....//......The legacy continues today, some would say as lip service, just enough that they are able to continue occupy EPG slots 3, 4 and 5.
Indeed, and in many ways, the argument now is to balance the value of privilege received by being on PSB muxes and having
cherished
DTT epg rankings, with the costs of undertaking non-commercial activities that are required by license obligation. This isn't an easy equation though; for instance, if ITV had no obligation to produce regional news it may well choose to do so at some level due to the need to grab early evening audience from the BBC. So the PSB
cost
isn't the whole cost of doing the regional news, but only the cost of going the extra from the probable commercial specification to the license obligation.
Equally, valuing the privileges of being on a PSB mux with single epg digits numbers isn't straightforward. In any case, a broadcaster who receives this privilege has a direct interest in undervaluing it.
Someone asked it ITV and C4 were PSBs in the IBA days. No, they weren't. They weren't even broadcasters, the ITA/IBA was the broadcaster and held the ITV brand. The companies were programme contractors only and operated in the shadow of
The Authority
, which was a broadcaster and a statutory undertaking. C4 was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the IBA, even in the same VAT group with it. The whole concept of being a PSB comes from the selling of licenses in the early '90s, the license holders then became actual broadcasters.
Last edited by TedJrr on 13 November 2020 4:14pm - 3 times in total