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The Broadcasting Act 1996 received the Royal Assent thus finishing the legislative process in July. The Act makes a number of important changes to the broadcasting law, mainly designed to catch up with developments in the media sector since the Broadcasting Act 1990. The main provisions are as follows. Part I of the Act creates a framework for the development of digital terrestrial television. This provides for the licensing of multiplexes, frequency bands on which several programme services and also data services can be combined. Six such multiplexes will be provided nationally and licensed by...

The Independant Television Commission (ITC) is launched on 5 June 1996 the second stage of its public consultation on the licensing of digital terrestrial television. The Broadcasting Bill, currently under consideration in the House of Commons, sets out a two-tier licensing structure under which the carriers of the services, the multiplex operators, are to be licensed separately from the services themselves. The ITC published on 22 May in draft form the proposed Invitation to Apply for Multiplex Service Licences, together with a draft licence and various supporting technical documents. Documents...

The Broadcasting Standards Council, the body established under the 1990 Broadcasting Act to monitor the portrayal of violence, sex and matters related to taste and decency in television, cable, radio and satellite services, has just published its fourth annual monitoring survey. The findings relate to three areas: violence, sexual activity and 'bad language'. The key issue of audience concern remains the depiction of violence. However, the first significant change in the proportion of those registering a concern about this issue is recorded in this annual report (for 1995) - 57% saying that there...

Essential reforms to meet the communications needs of the UK into the next century and improve the management of the radio spectrum are being published as a White Paper by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). It announces the Government's intention to bring forward legislation to permit the use of pricing as an aid to effective spectrum management in a context of (potential) spectrum congestion. According to the Radiocommunications Agency (RA), which is responsible for the management of most non-military spectrum in the UK, the current radio licence fees do not reflect the real value of...

In 1989 the Privy Council denied copyright protection for the format (plan or scheme on which a television series is based) of the television gameshow 'Opportunity Knocks' ([1989] 2 All ER 1056). Although the decision of the Privy Council had highly persuasive authority, the issue remained controversial. In 1994 a draft private Member's Bill proposed to extend literary works to formats. Subsequently, the Patent Office issued a Consultative Document on the protection of formats. As a result the Patent Office has continued working on possible legislative approaches to the protection of formats. This...