An unholy alliance: God and the TV companies' wad
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Your support makes all the difference.You might not think it when watching Blind Date on ITV or Channel 5's Family Affairs, but there are "public service" requirements for all the five terrestrial TV channels, with tough quotas governing how many hours of religious, arts and current affairs programmes are broadcast.
Regulators are busy studying the quotas to find out how effective they are, in preparation for the new era of media regulation that will begin when the Communications Bill passes through Parliament in the summer.
The Independent Television Commission is quietly carrying out an economic "cost benefit analysis" of the public service requirements of Channel 5 and ITV. The research will look at the costs of the special programming, and how to get better value for money. It should be published in the spring.
The findings will feed into a wider review of public service broadcasting, to be carried out by the ITC's new parent, the media super-regulator Ofcom. The ITC says its economic research will be one contribution to the debate, as other factors are also taken into account.
As the ITV's head of public affairs, Nick Toon, asks: "Are there intangible benefits [from public service broadcasting] that are immeasurable? My personal opinion is that it is a mix of the economic and the cultural."
Programmes like Songs of Praise don't pull in top ratings on TV, which is why the quotas are in place. To serve the minority, and the public interest, the Government feels it must ensure the industry provides programmes that would not be shown if the decision were based purely on market forces.
The Communications Bill will tighten up the requirements when it becomes law in the summer. Because the new legislation will allow non-European companies to take over Channel 5, it is feared that a large US media group could snap up the UK's newest terrestrial broadcaster and give viewers a diet of American trash.
Last week the Government made an amendment to the Bill that will allow Ofcom to increase the channel's public service requirements if it is taken over by another company.
However, some channels find that the quotas are easy to meet and that the costs are not onerous. Channel 5 itself says it often shows more news and current affairs programmes than it has to.
But its competitors can struggle to meet the targets. When Channel 4 showed Martin Scorsese's controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ, in which Jesus is shown having sex with Mary Magdalene, it claimed this should count towards its religious quota. The regulator, evoking memories of Mary Whitehouse, disagreed.
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