofcom's vision unless it is coupled with an important emphasis on getting as much value out of existing PSB expenditure as possible.

Ofcom, for example, should urge increased NAO scrutiny over the BBC.