Ofcom is the UK's Communications regulator, and one of our jobs is to review the provision of Public Service Broadcasting (PSB)in the UK at least once every five years.
Such reviews have to:
- Review how well existing public service broadcasters (the likes of BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and five) are performing in their public service role.
- Recommend what policies the Government should adopt in order to maintain and strengthen the quality of PSB in the future.
We did our first PSB review back in 2004-5, first publishing our review, followed by our recommendations.
Over the past couple of years the pace of change in broadcasting has outstripped most people's expectations and predictions - Ofcom's included. So we've brought forward the second review of PSB, publishing its terms of reference in September 2007.
We published the first phase of the review on April 10th 2008. That was open for consultation for ten weeks and now we have published the second phase of our analysis. That takes on board the comments and feedback made in response to Phase One, and includes lots more research and analysis.
The team inside Ofcom have been sifting through a mountain of data, and grappling with a range of throny problems. But rather than huddling away on the south side of Southwark Bridge for several months, we thought we'd try blogging - as a trial.
We're keen to see if a blog can let more people learn about our emerging thinking, and we hope that your thoughts and suggestions will improve the quality of our analysis.
We will read all comments before they get published (even regulators worry about libel) so there may be a delay before your comment appears on the blog. And if we don't feel we can publish your comment because they break one of the House Rules we'll email you back and explain why.
We ask that your comments are relevent to the review of public service broadcasting - if they're not, I'm afraid we won't be able to publish them as part of this trial.
Please read this blog's House Rules and the terms and conditions before commenting.
The blog is written by Rhona Parry, a member of Ofcom's PSB Review team.
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