Digital TV could spell disaster, warn bishops
By Mark Greaves
27 June 2008

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales have warned Ofcom that the digital switchover could lead to a "Tower of Babel" of competing television channels. The bishops said the only defence against this "bewildering" new environment was strong public service broadcasting. They called on the Government to provide more funding and to introduce a more powerful system of regulation to stop a decline in broadcasting quality. The regulation of public service broadcasting had "significant limitations", they said, and had led to the downgrading of "children's, regional news and religious programmes".

The comments were contained in a wide-ranging submission to Ofcom which included sharp criticism of ITV and a concern at the way religious programming was being marginalised.

The submission will inform Ofcom's review of public service broadcasting which in turn will lay the ground for a shake-up of Government funding some time before the digital switchover in 2012.

Catholic and Anglican bishops united to warn Ofcom of the dangers of the switchover. Auxiliary Bishop John Arnold of Westminster said in a joint statement with the Anglican Bishop Nigel McCulloch of Manchester: "There is a real risk that the flood of information from a proliferation of digital channels could be confusing and bewildering, creating a modern Tower of Babel, rather than being enlightening.

"Public service broadcasting can be a comprehensive, authoritative and trustworthy guide in this environment. Therefore the full range of public service content needs to be made available across all platforms - internet, mobile and digital."

The Catholic bishops backed the BBC's efforts to retain all of the licence fee rather than sharing a portion with rivals. This system "works well", they said.

They argued, however, that funding should not be limited to the BBC alone since this would restrict the range of quality programming and would "damage the BBC itself".

But the bishops opposed the funding of channels such as Sky News and Discovery and said that ITV needed to "pay more than lip service" to serious programming if it wanted to retain Government funding.

They said: "Ofcom has to challenge ITV to justify in practice its assertion that it wishes to retain its status as a public service broadcaster. If ITV really wishes to retain this status then it should pay more than lip service to the provision of serious documentaries, children's programming, regional and local news and religious programmes."

The bishops' submission also criticised the tendency of broadcasters to push religious programming into the "special interest" category.

Such programming deals with "the whole spectrum of human experience", they said, and does not only appeal to people who are religious. They strongly disputed the idea that, since enough religious programming was provided by the market, no Government funding was needed in this area.

"Only a certain kind of narrow religious programming is supplied through the multi-channel market and is certainly no substitute for the range and variety of religious programming delivered by the public service broadcasters," they said.

The bishops stressed that domestic religious programming could contribute to "mutual respect and understanding among different communities" in Britain.