Emily Bell: The regulation game

Emily Bell

• Increase image
• View all images

The new Ofcom chair must encourage innovation - and punish bad acting.

Who should be the new chair of Ofcom? A trivial matter perhaps in terms of what really makes an impact in the world of broadcasting - after all, you could show a picture of Lord Currie to a hundred thousand programme-makers (if there were such a thing) and I'd be surprised if more than a hundred of them knew who he was.

But the replacement for the chair of Ofcom has now become something of a focal point for discussion about "whither the regulator"; particularly in terms of what qualities were wanted from its leadership. Prof Steven Barnett, who has always represented the public service arguments extremely well around many aspects of the media, voiced concern last week that the regulator is not giving enough weight to the viewer and is not policing content with a close enough eye on quality and innovation.

This is always going to be something of a pernicious minefield, as a subjective area like "quality" is arguably impossible to regulate. I would say that recent series such as Criminal Justice (though a bit silly at one point) and Channel 4's excellent Disarming Britain, represent programme-making redolent of high quality.

I imagine these innovative programmes were motivated by the desire to make a difference. It may have been to impress the regulators, and it was almost certainly oriented towards fulfilling a PSB remit which has been under some scrutiny. If broadcasters need to be regulated into doing this then arguably the problems are more systemic than cosmetic and a more muscular content board at Ofcom would not really be a sufficient remedy.

Ofcom is a converged regulator and needs to be run by someone who understands market complexity and competition, and these skills tend to reside more in industrial economists than former drama producers. But there is, beyond Barnett's interesting proposition, more noise now about content regulation than in the past five years.

The record fines which Ofcom levied this year on TV and radio show that there is a fairly poor compliance record among some of our more important broadcasters. One could argue that there should be more fines against programming crimes of a less tangible nature - poor scripts, wooden acting, nonsense news, boring ideas, rubbish presenters etc. This would be far more fun, but what the regulatory environment should really be aiming to do is create the economic conditions which allow quality programming to thrive in the first place.

Emily Bell is director of digital content, Guardian News and Media