Competition

Abstract

Section 5[2] of the Act enjoined the Authority to do all it could ‘to secure that there is adequate competition to supply programmes between a number of programme contractors. The first Annual Report recorded: ‘No problem exercised the Authority more than this need to secure competition, since its initial decisions here would clearly be far-reaching and would set the pattern of the new television system for years to come.’¹ Competition to supply programmes, the report went on,

can be obtained fully only when viewers have at all times a choice of two or more programmes, or in other words when there are at least two stations covering each area. This the Authority hopes ultimately to bring about. It could not do so in the first phase of its existence since, all other considerations apart, more frequencies would have been needed than the two allotted to it. The Authority therefore had to provide ‘adequate competition’ with only one station in any one area.