Spotlight on Edwards' Ofcom job

Spotlight on Edwards' Ofcom job

By Nick Higham BBC media correspondent

Jonathan Edwards' appointment to the "content board" of the new communications regulator Ofcom has caused a bit of a stir.

The National Secular Society thinks the Olympic triple jumper and Songs of Praise presenter is the wrong man for the job because he is a committed Christian. They would prefer someone less like "Mary Whitehouse reincarnated".

I suspect they are wrong to worry.

You could argue (cynically) that they are wrong because media watchdogs like the Ofcom content board are ineffectual.

Jonathan Edwards has joined Ofcom's content board

The Broadcasting Standards Council - which became the Broadcasting Standards Commission, which is in turn being swallowed up by Ofcom - once had a bishop among its members.

Yet in the years since the BSC was established by Margaret Thatcher, attitudes towards, for instance, sex and nudity on television have changed out of all recognition - Mrs Whitehouse would no doubt have said for the worse.

If television programmes have become bland and unadventurous - which is what the National Secular Society fears - it is not because of any watchdog, but because increasing competition has led programme commissioners to feel they must play safe.

'Blandness'

Indeed to its credit another of the watchdogs being rolled into Ofcom, the Independent Television Commission, in its final annual report last week singled out for criticism two manifestations of increasing blandness on ITV - more soap episodes in peak time and fewer, more populist stories in the news.

Mary Whitehouse was famed for being outspoken

It's unclear exactly how influential the Ofcom content board will be.

It will have "strong input" into licensing decisions. It will handle complaints from viewers and listeners, as the BSC does.

It will draw up programme codes, as the BSC and ITC do. It will police how well broadcasters meet quotas for original, independent or regionally-produced programmes.

And it will oversee the way commercial broadcasters fulfil their public service obligations.

BBC values

It will, in other words, represent our interests as citizens, not just as consumers - which could be a tough job in an organisation whose senior people and legislative underpinning both seem biased towards economic regulation.

But the main reason the National Secular Society is wrong is that the content board, unlike the rest of Ofcom, is imbued with BBC values.

No fewer than ten of its 13 members have worked at the Beeb, mostly as programme-makers - including chairman Richard Hooper, who started out as a BBC trainee and was a pioneer Open University producer.

His deputy Sara Nathan is the ex-editor of Radio Five Live's first morning show, The Magazine and one of the two members of Ofcom's senior staff who serve on the board is Tim Suter, Ofcom's "partner for content and standards policy development".

He used to be a radio drama producer and was later deputy head of current affairs.

The BBC has always been keen on quality and originality. It is an organisation where content, not commerce, really is supposed to be king.

Perhaps those are lessons the members of Ofcom's content board will not have forgotten.