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As part of the fundamental review of public expenditure in the UK, the BBC licence fee has been frozen for the next six years at GBP 145.50. This is the result of agreement between the Corporation and the Government. It had been originally proposed that the BBC would be expected for the first time to meet the cost of free television licences for the over-75s, but this was bitterly opposed by the BBC Trust. Instead, the BBC has agreed to take over the funding of its World Service, currently directly funded by the UK Foreign Office. It will also assume the costs of BBC Monitoring (an open source...

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has announced that it will not open an investigation into ‘Project Canvas’ following complaints on competition grounds by Virgin Media and IPVision. ‘Project Canvas’ (see IRIS 2010-2/22 and IRIS 2010-7/23) is a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, BT and Arqiva to offer digital terrestrial channels and internet-delivered TV services via a set-top box connected to TV sets. It involves creating technical standards which can be used to deliver content via a single box using a branded user interface to be known as YouView. Competitors had claimed...

Ofcom, the UK Communications Regulator, has issued guidance on whether the holders of broadcasting licences need separate licences for different feeds (versions) of a service, for example feeds broadcast in different territories. In particular, the document concerns feeds where the programmes are almost identical but in different languages, feeds where the editorial content is almost identical but advertisements are different or differently scheduled or where editorial content of each feed is different. The Communications Act 2003 defines ‘programmes’ in a way which includes advertisements (s....

Ofcom has found that five programmes broadcast by the Islam Channel, originally shown in 2008 and 2009, were in breach of the Broadcast Code, Sections 2.3 (Harm and Offence) and 5.5 (Due Impartiality). The Channel had previously been found to have breached provisions of the Code relating to due impartiality in 2007 and was fined GBP 30,000. Four other programmes investigated were found to be Code compliant. Ofcom launched the investigation into the channel following a report monitoring its output, Re-Programming British Muslims, published by the Quilliam Foundation. Three of the programmes (two...

As reported in IRIS 2010-5:1/27, the Association for Television On-Demand (ATVOD) was formally “designated” as the co-regulator for UK Video on Demand (VOD) services. This status came formally into effect on 20 September 2010. ATVOD was an industry trade association prior to the designation. ATVOD has now published its Procedure for Complaints about Editorial Content on VOD Services. The document outlines the procedures ATVOD will normally follow in the handling of complaints concerning editorial content on video on demand (“VOD”) programme services (“VOD Services”). The Procedure also came into...