Media Forum: Is a public-service fund viable?

Public-service publisher proposals are back on media's agenda.

The closer we get to analogue switch-off in the UK, the more eccentric our TV industry seems. Nowhere else in the developed world (unless you include China) is the medium so dominated, both culturally and economically, by the State broadcaster. And this is not just any state broadcaster but a state broadcaster devoid of commercial breaks.

The only mainstream broadcaster attempting to pursue anything remotely like a public-service agenda, Channel 4, does so on the back of exploitation shows such as Big Brother that are as trashy as anything you'll find in the backwaters of the digital universe - and even here, the game will soon be up.

Legal skirmishes surrounding the filming of Wife Swap (an incident led to accusations by one of the participants that she had been sexually assaulted) are, in the eyes of many observers, the beginning of the end for exploitation TV. The ambulance-chasing lawyers that hovered on the fringes of the last series of Big Brother will be out in force next year, you can be sure of it.

Channel 4 has argued on many occasions in the past that, come analogue switch-off, it will face a funding shortfall if it continues to keep faith with its remit ('the provision of a wide variety of high quality and diverse programming that is innovative, creative, educational, distinctive in character and appeals to culturally diverse audiences').

Ofcom's plans to paper over widening cracks in the UK's broadcast economy are centred around its notion of a 'public-service publisher' - a notion that has been derided many times in the past but which, following a Royal Television Society speech last week by Ofcom's deputy chairman, Philip Graf, is back on the agenda once more.

The plan is to create a pot in excess of pounds 300 million, funded by the public purse - and commercial broadcasters would apply for hand-outs to produce programmes that, in the digital TV economy, they just couldn't afford to make. Should advertisers welcome this?