FUTURE OF REGIONAL INDEPENDENT TELEVISION AND COMMERCIAL PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

Early day motion 260, tabled 2 December 2002 by John Grogan (Labour). Signed by 127 members.

That this House greatly values the public service broadcasting role of Channel 3, Channel 4 and Channel 5 and the regional commitment and production of the ITV companies; urges the Government to ensure that this role and regional production base are strengthened by the Communications Bill; notes the trend towards centralisation and concentration of ownership of ITV as demonstrated by the proposed merger of Granada and Carlton; recommends that the Government introduce strong regulatory requirements on ITV to provide substantial high quality and original regional programme production across a broad range of programme genres and a distinct public service remit for every Channel 3 service requiring the provision of high quality and diverse programming which satisfied the tastes and interests of the part of the United Kingdom for which that service is licensed; supports the granting of independent status to regional ITV companies when seeking commissions on channels other than ITV; fears that allowing dominant national newspaper proprietors to own Channel 5 could destabilise commercial public service broadcasting and regional production as well as threatening plurality; and supports the conclusion of Lord Puttnam's Joint Scrutiny committee that this issue should be referred for consideration to OFCOM.

Signatures by party: Labour 76, Liberal Democrat 28, Labour/Co-operative 9, Conservative 6, DUP 3, Plaid Cymru 3, UUP 2.