Public flogging
Ofcom makes landmark ruling over Big Brother
Channel 4 review document (PDF)
Ofcom Content Sanctions Committee report (PDF)
So Ofcom managed to publish their verdict in time before the next series of Big Brother (which starts next week), and the result is the stiffest punishment they have ever given to any public service broadcaster. Apology captions shown on three separate occasions may not sound much for a punishment but it's the summary of judgement that is the most telling.
Ofcom had to act sternly on this occasion for two reasons: firstly there was the unprecedented volume of complaints received, and secondly there was the public humiliation faced by government minsters as a result of the surrounding publicity. However Channel 4's willingness to make changes to its internal systems avoided the risk of stronger punishment.
This includes a promise to reintroduce a "Right To Reply"-style programme that airs viewer's grievances in relation to Channel 4 programming; if something like that had been on air when Celebrity Big Brother was running, Channel 4 management may have been alerted to the seriousness of the problem at an earlier stage and taken remedial action sooner.
Although Channel 4 didn't initially know about the first racist comments made in the Celebrity Big Brother house that were logged as such, it is still indirectly being punished for them by Ofcom simply because its internal compliance systems ought to have picked up a problem at an earlier stage even if Endemol was basically at fault for not passing them on.
We may also be able to assume that Channel 4 knew that putting Shilpa Shetty into the Big Brother house might cause a potential race-related conflict amongst its occupants. Bear in mind that Endemol has been judged to be as guilty as Channel 4, but Channel 4 is a public service broadcaster therefore is expected to have higher standards than the likes of ITV or BSkyB.
Also worthy of note is the fact that S4C in Wales will also have to show the apology captions because it didn't take steps to ensure that its own output - namely rebroadcasting that of Channel 4's - complied with the standards of taste and decency expected from S4C, which are no lower than those expected from Channel 4 itself.
All the earlier noises made by Luke Johnson and Andy Duncan over Channel 4's public service remit mean nothing if there's no basic public service ethos, and it's the latter which is the prime reason why the channel's lapse of judgement was so serious. If ITV had made the same mistakes it would have been punished but the moral consequences may have been lesser.
It has been claimed that Ofcom's action against Channel 4 has been the strongest made by any regulator past or present, which may be the case specifically for Channel 4 but doesn't take into account what happened to ITV franchise holders under the old ITV regional system if they didn't meet their ultimate expectations, namely that they lost their franchise altogether.
Channel 4 hasn't lost its licence to broadcast just yet, but there has been a veiled threat of privatisation courtesy of a claim that such a measure is now one of the options being considered. The Big Brother fiasco certainly put such a possibility on the agenda even if it wasn't there before, and Channel 4's recent actions certainly haven't helped its public service credentials.
On tonight's Channel 4 News, Andy Duncan seemed confident that Channel 4 had learnt its lesson and had revised its internal systems accordingly, but there will always be a doubt in relation to the lapse of judgement that led to the situation arising in the first place. In short, Channel 4 seemed out of its depth when confronted with an unfamiliar situation.
So what can we learn from all of this? It may be true that both Channel 4 and Endemol "cocked up big time", so to speak, but the very fact that both parties managed to get into the sticky situation they did is due to the culmination of many years' worth of "soft-touch" regulation leading to a climate of complacency.
Combine complacency with an ever-worsening financial position and you have a potential recipe for disaster, but the problem with the Celebrity Big Brother fiasco is that Channel 4 ought to have seen the danger signs. Channel 4 (and Endemol) came unstuck under the pressure to deliver a ratings boost for a tired reality TV format.
The comment from the (then) Endemol chief creative officer Peter Bazalgette whilst Celebrity Big Brother was still on air, namely "We have obeyed the rules of broadcasting", says it all really. Coming next for Channel 4: the fallout from the Richard and Judy "You Say We Pay" phone quiz scandal...
