[cma-l] Broadcasting Devolution and Subsidiarity

[Dave Rushton]

Dear Colleagues

The Scottish parliamentary election result leaves Westminster's  
monopoly of broadcasting (and communications) regulation in an  
awkward place.

The absence of any significant accountability of broadcasting and  
communications to the Scottish Parliament and indirectly to the  
Scottish viewer and listener finds Westminster determining commercial  
as well as public interests in a political framework that for the  
most part is very different and might be better served from within  
the nation(s).

In a Paper prepared for the Calman Commission on Scottish Devolution  
(attached) the Institute of Local Television argued for broadcast  
devolution and for subsidiarity, sometimes known as double-devolution.

This two tier approach serves to bring the regulation of broadcasting  
and communications closer to the point of distribution and use. How  
the content and delivery of services are regulated becomes an  
important topic once again when - in spite of digital profusion -  
spectrum scarcity and national 'UK' commercial priorities are once  
again being promoted before local use, in the absence of any  
mechanism to ensure local interests are registered.

A number of opportunities to influence the collective understanding  
of communications will appear over the coming months. Not least among  
these are the revision of the CMA Charter to address the present.  
There's the request from the Department of Culture Media and Sport to  
help shape a new Communications Bill; the demands for the roll-out of  
local TV to reach scattered rural areas as well as easier to serve  
metropolitan viewers. There's the monopoly of terrestrial  
transmission, the lack of a national local TV plan to inform service  
providers, as well as aims to achieve a universal fast broadband  
service. Even the allocation of channels numbers for local TV on the  
Electronic Programme Guide reflects the missing local input on how  
delivery and content might be informed by local demand. All these  
deliberations have a bearing on the extent to which local TV,  
community radio and wireless broadband (et al) are or are not under  
local control, regulation or informed by a coordinated local  
motivation. These policies and decisions all remain linked by a  
continuing assumption that broadcasting and communications should  
remain a UK state monopoly, either in spite of (or because of) the  
greater local emphasis and distinction made between parts of the UK  
and the responsibility falling upon local intervention.

Section 11 of the Communication Act of 2003 addresses Media Literacy.  
Read closely and it is clear that Section 11 provides an obligation  
on Ofcom to enable viewers and listeners (and service users) to have  
greater control of the choices with which they are presented, that  
Media Literacy involves doing but also and influencing choice and not  
merely selecting. Community radio and local TV offer 'doing' but have  
barely considered the legitimacy of the local claim to regulate and  
to decide services, to favour local TV or radio uses of spectrum of  
cable bandwidth over pornography or shopping.

The majority of recommendations made to Calman in the first part of  
his 2008-2009 study proposed a measure of devolution for  
broadcasting. Broadcasting devolution appeared to be supported in  
Calman's Interim Report but it was largely ignored and pushed aside  
in the Final Report. Devolution of communications was then a step too  
far. However, the Scottish elections has put who controls  
broadcasting back on the political agenda. I am circulating a copy of  
the proposals that we made in 2008/2009 because I think the current  
debate on the impact of the Scottish election needs to go further  
than state-to-nation devolution and to include subsidiarity, or the  
devolution of regulation to services only available in local areas.  
Subsidiarity is a UK not a Scottish (or Welsh or Northern Ireland)  
issue and although overlooked is closely allied to the aims of  
community media.

This Paper makes some suggestions that require wider discussion.

A progressive approach to broadcasting regulation must bring  
responsibility for content closer to those communities who are  
demanding local and community services. It remains an irony, as Dan  
Cass of United for Local Television has suggested, that pornographic  
channels are currently being allocated more accessible numbers on the  
Electronic Programme Guide than local TV channels.

Hopefully some of what is recommended in this Paper can find its way  
into the aims and ambitions of the broad community media, if not into  
the CMA's Charter, then in recommendations made by community and  
local media to Government in the coming months.

With regards,



Dave
Dr David Rushton
Institute of Local Television and
Scottish Local TV Federation



  
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