[cma-l] The Guardian 14/02/14 - Ofcom boss: 'BBC licence fee should be shared with other broadcasters'

[CMA-L]

The BBC <http://www.theguardian.com/media/bbc> licence fee should be shared
with other broadcasters to promote "competition, dynamism and innovation",
according to the outgoing chair of media regulator
Ofcom<http://www.theguardian.com/media/ofcom>
.

Colette Bowe said she thought some BBC licence
fee<http://www.theguardian.com/media/bbc-licence-fee>funding should be
"contestable", with other media companies allowed to bid
to make public service broadcasting programming.

"I am an economist. There is a lot to be said for contestable funding on
competition grounds ... The counter argument is that once you start
stripping away great chunks of funding you weaken the stability [of the
BBC]," Bowe said on Thursday night, at a Royal Television Society all party
parliamentary group dinner marking her departure from Ofcom after five
years as chair<http://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/dec/17/colette-bowe-confirmed-as-ofcom-chair>
.

"I have got sympathy with the idea that some more of the funding currently
available for public service broadcasting should be contestable. Because on
the whole I am on the side of the people in the sector who believe that
what we need is even more competition and dynamism and innovation than we
have got."

Bowe added that examples such as the Labour government's abandoned plan to
use licence fee money to fund local news showed that it was "very, very
difficult to see a way to make [contestable] work" in practice, but this
"doesn't mean there is not a good reason to do it".

"I think the challenge for the BBC, leaving aside political will to
continue with a hypothecated tax, the challenge is going to be enforcing
the payment for the licence fee," she said, in the face of technological
changes.

Bowe served as an Ofcom board member for several years before taking over
as the media regulator's chair in 2009.

She is stepping down on 31 March, to be replaced by Dame Patricia
Hodgson<http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/04/dame-patricia-hodgson-favourite-chair-ofcom-bbc>,
the former BBC policy director and trustee who is Ofcom deputy chair.


*Maggie Brown, Friday 14 February 2014 17.50 GMT*
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/14/ofcom-bbc-licence-fee-shared-other-broadcasters

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