ISBA Calls For Government To Take Action Against BBC
The Incorporated Society of British Advertisers is calling on the Government to take action to stop the BBC using its “massive licence-fee funding” to compete with rival commercial broadcasters.
The industry body’s document to the Department of Culture Media and Sport claims the market distortion the BBC inflicts on commercial media and its advertiser customers will continue if not addressed as part of the Corporation’s Charter Review.
It is urging the Government to either free the BBC from its public service shackles or bring it back within a more clearly and tightly defined public service remit, managing its funding and adjusting its governance.
ISBA claims that maintaining the status quo is not an option and argues that the BBC now routinely operates well beyond the acceptable limits of its existing Charter, which serves only to “constrain fair and effective competition.”
A spokesperson for ISBA said: “This is a choice that must be made. The BBC’s ever more vigorous competitiveness – achieved on a basis of its massive and generous licence-fee funding and unchecked by its current governance – creates enormous market distortions and causes wide-ranging damage to a significant UK industry.”
The self-proclaimed voice of British advertisers is also calling for fundamental changes to the way the BBC is governed in the wake of the highly critical findings of the Hutton enquiry. It claims the Corporation has adopted an increasingly populist approach to programming and should be independently regulated by media super-regulator, Ofcom.
ISBA argues that the BBC’s annual £116 licence fee is “inequitable and unsustainable” within the mutli-channel landscape. It supports recent proposals put forward by David Elstein for the introduction of a new public service fund that could be accessed by commercial broadcasters such as ITV, Channel 4 and Five (see Tory Report Calls For Reduction Of BBC Licence Fee).
The BBC has come under increasing criticism over the last few months and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising recently launched a withering attack on the Corporation’s increasingly aggressive approach to programming and self-promotion (see IPA Report Deplores Aggressive And Commercial BBC).
Recent research examining the BBC’s role following the Hutton enquiry also revealed that almost 70% of people in the UK want fundamental changes to the way the Corporation is governed. Just 31% of those surveyed were found to support the continuation of the BBC’s annual £116 licence fee in its current form (see UK Viewers Call For Change In Way BBC Is Funded).
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