Did the government or the ITC consider it undesirable that ITV companies operated additional satellite and cable channels?
What difference does it make? If Central decided to launch a Golden Central Channel on the BSB platform for argument's sake, all that content of their own back catalogue they wanted to use on it would have to be cleared for extra broadcast if needs be, then fetched, dubbed and set up to be broadcast and sell the ad space. I dare say the 1980s and maybe early 1990s were a time of manual playout so people would be needed to run the Golden Central Channel as well as the main Central terrestrial service and the ad playouts for Channel 4, so these people would be paying their taxes and not standing in queues outside the Labour Exchange.
I think things would have panned out much much differently if the Government insisted on an ITV company being forced to sell all their shares in smaller satellite channels 'just because they are part of ITV'.
Did the government or the ITC consider it undesirable that ITV companies operated additional satellite and cable channels?
Why would they? The ITV companies were ITC licensed services in the same way that all satellite and cable stations were
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If their investments in another channel or any thing else were causing financial issues for the ITV company or made them potentially unfit then that would be a different matter
The IBA was abolished in order to deregulate TV and encourage new services rather than hinder.
But equally of course the concept of the IBA being the broadcaster and owning all the infrastructure and so on and so forth (as was the case up until the 1990 Broadcasting Act) becomes increasingly implausible when you consider the expected explosion in channel numbers and satellite/cable technology, there was no way Crawley Court or wherever was going to be able to monitor all these transmissions they've licenced and overview, it's going to be cheaper to flip the system on its head and hold the broadcasters directly accountable instead (as opposed to the IBA) to an independent regulator and and let them deal with issues on an as-and-when basis after the event.
By the time the licenced service for BSB started (the licence was granted in 1986 I think but the project didn't get off the ground until 1989), the IBA's days were already numbered thanks to the Death On The Rock documentary so ultimately the explosion in channels wasn't going to be their problem.
The issue was more regulatory than practical though.
The big anomaly was that channels were broadcasting direct to peoples homes from abroad - Sky for example. They were effectively pirate broadcasts into the uk, the only regulation they had is if they were on cable when the Cable Authority got involved in programme standards.
That couldn't continue, not only was there that loophole but keeping ITV/C4 and BSB inside the IBA would be unfair on them - having to confirm to a lot of rules and regs and practises that their new rivals didn't
So in theory Sky could broadcast anything into the UK and not be censured?
:-(
A former member
Well no, look at Fox news, and also I doubt you could broadcast high impact passionate porn to the UK viewers. This isnt the EU, where even in the 80s you would get pretty hardcore stuff.
Good point. I was thinking of that TV ark clip of news at ten about RTL 4's broadcasting of softcore unscrambled into the uk.
Difference between being able to pick something up and broadcasting it into the UK. I can if I wanted to pick up such channels with the right equipment, many others have been able to do that since 80s.
So in theory Sky could broadcast anything into the UK and not be censured?
I'm not sure how it worked. As I say if they wanted to broadcast on cable there was an authority regulating programme content. I'd have thought that the early satellite channels got more viewers via cable than via a dish.
Well no, look at Fox news, and also I doubt you could broadcast high impact passionate porn to the UK viewers.
No, obscenity laws still would have applied, as would libel etc.
Quote:
This isnt the EU, where even in the 80s you would get pretty hardcore stuff.
Back then it wasn't the EU either of course.... not that they were a factor on individual countries rules on such things,nor how prudish their populations are