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

[Peter Lewis]

Over three decades ago, COMCOM,  predecessor of the CRA/CMA, wrote in
its *Comments
on the Annan Report*, "the licence fee revenue should ... cease to be the
exclusive property of the BBC. It is not their's by divine right" (quoted
in my chapter in Janey Gordon's *Community Radio in the Twenty-First
Century*). Of course, at the time, this was regarded as outrageous nonsense.

Peter Lewis


On 16 February 2014 11:24, Marilyn Hyndman <marilyn at northernvisions.org>wrote:

> Press statement from the sector?
>
>
> On 14 Feb 2014, at 18:38, CMA-L wrote:
>
> 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
>
> \\
>
> Community Media Association
> --
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> Marilyn Hyndman
> Northern Visions/NvTv
> 23 Donegall Street
> Belfast
> BT1 2FF
>
> Tel: 028 9024 5495 ext 207
> Fax: 028 9032 6608
>
> NvTv
> Belfast Community Television
>
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-- 
Dr. Peter Lewis
Senior Lecturer in Community Media
Faculty of Social Sciences & Humanities
London Metropolitan University
Room BP 1-25
Tower Building
166-220 Holloway Road
London N7 8DB

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/faculties/faculty-of-social-sciences-and-humanities/people/surnames-k-to-m/peter-lewis/

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