Recommendations of the Puttnam Report1

This chapter presents the recommendations of the Puttnam Report. It covers recommendations for the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, and Channel 5. It proposes the establishment of a new fund for public service content. It also discusses the dissatisfaction with the performance of public service television from ethnic, regional, national and faith-based minorities; the failure of the public service television system to reflect the changing constitutional shape of the UK such that audiences in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the English regions; the decline in investment in some of the genres traditionally associated with public service television: arts, current affairs and children's programming; and the need for a more consolidated approach to maximising entry-level opportunities and increasing investment in training and professional development at all levels of the industry.

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 639-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Ramsey

The commercial public service broadcasters (PSBs) in the United Kingdom (UK) make a significant contribution to the country’s public service television system, alongside the BBC. Operating under the UK communications regulator Ofcom, the commercial PSB channels ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 are required to broadcast varying levels of public service content. This places these channels in a different category to all other market broadcasters in the UK. By taking a critical political economy of communication approach, this article examines how the regulatory system functions to secure public service provision in television. A particular focus is placed on the first-run originations quotas, which govern the levels of programming that are originally produced or commissioned by a commercial PSB, and broadcast for the first time in the UK. It is argued that while fulfilling the public service remit, the commercial PSBs gain significant benefits that contribute to the underpinning of their business models.


Author(s):  
Patrick Barwise

This chapter explores the assumption that public service television (PST), i.e. BBC TV, commercial public service broadcasters (PSBs), and non-PSBs, offers less consumer value for money than the rest of the market in the UK; that the only continuing rationale for PST rests on citizen concerns. It shows that PST does give citizens public service benefits over and above those provided by the non-PSBs and online-only TV players, and these ‘citizenship’ benefits are highly valued by the public. PST also offers consumers better value for money because the non-PSBs' significantly higher cost per viewer-hour seems unlikely to be compensated for by commensurately higher audience appreciation. The main policy implication is simple: there is no necessary trade-off between citizen and consumer benefits: pound for pound, PST appears to deliver both sets of benefits better than the rest of the market.


2013 ◽  
Vol 146 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gay Hawkins

Is there anything left to say about public value and public service broadcasting (PSB) without lapsing into boosterism, special pleading, or wildly unsubstantiated claims about the role of PSB in making citizens and democracy? This article develops an alternative approach, one that considers publicness not as a pre-given or static value, but as something that has to be continually enacted or performed. Using recent debates in political theory, it examines the processes and ontological effects of what Latour calls ‘making things public’. It makes two assumptions. The first is that there is no such thing as ‘the public’ out there waiting to be addressed; rather, publics have to be called into being The second is that there are a multiplicity of ways in which publicness can be assembled, and the challenge for PSB is to establish why its strategies are better. The example used is the ABC's current affairs discussion show Q&A, which is investigated to see how it generates an ontology of publicness. In what ways is the notion of public address and assembly mobilised? How does the experience of a public as a form of what Warner calls ‘Stranger sociability’ extend from the live audience to the household viewer? In what ways are the notions of public reason and rational discussion enacted and disrupted? And how does this enactment of publicness generate a sometimes poetic, anarchic or ribald shadow reality tweeted in from anonymous participants competing for public attention? Finally, how does it both reproduce and reinvent existing institutional regimes of value within the ABC?


2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Danson ◽  
Geoffrey Whittam

The devolved governments and parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland increasingly have been adopting different approaches from England to the delivery of public services. With more powers and responsibilities, Scotland has initiated these moves to divergence, not least with respect to the roles of volunteering, the Voluntary and Community Sectors (VCS) in the context of the ‘Big Society’. This article explores how the environment and institutions in Scotland increasingly are generating moves for different relations between the public, private and VCS. With key powers reserved for the Westminster parliament, differences are demonstrated in the position and development of the VCS.


2015 ◽  
Vol 143 (15) ◽  
pp. 3182-3195 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. A. ROBINSON

SUMMARYDespite many years of state-sponsored efforts to eradicate the disease from cattle through testing and slaughter, bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is still regarded as the most important and complex of animal health challenges facing the British livestock agricultural industry. This paper provides a historical analysis of the ongoing bTB statutory eradication programme in one part of the UK – Northern Ireland (NI) – which began in 1949 as a voluntary scheme, but between 1959 and 1960 became compulsory for all cattle herd-owners. Tracing bTB back through time sets the eradication efforts of the present day within a deeper context, and provides signposts for what developed in subsequent decades. The findings are based primarily on empirical research using historical published reports of the Ministry of Agriculture and state documents held in the public archives in NI, and they emphasize the need to consider the economic, social and political contexts of disease eradication efforts and their influences on both the past and the present.


Author(s):  
М.М. Владимирова ◽  
Ф.Г. Мухаметзянова ◽  
А.Ш. Яруллина

В статье рассматриваются вопросы, связанные с педагогическими основами подготовки кадров для гражданской службы на примере Республики Татарстан (РТ) в контексте их профессионального становления и развития. Тенденции развития современного российского общества, как глобализация и цифровизация, повышают требования не только к интенсивности работы государственных служащих, но и развитию их как субъектов профессиональной деятельности. Ведущая идея статьи заключается в том, педагогическими основами профессионального развития молодых госслужащих является не только система основного и дополнительного образования, но и институт наставничества, что актуализирует вопросы субъектно-ориентированного подхода и развитие госслужащих как субъектов профессиональной деятельности через различные системы их подготовки и переподготовки. В этой системе подготовки и переподготовки госслужащих особое внимание уделяется институту наставничества на основе теоретического анализа изучаемой проблемы и результатов пилотного исследования. The article examines issues related to the pedagogical foundations of training personnel for the civil service on the example of the Republic of Tatarstan (RT) in the context of their professional formation and development. The development trends of modern Russian society, such as globalization and digitalization, increase the requirements for not only the intensity of the work of civil servants, but also their development as subjects of professional activity. The leading idea of the article is that the pedagogical foundations of the professional development of young civil servants are not only the system of basic and additional education, but also the institute of mentoring, which actualizes the issues of the subject-oriented approach and the development of civil servants as subjects of professional activity through various systems of their training and retraining. In this system of training and retraining of civil servants, special attention is paid to the institution of mentoring on the basis of a theoretical analysis of the problem under study and the results of a pilot study.


This chapter traces the history of public service television. The history of British public service broadcasting policy in the 20th century is characterized by a series of very deliberate public interventions into what might otherwise have developed as a straightforward commercial marketplace. The creation of the BBC, the launch of an ITV network required to produce public service programming, and the addition of the highly idiosyncratic Channel 4 gave the UK a television ecology animated by quality, breadth of programming and an orientation towards serving the public interest. At each of these three moments, the possibilities of public service television were expanded and British culture enriched as a result. The 1990 Broadcasting Act and the fair wind given to multichannel services may have ended the supremacy of the public service television ideal. However, public service television has survived, through the design of the institutions responsible for it, because of legislative protection, and as a result of its continuing popularity amongst the public.


Author(s):  
S.C. Aveyard

This chapter looks at economic policy in Northern Ireland in the context of severe economic difficulties experienced by the UK as a whole. It shows how the Labour government sought to shield Northern Ireland from economic realities because of the conflict, increasing public expenditure and desperately seeking industrial investment. The level of desperation in this endeavour is illustrated through examples such as Harland & Wolff’s shipyards and the DeLorean Motor Company. The experience of the 1970s, and particularly under the Labour government, set the pattern for the following decades with a steadily increasing subvention from the rest of the United Kingdom and a growing dependence on the public sector, all at a time when the opposite trend took place in Great Britain.


2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hatim El Sghiar ◽  
Leen d’Haenens

Public Television and Identification: Flemish citizens with Moroccan and Turkish backgrounds. Evidence from family research Public Television and Identification: Flemish citizens with Moroccan and Turkish backgrounds. Evidence from family research This article outlines how the Flemish public broadcaster VRT is perceived by 25 in-depth interviewed families with Moroccan and Turkish backgrounds. Our analysis shows that, compared to other channels, VRT is perceived of great value when it comes to current affairs, children’s programs and news, but not fiction. Indispensable elements of identification within the de facto diversified Flemish social context are lacking, according to our informants. Criticisms voiced by our informants do not always result from ‘ethnic’ or ‘religious’ identifications. Especially subaltern groups (non-believers, young people, women) do not feel represented. Criticisms bear on the definition of functional quality as provided in the public-service contract: language use, perceived quality, the extent to which the program supply is (not or hardly) meeting their needs. Consequently, a wider approach, applying both the diversity charter and the public-service contract to minority audiences, is being advocated.


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