Certainty or Security ? The Path to Digital - a speech by the Chief Executive of Ofcom

"If commercial TV wants to cross-promote commercial radio that is part of the same group, then that too can be building public value"

The words of Stephen Hopkins Carter, Ofcom's Chief Executive. Yes, promotions on UTV for TalkSport (which it now owns), or on Scottish for Virgin Radio, "build public value".

Quite how a commercial television station promoting a commercial radio station brings about "public value" is not revealled.

Shareholder value for the company doing the cross-promotion - that's obvious. Can't beat a good bit of free promotion after all, but "public value"?

For the rest of the world, public value is the value the public place on tax-payer funded services, on facilities and amenities the various authorities provide, or even at a stretch, that public organisations like Ofcom regulate.

So where is the public value in allowing some trailers for a commercial radio station, to appear on a commercial television station without advertisment fees changing hands? Quite simply, there is none.

That's not to say that the media groups shouldn't be allowed to do it, but there's no way on earth that that is public value.