Second time lucky?

So Ed Richards seems to be determined to make his "public service publisher" idea live on in some form, despite the idea being rejected by government ministers (and even laughed at by some critics), although you have to bear in mind that the options available for public service media content are distinctly limited given the lack of sources for 'public' money.

There's an obsession with trying to provide public service content using so-called "new media" methods despite evidence suggesting that young people still watch a fair amount of television, though to be fair the BBC itself is partly responsible for this misconception.

And 'young people' tend not to watch television anyway regardless of the nature of the distractions, and people tend to change their media consumption habits as they grow older. Whether or not a broadcaster like the BBC provides content for fifteen year-olds ends up being irrelevant when it comes to justifying the licence fee to that same group of people ten years later.

Competition only tends to serve a useful purpose when the competitors are motivated by factors other than serving the public, such as the case of private companies that are principally driven by a requirement to generate a profit. In terms of public service provision, choice ends up being a more important factor than competition, especially in terms of managing resources.

Ironically all this talk of splitting public services goes against the premise that "bigger is better" as various ITV contractors pleaded to merge with each other during the 1990s. The government responded in faith by allowing a large ITV plc to be created as well as simultaneously losing interest in ITV's affairs; the latter being aided by the ONdigital football rights fiasco.

So we have "biggest is best" in relation to ITV plc, yet Ed Richards seems to be against this philosophy when it comes to public service broadcasting. Plus he superficially doesn't appear to realise why his public service publisher idea was rejected in the first place, although generating lots of ideas (even bad ones) seems to be part of Ofcom's remit anyway.

It's also strange that an option of forcing broadcast licence holders (in particular, ITV) into providing additional public service content which may or may not generate profits for them seems to be strictly out of bounds, though it may be perceived to just fall outside of Ofcom's remit and/or be politically unwise for whatever reason(s).

For the next five years the BBC is relatively safe from any further changes, with the only significant danger being what happens to any surplus licence fee money left over after the digital switchover and reorganisation costs have been spent, although it could be a few more years allowing for any borrowed money to be paid back in full.

Personally I suspect that any future changes in public service broadcasting are likely to involve Channel 4 in some shape or form, because the costs of establishing a new public service broadcaster in any shape or form in the era of the internet are just going to be too prohibitive with a very high risk of potential failure.