Paul Dacre will be offered another chance to become chair Ofcom, ministers have confirmed, according to The Guardian. Ministers have wanted to appoint the former Daily Mail editor since the vacancy emerged. Having appointed a sympathetic selection panel Dacre was unexpectedly rejected as even this panel deemed him “not appointable” following interview. This even though […]

IA report from the EBU shows that democracy has declined in two thirds of EBU Member countries, with citizens turning away from politics and public life. The report demonstrates how strong and well-funded public service media (PSM) goes hand-in-hand with a nation’s democratic health. ‘The need for strong public service media has never been greater,’ […]

ITN has submitted its response to the government’s consultation into a change of ownership of Channel 4. Due to its unique position as the supplier of the channel’s independent news service, ITN saus it remains impartial on the ownership model of Channel 4. While recognising that audience habits are changing and broadcasters are adapting their […]

Julian Knight, Chair of the UK parliament’s DCMS Committee has called for the government to rule out candidates previously deemed to be unappointable from applying again for the post of Chair of Ofcom, a clear reference to the potential renewed candidacy of former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre. The re-running of the recruitment process to […]

ITV has called on the UK government to exempt some television workers from self-isolation. Carolyn McCall, chief executive, said ITV had been talking to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport about an exemption for “certain aspects” of television on the grounds that broadcasters have a public service remit, including to provide news coverage. […]

More than 600 feature films and television productions have gone into production in the UK since the scheme was announced in July last year as the industry has moved into pandemic recovery thanks to the Government funded Film and TV Production Restart Scheme. The scheme was launched by the Government backed by £500 million to […]

The EU has ruled that UK data protection standards are “adequate” in a decision that means data can continue to flow between the UK and the EU. But Brussels has warned UK government against weakening standards. A failure to recognise UK standards would have meant chaos in many industries including media and online advertising. The […]

There was a 24 per cent increase in the amount of digging work performed by the UK’s telecoms industry last year, according to Digging up Britain 2021. The report by LSBUD, which provides a free to use online search facility for underground pipes and cables, reveals that there were 1,125,843 searches through its portal by […]

An outage at edge CDN provider Fastly saw several high-profile sites off air for over an hour earlier today (June 8th) including the BBC, HBO, Hulu, Vimeo, FT, CNN, Twitch, the UK government and many more. The firm said there were issues with its global CDN and was implementing a fix. A statement said: “We […]