Lord Carter's interim report on Digital Britain is due out next week. I was at the briefing he gave to the Westminster forum, which made the front page of the FT at the weekend, along with a few TV luminaries. There are a few big unanswered questions. First, is it really 'universal' access? Second, if 'free to air' is no longer viable, how do you create a framework that allows quality public service broadcasting to continue that isn't singly funding the BBC? Third if there is no publicly supported creative industry, how will programmes that sit low down the commissioning table (investigative public interest programmes for example) ever see the light of day? As the government continues to bail out the banks with our money, government investment in the 'digital content' industry pales somewhat into a relatively small proportion of the £3.5bn BBC funding. By comparison, the Government injected £37bn into RBS, Lloyds TSB and HBOS in October, and pledged £450bn to guarantee banks' debt. It's now adding another tranche of money for the bankers. If we are to become a serious digital player in the world, the government needs to put its money where its mouth is.
Alastair Duncan
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