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: Information Overload

Media, Media, Media

By Scott Vine

A number of media related stories/events have happened during the past week that I feel could do with short mentions from me, so excuse this collection of rambles.

The BBC published a report last week, by Will Wyatt CBE from his into the publication by the BBC of misleading footage relating to the Queen during a press launch for the BBC One Autumn season - which seemed to imply that the Queen had had a strop and stormed off from a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz. This, it quickly turned out, was tosh and had been edited together by the company preparing the trail for the programme ( who were a different company to the one that actually made the documentary).

Whilst Will Wyatt concluded that no-one consciously set out to defame or misrepresent the Queen (which seems rather obvious really ), he did state that serious mistakes were made which led to the misleading information about the Queen entering into the public domain.

My first thought when reading this report was of deja vu. Weren't these the same type of editorial and management (or lack of) issues that the BBC were raked over the coals about during the Hutton Report on the Gilligan affair? (I'll admit I thought that report was overly harsh on the BBC at the time). The processes for how the BBC manages things still seems to be poor. Peter Fincham has resigned as Controller of BBC One over the issue, which is probably the right thing to do and probably saves at least one other person - who doesn't read their emails - their job.

Andreas Whittam-Smith in the Independent also sees the parallels and goes further

Meanwhile, Ofcom and the Competition Commission had BskyB on thier minds. Ofcom is consulting on BskyB's proposals to replace its three free to air channels on freeview with a pay tv package (Sky Sports 1 and, in the evening, Sky One (including an hour of Sky News content) and Sky Movies SD1). Sky would use the remainder of its capacity to retail two further channels from third party providers in the daytime: a factual channel and a children's channel. Ofcom believes that, whilst the proposal would increase the choice and availability of retail pay TV services on the DTT platform, it would also impact on competition for pay TV services on DTT and possibly across other digital TV platforms.

Where this document is amusing is that Ofcom seem to have taken a leaf out of the TV phone quizzes they have been so interested in recently when devising the three possible options they put forward. So instead of asking the question: "what colour is the black cat" ? and giving us the possible answers (a) White, (b) Black, or (c) Grey, we get: which of these three broad options do you favour?: (a) Consent to the proposal unconditionally; (b) Consent to the proposal, but impose additional conditions to reduce the risk of competition problems; or (c) Not consent to the proposal at this time.

As in the phone in question example there will be the one supporter for option (a) Sky, a number for option (c) lead by Virgin - although they will probably suggest (d) don't allow under any circumstances ever ever ever; but whilst Ofcom may claim not to be "making a specific recommendation", it is very clear form the document, and the three options, where the regulator wants to go with this one.

The Competition Commission has provisionally found that the acquisition by BSkyB of a 17.9 percent share in ITV restricts competition, and therefore operates against the public interest. Not a big shock this one although some of the reasoning behind the provisional finding does seem a bit odd as it seems to suggest Sky would potentially do things that would threaten ITV's business, and therefore its own investment. Now, I am not someone who you would ever call a big fan of Mr Murdock, and I would find some amusement in them having to sell their stake and the financial loss that would entail, but I'm not sure about this one.

The argument is that becuase Sky face competition from the free-to-air, of which ITV is an important part that its stake would give it both the the ability and incentive to take advantage of opportunities to weaken ITV or prevent it from taking actions that would threaten Sky?s interests.

Of course it could happen, after all the original move - which was (despite claims to the contrary) for no other reason than to scupper Virgin's attempt to buy ITV, so there was no thought of long term goal in buying the stake. It was also a piece of genius (no doubt about it). I'm just not sure Sky would act this way in this matter. But, what do I know.

The Competition Commission is looking for views on three potential remedies to alleviate the situation as it sees it : (i) BSkyB sells its entire stake; (ii) BSkyB sells enough of its stake to ensure it no longer has material influence over ITV; and (iii) BSkyB sells some of its stake and is subject to behavioural restrictions, which might relate to areas such as voting behaviour and the solicitation or acceptance of board representation.

Full post as published by Information Overload on October 09, 2007 (boomark / email).