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The Independent Television Commission (ITC), which regulates UK commercial broadcasting, has issued a direction to Scottish Television, a Channel 3 company, requiring it to ensure due impartiality in the run-up to a local Parliamentary election. The company had broadcast throughout the UK, including Scotland, a programme entitled "Ask the Prime Minister" in which Tony Blair answered questions from a studio audience for one hour. This took place on 12 December. The election was due to take place on 21 December. Section 6 of the Broadcasting Act 1990 requires the Commission to do all it can to secure...

The UK Government has issued a White Paper that proposes a complete overhaul of the regulatory institutions and much of the substantive law applying to communications, including broadcasting, telecommunications and the Internet. This is likely to result in new legislation to be introduced to Parliament in 2001 or 2002, after the next general election. The centrepiece of the new proposals is the creation of a single regulatory commission for the communications and media industries. This will take the form of an Office of Communications (OFCOM) covering telecommunications, television and radio and...

The Independent Television Commission, the UK regulator of private broadcasters, has published a new code on the regulation of television sponsorship. It hopes that the new code will provide "a streamlined and more user-friendly approach" to regulation. The two key principles have been retained from the earlier code; the requirement of editorial independence from the influence of sponsors and the requirement that advertising and sponsor credits are clearly distinguished. These are designed to prevent programmes from being distorted for commercial purposes and sponsor credits from being used as...

The case concerning the broadcasting of Danish football matches referred to in IRIS 2000-8: 7 has now been resolved by the UK Court of Appeal in favour of the private broadcaster. The background is that TVDanmark 1, a broadcaster established in the United Kingdom, had acquired exclusive rights to broadcast to the Danish population football matches involving the Danish national team in World Cup 2002. This broadcaster only reaches 60% of the Danish population. The Danish public service broadcasters, which reach a much higher percentage of the population, had sought to acquire the rights but had...

The UK competition authorities have agreed to a set of mergers that will change the number of owners of the major Channel 3 companies (by far the most important private broadcasters) from three to two. Channel 3 (better known as ITV) is organised on the basis of sixteen regional licenses that combine as a single network to offer the bulk of the programmes. Since the award of the licences in 1991, there has been a strong process of consolidation between the owners of franchises, so that by 1999 all the most important licences were owned by three companies; Carlton Communications, the Granada Group...