The Public Service Publisher - an Obituary

In 2005, the British communications regulator Ofcom released its review of public service broadcasting (PSB), the remit governing the majority of broadcasters throughout British broadcasting history. While supporting a continuing role for PSB in a digital era, Ofcom found that the arrangement whereby commercial broadcasters provided public service programming in return for access to the airwaves was breaking down because of the declining value of analogue spectrum in the run-up to the switchover to digital television. In this situation, Ofcom, as the body with statutory responsibility for ensuring broadcast diversity and with specific oversight over commercial channels, concluded that the BBC was likely to end up as the near monopoly provider of PSB. It therefore recommended the creation of a new competitive supplier of PSB content, a Public Service Publisher (PSP), whose role would be to facilitate the creation of innovative and publicly engaged material

Citizens and consumers: discursive debates during and after the Communications Act 2003

The regulation of media and communications in the UK has recently been subject to reform resulting in the creation of the Office of Communications (Ofcom). This statutory body, established by an Act of Parliament, is a new, sector-wide regulator, protecting the interests of what has been termed the ‘citizen-consumer’. This article charts the discursive shifts that occurred during the passage of the Communications Act through Parliament and in the initial stages of its implementation to understand how and why the term ‘citizen-consumer’ came to lie at the heart of the new regulator’s mission. By critically analysing the various alignments of ‘citizen’ and ‘consumer’ interests within the debates, the underlying struggles over the formulation of power, responsibility and duties for the new regulator and for other stakeholders – industry, government and public – are identified. The article concludes that the legacy of these debates is that regulatory provisions designed to further the ‘citizen interest’ contain significant and unresolved dilemmas

Representing citizens and consumers in media and communications regulation

What do citizens need from the media, and how should this be regulated? Western democracies are witnessing a changing regulatory regime, from "command-andcontrol" government to discursive, multistakeholder governance. In the United Kingdom, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) is required to further the interests of citizens and consumers, which it does in part by aligning them as the citizen-consumer. What is meant by this term, and whether it captures the needs of citizens or subordinates them to those of consumers, has been contested by civil society groups as well as occasioning some soul-searching within the regulator. By triangulating a discursive analysis of the Communications Act 2003, key actor interviews with the regulator and civil society bodies, and focus groups among the public, the authors seek to understand how these terms ("citizen," "consumer," and "citizen-consumer") are used to promote stakeholder interests in the media and communications sector, not always to the benefit of citizens

Internet Governance in the UK

Discussion of internet governance has been shaped by three myths: that the market can decide, that the Internet is different to 'legacy' media and that national governance is unimportant. The author challenges these three myths through an examination of internet governance in the UK in 2003/4 and argues that the internet is a layered, not vertically integrated, medium of communication, that three modes of governance prevail - hierarchy, markets and networks (self-regulatory). The layers of the UK internet are examined, their governance identified and evaluated, and the conclusion drawn that network governance is a distinctive, but not universally present, characteristic of UK internet governance. Also, contemporary, well-functioning arrangements may be unstable, and stronger hierarchical governance may be required in the future