Free For All?
Public service television in the digital age
Digital technology opens up a host of new choices about how we watch and how we pay for television. Barry Cox, deputy chairman of Channel 4, explores the consequences for public service broadcasting - and the BBC in particular.
Digital technology gives television viewers far greater choice and control over the programmes they want to watch. It also enables broadcasters to charge viewers for the programmes they do watch.
At the moment the two powerful monopoly players of British broadcasting operate by charging viewers for programmes they don’t watch. All viewers have to pay the BBC’s compulsory licence fee and Sky subscribers have to pay for bundles of channels they often do not want in order to access the premium channels they do.
Barry Cox, the government’s digital television adviser, believes that digital television will expose ‘fundamental contradictions’ in the BBC’s status and force Ofcom to act over Sky’s stranglehold on the pay TV market.
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