Abstract
This chapter deals with the neoliberal critique of the economics of broadcasting in the UK, tracing the slow and complex rise of ‘competition’, in particular, as a key feature, and elaborating the difference between ‘competition for quality content’ and ‘competition for audiences and profits’. The explicit foregrounding of this feature in the Peacock Report (1986) is situated in the context of the longer-term critique of broadcasting from a neoliberal perspective (back to Ronald Coase in the 1940s), and the serious consideration (and rejection) of these critiques in much earlier documents, as well as the arguments for private enterprise within the very first regulatory texts.
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Dawes, S. (2017). Problematizing Monopoly, Competition and Choice. In: British Broadcasting and the Public-Private Dichotomy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50097-3_8
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