Regulating the BBC’s impact on competition - Statement on requirements and guidelines
The role of the BBC is to produce high quality and distinctive programmes and services which educate, inform and entertain.
As a large publicly-funded organisation, the BBC inevitably has an impact on competition in the wider media market. It may have a positive effect by stimulating demand or encouraging sector wide innovation, for example. But in fulfilling its objectives, the BBC may also harm the ability of others to compete effectively.
In December 2016, we published four consultations setting out how we intended to regulate the BBC’s impact on competition. In those consultations, we proposed requirements and guidance that we would use:
- when assessing if the BBC should be allowed to make proposed changes to its activities;
- when carrying out a review to assess the impact of ongoing BBC activities on competition;
- to ensure the BBC’s commercial subsidiaries don’t benefit from their relationship with the BBC public service in a way that gives them an unfair advantage over their competitors; and
- to ensure the BBC negotiates distribution arrangements with platforms on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.
This document summarises the comments we received about those proposals, our responses to those comments, and the amendments we have made to the requirements and guidance as a result.