While the hue and cry over BBC jam continues, OFCOM have been conducting a less high-profile but important consultation about the proposed Public Service Broadcaster, which would be ‘a new approach to public service content in the digital media age’.

OFCOM’s review will impact on the BBC and Channel 4 as well as on aspiring PSBs like Teacher’s TV. Given that the  review happens to coincide with the suspension of BBC jam we think OFCOM should have extended the deadline for this project beyond its original deadline of March 23 2007. OFCOM’s usual anodyne response was, ‘We are not extending the consultation period, however, although we would ideally still like to receive responses before the planned deadline, we are keen to get as much engagement as possible from stakeholders so will make every effort to include later responses’. That would be a simple no then.

We doubt the commercial sector will have much faith that OFCOM’s desire to see the creation of what they are calling the ‘Public Services Publisher’ will ‘secure plurality and diversity in the wider digital media market’. OFCOM may see a gap in public service content provision, but the implications of this review seem not to be particularly well understood outside government channels. OFCOM did commission Andrew Chitty of Illumina Digital and Anthony Lilley of Magic Lantern Productions to create a forum of digital media experts and produce a report about the proposed PSP. This report uses Teacher’s TV as an example of ‘a genuine revolution in the delivery of public services’. Our coverage of TTV indicates that it has been an interesting experiment in delivering professional development in education, but by most objective measures it could hardly be described as a success or revolutionary, given similar systems and distribution modes have existed in education internationally for over a decade. For example SOFWEB, the satellite digital television system for Victorian schools that was established in the early 1990s and went on to become an online portal for teachers, students, administrators and parents.

One of the more interesting ideas is that the new PSP could become a kitemark for public broadcast content irrespective of delivery channel. Innovative, but we can’t see the BBC being too enthusiastic about this as they already tried this with the content of BBC jam being listed on Curriculum Online. Another emerging theme about the structure of the PSP is the importance of user-generated content. Given the government’s mania for spin and its effective control of media channels like the DfES’s new e-channel Schoolsweb, how this will actually work is unclear.

The PSP may well be a revolution and the recent deal between Espresso and Channel 4 may be an early sign of what might be coming, but outside a narrow field of experts we doubt many business people in the education market actually have any idea about the opportunities and challenges it may present.
www.ofcom.org.uk

www.openmedianetwork.org.uk