Tag: OFCOM
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OFCOM mulls legislation to save DAB
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Andrew Orlowski
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Parliament may need to step in with new legislation, to save the digital radio fail whale OFCOM admitted today. OFCOM’s Peter Davies made the comments in front of a critical audience at the Radio Academy’s Radio At The Edge conference today. Davies was put on the spot by moderator James Ashton. After years of trying…
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Top-slicing the Beeb: Clueless execs get busy
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Andrew Orlowski
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Some quangos, like jellyfish, seem to be able to reproduce asexually. It’s what they live to do. What this means is that without any contact, parthenogenesis occurs and they simply spawn off a little version of themselves, which may grow as large as its parent. Britain’s uber-regulator Ofcom, I learned this week, definitely falls into…
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Earth to Ofcom: They’re our airwaves. Give us them back
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Andrew Orlowski
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Sometimes Ofcom, Britain’s media and telecomms uber-regulator, likes to agonise in public whether Britain needs a media and telecomms uber-regulator. It must feel like a stag night in SE1, as the executives fly in expensive blue-sky wonks and consultants, and Ofcom gets quite giddy with itself at the prospect of a world without Ofcom. Then…
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Nathan Barleys mourn Great Lost Quango
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Andrew Orlowski
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Soho’s Nathan Barleys were in mourning yesterday after Ofcom chief Ed Richards abandoned his shape-shifting flagship, the “Public Service Publisher” quango. Richards said in a speech to the Royal Television Society on Tuesday night that the “the PSP as a concept has served its purpose and we can move on to the relevant questions for…
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DAB: A very British failure
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Andrew Orlowski
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Emergency talks to save digital radio are taking place in Manchester today, the FT reports. Unloved, unviable, and often unlistenable, DAB is a technology the public clearly doesn’t want; so it comes as no surprise to learn that coercion will be used to persuading the public to get on board. With DAB, we’re expected to…
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MPs reject Ofcom’s Nathan Barley quango
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Andrew Orlowski
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In a victory for Register readers, MPs have rejected Ofcom’s proposal for a publicly-funded new media quango. The Commons’ select committee for Culture, Media and Sport rejects the idea that the creation of a “Public Service Publisher” gatekeeper would help the market. The report is here, while the Ofcomwatch blog broke the news here. The…