New BBC regulator
This month marks the beginning of a new era of regulation for the BBC. For the first time in its history it will have an outside regulator, Ofcom. Ofcom has published detailed proposals on how it will regulate the BBC which include a series of targets for the number of hours of news and current affairs which the BBC should produce. IBT will submit evidence to Ofcom, arguing that the regulator should also be measuring the total number of hours of international content.
In a separate development, the BBC Trust has published its own End of Charter review in which it identifies two key challenges for the future: retaining young audiences and improving BAME representation. It says that many mainstream services ‘skew white.’