Introduction

Abstract

In the middle years of the last century, from the late 1920s to the end of the 1980s, it all appeared fairly straightforward. International agreements involving up to 200 countries provided each of them with a share of spectrum, an allocation of frequencies which it was the individual nation’s right to deploy as it pleased, provided that it did not interfere with its neighbours. Arrangements differed within states: commercial operations in one place, state-dominated monopolies in another, a mixture of the two somewhere else. No less a variety of revenue streams provided the funding: state grants, licence-fees, advertising and subscription. And across the globe broadcasters operated under licences from the state with varying degrees of oversight of performances and of enforcement.

I think fundamentally that there is a tension between accountability and the public interest. It’s fundamentally between what people want and what people need. It’s society making judgements about the latter, the (BBC)Trust regulating them.

(Richard Hooper, former Deputy Chair, Ofcom, UK)