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 to put a brave face on DAB, the OFCOM man all but admitted the British radio industry now needed drastic action.
“Yes, it will require … Read More
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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 this class. I just hadn’t realised how badly it longs to plop out lots of baby Ofcoms.
Ofcom recently proposed that the BBC should share … Read More
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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 sobriety returns, of course, and it wakes up and finds itself knickerless and handcuffed to a lampost.
So Ofcom gets back to what it loves … Read More
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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 today”.
Translated from PR-speak, that means the game is up for the much-derided idea. (It’s been called “Welfare For Wankers”.) So what is the PSP … Read More
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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 pay for the stick that beats us up.
DAB has been a very British failure. While the specification is almost 20 years old, and (just … Read More
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MPs reject Ofcom’s Nathan Barley quango
by
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 PSP would have cost taxpayers £300m a year, with the cash going to production houses to create interactive Web 2.0-style concepts.