A Genealogy of Broadcasting Policy in the UK

Simon Dawes, a research student in our team and Editorial Assistant for Theory, Culture and Society and Body and Society, explains the key ideas underpinning his current research on broadcasting policy.

I’m working on a genealogy of broadcasting policy in the UK, looking specifically at the shifts in how the public have been constructed over time. This is set in the context of claims that broadcasting was regulated in terms of a public service ethos from the 1920s until the 1970s/1980s, since when it has been regulated as a market. A concomitant shift in the construction of the public from citizens to consumers accompanies these claims.

In research so far undertaken, I’ve used critical discourse analysis (CDA) to demonstrate the relationship between citizen- and consumer- signifiers in the Communications White Paper 2000 (the text that established the creation of Ofcom). My study showed that in addition to the predictable preference for the term ‘consumer’, there was an ambiguous distinction between citizen- and consumer- issues and a contradictory usage of the two terms. Consequently, emphasis was placed upon the collective agency of consumers, while the citizen was reconstructed as a passive and vulnerable individual. Further, the privatisation of public interest and the economisation of public service that I detected in the discourse led me to concur with the Habermasian critique of the depoliticisation of the public sphere. These preferences, ambiguities and contradictions have consequences for how Ofcom regulates the communications industries, and identifying them helps us understand how they will decide on the future of public service broadcasting in the UK. You can see an article I wrote on this research here.

My thesis will offer a discursive history of broadcasting policy by extending this analysis to a range of committee reports, regulators’ reviews, government white papers, bills and acts that have been written in the UK since the 1920s. In the work I’m currently undertaking, I’m beginning to question the epistemological assumptions behind the theories and methodologies I’ve been using. Methodologically, I’m looking to link CDA with a more Foucauldian approach to discourse analysis, while in terms of theory I’m concentrating on recent problematisations of the public sphere concept. Once I’ve cleared all that up, it’ll be back to the archive for some more analysis.

Freeview and DRM: An update

In an earlier blog I discussed how the BBC was requesting a form of digital rights management for its Freeview High Definition service, which is due to begin rolling out in December. In a submission to Ofcom, the BBC said so-called 'content providers', which is widely taken to mean principally US rights holders, would withhold content if such provisions weren’t put in place. Critics such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation argued that these rights holders were attempting to improperly influence the development of future TV hardware and the move would not be in the public interest.

Despite the brevity of the consultation period, in a letter to the BBC Ofcom yesterday put the proposals on hold. It said it had received a large number of submissions, mainly from consumer groups, who had ‘raised a number of potentially significant consumer “fair use” and competition issues that were not addressed in our original consultation.’ (Such groups included the Open Rights Group, a UK based organisation similar to the EFF that campaigns to ‘preserve and promote your rights in the digital age’.) Ofcom ordered that until these issues have been resolved no DRM requiring a licence, which is the critical point in all this, can be implemented.

Given the imminence of the HD rollout this is something of a cat among the pigeons, but then again the BBC only applied for the change in its broadcasting licence at the end of August. And it seems the BBC is suddenly left holding the baby. According to a contributor to the BBC’s ‘backstage’ mailing list, ‘The big shock was that (and I read all of the responses) no “content provider” was prepared to say why they asked the BBC for it in the first place. No PACT. No BSkyB.’

This strange state of affairs seems to speak ill of the whole exercise. Today would be an interesting one to be a fly on the wall in a number of boardrooms.

See also
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/09/bbc-anti-piracy-freeview-turned-down
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2009/11/09/ofcom-holds-on-hd-licence-change/

Photo credit Ladybeames Permissions