Home > TV > Ofcom PSB Review > Ofcom reports > Public Service Broadcasting > Defining PSB

Policy makers and academics over the years have tried to produce an objective and widely-agreed definition of PSB. Broadcasters themselves have also done much to advance rationales for public service broadcasting which, unsurprisingly, often serve mainly to support their own existence. But it sometimes seems as if little progress has been made. The economist R H Coase ^(-2-) noted almost 40 years ago that broadcasting policy developed in a world "in which ignorance, prejudice and mental confusion, encouraged rather than dispelled by the political organisation, exert a strong influence on policy making". In 1999, the Davies report - the most recent major government review of the funding of the BBC ^(-3-) - concluded that it would be too ambitious in its six months to establish a new definition of the role of public service broadcasting, although it did conclude that "we may not be able to offer a tight new definition of public service broadcasting, but we nevertheless each felt we knew it when we saw it".

In particular, we seem to have fallen in to a rather sterile debate between those who argue that PSB is all about 'market failure' and those who argue that PSB should be rooted in cultural and social objectives, which have little to do with the effective operations of markets.

The market failure 'extremists' argue that consumer sovereignty should be the key to policy making in broadcasting. Individuals are seen as being the best judges of their own well-being. In an effectively operating market, well-informed consumers will be able to express their preferences, acting individually or together, and suppliers will compete to satisfy those preferences. Resources will be allocated efficiently to their highest valued uses. To the extent that broadcasting markets might not work effectively, then some intervention may be needed - but this is likely to be increasingly limited and narrowly scoped. Indeed, some of the key consumer market failure arguments advanced over the years in support of public intervention in broadcasting are now much less persuasive - broadcasting is no longer a pure public good, for example, as conditional access technology allows consumers to be excluded from services they have not paid for; and consumers have access to a vast amount of information about the programmes and services available to them, which reduces the problem of insufficient information, once felt to be a significant market imperfection. In a multichannel world, with a mix of pay and advertiser-funded services, the market will provide for most direct consumer demands.

Those who would take the opposite approach argue that broadcasting is too important to be left to the market - it has an unrivalled influence on our cultural identity, our way of understanding ourselves and the world in which we live, and on our ability to participate effectively in a democratic society. Given this, we cannot afford to rely solely on commercial provision, especially in the areas of news and current affairs. Rather, we need regulatory and institutional measures to ensure that high quality, independent and challenging programmes and services are available to all, free of commercial and political influence.

Can a common framework be used which brings these two - seemingly diametrically opposed - approaches together?

We think that this is possible. The market failure extremists, while appearing to take an objective approach to the subject, dodge a major question: are short-term consumer decisions, taken in a market with as powerful an influence on all our lives as has broadcasting, likely to deliver a socially optimal long-term outcome? If the answer is no, then policy makers need to think about precisely what that socially optimal outcome should be and devise interventions to help achieve it which go beyond correcting pure market failures. Those who argue the case for wider social and cultural goals dodge an equally difficult question about funding and priorities - just how much intervention is needed and in what form to achieve their stated aims? To answer this question, policy makers need to understand what the market, left to itself, would provide.

Whichever starting point is adopted, the conclusions are the same: it is important to develop some regulatory policy consensus thinking about both a desirable longer-term outcome for broadcasting (this in the end will be a value judgement, informed by some clear thinking about the sort of society we want to live in) and an understanding of what a market-based system might provide (given that markets are usually better at allocating resources and satisfying consumer needs than command and control systems, even those which come in the guise of a PSB). Policy decisions can then be made in the light of the desirable outcome, informed by an understanding of likely market developments.

Suggested overall framework

A research-based view

Identifying a desirable outcome requires making value judgements about the importance of specified social goals - for example, of the quality and type of news provision, encouraging social cohesion, and so on. Many of these aspects are captured in Clause 264 of the 2003 Communications Act, which describes the fulfilment of the purposes of PSB as including (amongst other things) "fair and well-informed debate" and "comprehensive and authoritative coverage of news and current affairs"; and "programmes that reflect the lives and concerns of different communities and cultural interests and traditions within the United Kingdom".

While any interested party could produce a list of such desirable outcomes, a key missing dimension is an understanding of what the general public thinks the priorities for PSB should be. This is not a new idea. The Peacock report (-3-) advanced the idea that consumers may have a considered view about the provision of aspects of broadcasting which they themselves might not directly consume in amounts sufficient to secure their commercial delivery, but which they would nevertheless like to see available for others to use, or for themselves to use at some stage in the future. Just as there is widespread support for the public funding of galleries, museums, theatres and other sports and arts facilities, so Peacock argued, there is likely to be public support for some aspects of PSB. It is an important challenge for policy makers to establish the depth and breadth of this support - for wide scale public funding of broadcasting can only survive in the longer term if there is a democratic will for it to survive. If popular support for the BBC dips below a threshold level, for example, then the long-term survival of the licence fee - which depends on an acquiescent public - will be called into question. At the ITC, some research has already been carried out to determine the extent to which the public can separate their own personal programming likes and dislikes from their support for 'citizenship' or 'social/cultural' programming. This research shows that social benefits such as protecting the public (from rogue traders, etc.) and inclusion (delivering something of value to everyone irrespective of background and social circumstance) are regarded as being more important to viewers than many of the personal benefits that they were presented with.

If it is thought that the general public on its own is unlikely to have enough information on which to form a view about the desirable longer-term nature of broadcasting, similar research can be carried out amongst opinion formers and other interested groups (parents and teachers, for example, could be asked about the importance of different aspects of children's and educational programming).

By taking these steps, it should be possible to construct a research-based view of the broadcasting world we would like to see in the UK, which, subject to appropriate debate and challenge, would help establish a more robust starting point for an assessment of PSB in future.

Understanding the market

The second part of the equation is a clear view of how the broadcasting market might develop over the next few years. Informed by this analysis, we can then start to identify the nature and scope of intervention that might be needed to secure the desirable outcome referred to above.

In its PSB review, Ofcom will be conducting in-depth research and analysis of future trends in the UK broadcasting sector. Based on existing research, however (such as the Bournemouth Media School scenario analysis - Future Reflections), it seems plausible that the focus of concern may be in the following areas:

• Concentration: the likely emergence of a few powerful, possibly foreign-owned commercial players will pose questions about effective competition in the market, undue political influence, plurality of views, and a possible risk to UK-originated productions
• Fragmentation: as audiences and revenues continue to fragment over the multitude of digital channels, there is likely to be an increasing risk to investment in content, and possibly a threat to quality
• Undersupply of certain types of programmes: a combination of market imperfections and the existence of externalities or 'merit good' characteristics amongst certain types of programmes means that these programmes, e.g. those with an educative element, may not be supplied in a sufficient quantity by the market.

Each of these concerns may call for different types of intervention. The policy toolkit could range from institutional solutions (such as the BBC), through regulatory rules (for example rules to ensure a certain proportion of UK originations is shown), to specific targeted interventions, e.g. the identification of specific programming types (such as news) and programme attributes (such as impartiality) which need to be supported and sustained by various means, including direct funding. The toolkit might also include interventions to foster particular market characteristics that are felt to be important - for example, universal availability of certain services, or competition across public service broadcasters for the provision of certain programme types.

Is this still PSB?

The overall aim of this analysis would be to have a clearly-defined and agreed set of aims and outcomes for UK broadcasting. The extent to which the system as a whole is delivering these outcomes can then be measured and assessed. In effect, we are identifying the public interest in broadcasting - and asking what public action is needed to protect that interest.

PSB as it is currently thought about in the UK is arguably a sub-set of this overall public interest. Alongside, for example, healthy competition, a thriving commercial broadcasting sector, and robust investment in programmes, we may wish to identify particular types of content which need special protection, and perhaps particular institutions which have a special responsibility for delivering that content.

With such an approach, there is no problem in recognising that there is much of value produced by wholly commercial broadcasters. But alongside the commercial sector, it may be in the public interest to sustain strong public broadcasters catering for a wide range of audiences through a variety of different types of programming.

Footnotes

2. Coase (1966)

3. DCMS (1999)

4. Peacock (1986)

Back to top