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For some time there has been concern in the United Kingdom about the development of new services by the BBC. The Corporation is financed mainly by a compulsory licence fee levied on all users of television sets. Complaints have been made by commercial broadcasters that this can be used to fund services which compete unfairly with their own offerings. As a result, a strict division is expected between BBC public services financed by the licence fee and its commercial services financed from other sources such as the sale of rights. The United Kingdom minister has now issued a stricter definition...

The Independent Television Commission, the UK regulator of private sector broadcasting, has commenced a process of consultation on the future of public service broadcasting which already seems likely to prove controversial. The questions asked include: which elements distinguish public service broadcasting (PSB) from other television channels, whether PSB requirements should be retained for the main terrestrial channels, whether PSB can still be thought of as best delivered by defined channels or is now being met across a wider range of services and platforms, and indeed whether the aims of PSB...

The Court of Appeal has recently overturned a decision ordering defendants - including a media company - to disclose the identity of the source of confidential information, namely draft legal advice (subsequently discarded) and the circumstances in which it came to the defendants' notice. In the trial judge's opinion, the information "was of topical concern and serious public interest deserving discussion and comment in the media but for the fact that it was confidential to the claimants". No internal inquiry within the lawyers' office was undertaken to establish who was responsible for acquiring...

On 1 March 2000 the Competition Act 1998 came into effect in the UK. This represents a fundamental reform of competition law and may thus have important implications for the media. The previous law was untidy and was based around tests of whether anti-competitive agreements and practices were against the public interest rather than concentrating directly on their anti-competitive effects. There was also an untidy relationship between the general competition law authorities and the regulators of particular sectors such as telecommunications, and incompatibility with the approach adopted in European...

A simpler and clearer regulatory approach to sponsor credits is proposed in the Independent Television Commission's (ITC) review of its Sponsorship Code published on the 11th April. The ITC first published a Code of Programme Sponsorship in 1991. This followed the Broadcasting Act 1990, which made reference to sponsorship and provided for sponsored programmes on all ITC licensed services, including ITV and Channel 4. Revised editions of the Code were published in January 1994 and spring 1997. Further changes were made to the current Code (notably the extension of masthead to terrestrial television),...