[comtv-l] Fwd: Broadcasting Devolution and Subsidiarity

[CMA-L]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dave Rushton <local.tv at virgin.net>

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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