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The Chancellor has announced in his first Budget a new tax relief for British films. This will allow 100% write off for the expenditure of a British film which costs £15 million or less to make, when the film is completed. This applies to production costs incurred or acquisition costs of a film completed and acquired after 2nd July 1997, even if a film started before that date. A qualifying British film is a film certified under the Films Act 1985 by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (the former Department of National Heritage) as a British film. There are detailed criteria to be met...

The Independent Television Commission, the UK's regulatory authority for broadcasting, on 24 June awarded licences for multiplexes (blocks of frequencies) for digital terrestrial television. A group of three licences was awarded to British Digital Broadcasting (BDB), a consortium comprised at the time of the application of Carlton Communications, the Granada Group and BSkyB. A competing application from Digital Television Network (DTN) was unsuccessful. The Commission had to apply a number of criteria set out in the Broadcasting Act 1996. It considered that the DTN application included more innovative...

The Broadcasting Act 1990 provides the basis for specific programme and other requirements for the 18 terrestrial TV licences granted by the Independent Television Commission (ITC): the 15 regional ITV licensees (Channel 3), GMTV (breakfast-time licensee), Channel 4 and Public Teletext. The ITC is charged to review annually where licensees have failed to comply with these licence conditions. To meet this obligation, the ITC has now published its 1996 Annual Performance Reviews. Teletext received a favourable report and GMTV was congratulated on rectifying the complaints highlighted in the previous...

The new Broadcasting Standards Commission has published its first research report. The Commission was created out of the merger (under the Broadcasting Act 1996) of the Broadcasting Standards Council and the Broadcasting Complaints Commission on 1 April 1997. The study looks at public attitudes to media regulation in a changing social climate. It was undertaken by the Commission as part of a wider consultation on its new role combining standards and fairness in broadcasting. The research based on two national surveys and 14 focus groups also addresses the issue of privacy. In general, the respondents...

Under the Broadcasting Act 1996 the Secretary of State has designated eight "listed events" which cannot be broadcast only by subscription or pay-per-view without regulatory consent. There has been some political pressure recently for an extension of the list, which currently specifies the FA Cup Final, the Scottish FA Cup Final, the FIFA World Cup finals, the Derby and Grand National horse races, the Olympic Games, the Wimbledon tennis finals weekend and cricket test matches involving England. On 19 May 1997 the Under-Secretary of State for National Heritage announced a review of the list "to...