According to some recent studies, international revenues of UK indie sector has trebled in the past decade, but Natasha Cox (television and documentary producer) observes how increased competition as well as growing focus on international sales stunt creative freedoms within the sector. According to Cox, building new structures between public service broadcasters and independent sector is essential to enable fairer competition between independent TV companies, and would enable delivering a broader range of public service television content. Read the submission in full here

Chris Tryhorn (freelance journalist and researcher) asks whether we should perhaps define public service television less generally; ‘should we be calling ITV and Channel 5 ‘public service broadcasters’ when this is far from a sufficient description for them? According to Tryhorn, ‘the renewal of the BBC’s royal charter provides an opportunity for a tighter definition, which could then feed into the discussions around Channel 4’s remit and any future regulatory burden imposed on ITV or Channel 5.’ Read the submission in full here

by Hannah Gannagé-Stewart, Broadcast

The former BBC director general issued his warning at an event held as part of the former Channel 4 deputy chair Lord Puttnam’s review of public service broadcasting.

“If you let private equity get anywhere near Channel 4, they will destroy it, I have no doubt about that,” he said.

…

He suggested C4 could be run as a ‘public good’ with any profit generated distributed back to programme-makers.

Enders Analysis head of TV Toby Syfret urged the industry not to forget about the broadcaster’s battle to remain in public hands amid the furore surrounding BBC charter review.   

“For heaven’s sake make this not just about the BBC but part of a wider debate,” he said. “I think in many ways Channel 4 is in a lot more trouble,” he said.

Read the article in full here

Watch the recording of the event, What would TV look like without the BBC? Funding the future of public service television held at the British Academy on Tuesday 15th December 2015. 

The BBC’s submission positions itself within the UK TV sector market, outlines its substantial and consistent contribution to the creative economy and identifies key challenges facing public service broadcasting in the 21st century. In order to secure a strong, open and independent BBC, the submission argues that PSB regulatory framework needs to be reformed, including enabling more effective access and prominence of the publicly-funded content. Read the BBC’s submission to the Inquiry here

The BBC as ‘a unique public sector cultural organisation’, according to John Ellis (Royal Holloway, University of London), and broadcasting is no longer the only way of carrying out its mission to inform, educate and entertain. ‘If the BBC genuinely believes that TV will migrate online – which after all is the rationale for BBC3 a a broadcast service’, Ellis argues, the next obvious stage is linking licence fee to i-Player and not broadcasting. Read Ellis’s five arguments about the BBC here