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It is part of Ofcom’s duty to protect vulnerable consumers and to regulate inappropriate behaviour by some providers. The regulation of Premium Rate Services falls into this category, as provided for by the Communications Act 2003, Sections 120 - 124. In non-statutory language, PRS “offer consumers some form of content, product or service accessed via fixed or mobile telephones and charged to the user’s telephone bill”. The “Premium Rate Services Condition” regulates the provision, content, promotion and marketing of PRS and the providers have to comply with directions made by the code’s enforcement...

The UK media regulator, Ofcom, has found ITV to be in breach of the Ofcom standards code in relation to its news reporting on 3 March 2006 of an interview with the Prime Minister concerning the role of God in his decision to go to war in Iraq. Rule 5.1 of the Broadcasting Code requires that news must be reported “with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality”, and complaints had been made by ten viewers that this rule had been breached. The Prime Minister had been interviewed by Michael Parkinson, a veteran chat show host, for the Parkinson programme. Clips from the interview were supplied...

The new BBC Royal Charter and Agreement (see IRIS 2006-5: 13), which came into effect on 1 January 2007, requires that new and modified BBC services should be subject to a Public Value Test to establish whether they will be in the public interest. As part of this process the communications regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) undertakes a Market Impact Assessment to assess the likely impact of the services on the markets in which the new services will be provided and in related markets, examining the extent to which they might deter innovation and investment by alternative providers...

The BBC does not carry advertising on any of its public service broadcasting channels and so relies on funding by licence fee. The funding level is set for several years in advance by the government, and the latest settlement has just been announced. The BBC had sought a generous settlement to include the costs of digital switchover, the development of new services, and the moving of key departments to Salford, in the North West of England. It thus applied for a settlement of inflation plus two point three percent over the next ten years. This was widely perceived as having been unrealistic, and...

Analogue broadcasting in the UK is to be switched off in regional stages between 2008 and 2012. Digital television in the form of Freeview (a joint venture between the BBC and commercial broadcasters) has been phenomenally successful and has contributed (together with digital satellite broadcasting) to a figure of over 73% of households receiving digital television by September 2006. Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has now confirmed details of licence conditions to ensure that coverage by digital terrestrial television is achieved after switchover, to a degree equivalent to that of current...