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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...

The UK telecommunications regulator has issued a new consultative document on how to promote competition in services supplied over telecommunication networks; these services include electronic mail, on-line information services, video-conferencing, entertainment services and Internet access. This is part of a continuing process of consultation about how to regulate the changing telecommunications world, and set out details of proposed new regulatory controls. These include giving British Telecom the freedom to choose to set lower prices for independent service providers than for other users, and...

The Secretary of State for National Heritage, Virginia Bottomly, has issued an Order, The Broadcasting (Prescribed Countries) Order 1996, which will extend the existing regulatory and licensing powers of the Independent Television Commission (ITC) to all television services broadcast from the United Kingdom, regardless of which country the service was received. The Broadcasting Act 1990 describes one type of television programme service under that Act as a non-domestic satellite service. Part of the definition of this service is that it consists of the transmission of television programmes by...