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At the end of May, the Independent Television Commission (ITC) launched the first stage of a public consultation on the licensing of digital terrestrial television. Under the Broadcasting Bill, currently before Parliament, the ITC will be responsible for regulating and licensing digital television in the U.K. The framework established in the Bill is a two tier process under which the carriers of the services, the multiplex operators, are licensed separately from the programme and additional services providers. The first stage of consultation concerns the multiplex operators, for which the ITC...

Views expressed at BBC Governors' Seminar on taste and decency will be incorporated into a revised version of the Corporation's guidelines for programme makers. The Guidelines' section on taste and decency will see a strong emphasis placed on the importance of the watershed; that is the 9 o'clock boundary between programmes suitable for children to watch and those which are not. It will also reflect concerns about the use of bad language, and the portrayal of sex and violence. The concept of 'respect' as a key issue in determining where the boundaries should lie in issues of taste, sex and language...

The Independent Television Commission has just published its 1995 Performance Review of the ITV companies. This is an annual exercise. The report deals with three topics; the overall quality assessment of the ITV schedules; economic behaviour of the companies; and the performance of Channel 4. As regards the overall picture, the Commission finds that ITV has lost the balance between entertainment shows (in particular, as regards real-life and fictional crime programmes) and other genres, such as documentary and arts programmes. The Commission is concerned that the distinctive foundation of the...

As part of its contribution to the debate over whose interests should prevail in the sale of television rights to sports events, the Department of National Heritage has recently published a consultation paper on the subject, which summarises the key issues and main options for change. In 1994, the National Heritage Select Committee proposed that the 1990 Broadcasting Act's controls be extended and that there be regular review of the situation in the light of technological developments. The Government's view is that the debate is not really over terrestrial versus subscription television. Rather,...

The British Government has agreed to provide protection for eight important sporting events which will mean that they cannot be shown live on an exclusive basis either on subscription or on pay-per-view. The effect is that they will be shown on terrestrial television. The previous position under the Broadcasting Act 1990 was that these 'listed events' were protected from being broadcast solely on a pay-per-view basis, but could be shown exclusively on a subscription channel. The House of Lords voted 223 to 106 to amend the Broadcasting Bill currently before Parliament in order to extend the protection...