IPA Demands a Single Regulatory Body For TV

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) has today called for a single economic regulator for television, responsible both for commercial services and the BBC, and an update of the current ownership and licensing regimes for radio.

This development is the IPA’s response to the Government’s Green Paper on Regulating Communications (see Newsline). The IPA is calling for:

• a legally-binding remit for the BBC to provide a range and quality of programme that would not be produced by the commercial sector. The IPA is recommending this blueprint is based on the BBC’s own 1992 document Extending Choice;
• maintaining the existing ITC safeguards against concentration of ownership and anti-competitive sales practices;
• keeping in place the requirement for 100% of public service analogue output to be simulcast on digital terrestrial television;
• supervision to ensure that digital investments do not adversely affect analogue programme output;
• no review of the analogue switch-off date until 50% digital terrestrial television penetration is achieved and then no switch-off until 90%s penetration is achieved.

In the case of radio, the IPA is demanding a review of the current ownership and licensing arrangements under a dedicated and separate economic regulator for both the BBC and the commercial sector.

Radio ownership has been in the spotlight lately, with GWR recently commissioning a study to set out some options for the future control of radio (see Newsline).

Jim Marshall of the IPA and responsible for the future of television commented: “The future uptake of digital is impossible to forecast with any degree of reliability. However two key trends are evident: the increasingly dynamic and competitive nature of the market and the fast changing economics of the television sector with subscription income now beginning to assume major importance. Developments in one part of the market can now threaten the viability of other broadcasters. It points to the need for all parts of the market (both BBC and commercial) to be subject to coordinated regulation so that the publicly-funded BBC, rather than ITV, carries primary responsibility for discharging the public service programming remit.”