Free TV “A Right For Citizens”

The cable and satellite broadcasting revolution, whether on analogue or digital, offers almost limitless choice to viewers and a chance for governments to create a regulatory regime of common sense and fairness, according to National Heritage minister Lord Inglewood.

Speaking at the UK Association for European Law Media Conference, Lord Inglewood went on to say that public service TV had a safe future. Access to it was as much a right for citizens as mains water and the telephone, he said. He went on to say: “I believe that – for the foreseeable future – universally available free to air public service broadcasting of the kind we are accustomed to will remain at the heart of UK broadcasting.”

He gave two reasons for this: firstly, it will act as a benchmark against which all other services will stand. The major free to air channels, with universal coverage and their privileged place in analogue broadcasting and on the digital multiplexes, act as a yardstick against which the others will be judged; and secondly these channels are part of the “information infrastructure of contemporary society. Access to them is as much part of the citizens’ right as access to the water main or the telephone line.”

He also said that viewers will demand that the explosion of channels is properly controller and that EC-wide regulation is itself properly constrained.

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