Submission of written evidence to House of Lords, ‘Communications and digital select committee inquiry on BBC future funding,’

Our submission centres on the notion of ‘public value’ as a means of defining and assessing the benefits the BBC, and the wider UK PSB ecology, create for the UK public. Our recently published discussion paper, ‘What is the Public Value of Public Service Broadcasting?’, examines the challenges and opportunities currently facing the UK’s unique PSB model. Across the breadth of regulatory interventions and policy principles, we have identified six distinct types of public value – social, cultural, economic, industrial, representational and civic – encompassing the objectives and purposes UK PSB seeks to fulfil. All five of the UK’s PSBs – the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5 and S4C – contribute to some or all of these values, reflecting the considerable public value this mixed model of publicly-funded, not-for-profit and commercial broadcasting generates. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, the BBC contributes the most public value in each of these categories and, in many cases, complements and amplifies the benefits provided by the other broadcasters. We address examples of the BBC’s contribution to public value in our answers below. Further, we consider how changes in the media landscape are likely to impact on the BBC’s ability to continue creating these values for its audiences, how perceptions of the value of PSB are likely to evolve in these contexts, and what implications these developments may have for the feasibility of the BBC’s current public funding model