The main areas which it maintains are licensing, research, codes and policies, complaints, competition and protecting the radio spectrum from abuse. Ofcom protects the radio spectrum in a number of ways. It investigates and carries out enforcement activities to clear interference or illegal use from the spectrum. Until 2010, it was Ofcom who investigated all interference cases within the UK. However, it is now being reverted to the BBC. But people still report to Ofcom and in all cases to do with illegal/pirate radio operations.
Advertising Standards Authority - This is an independent body set up by the advertising industry to keep an eye on the rules laid down in the advertising codes for both radio and television advertising. It is not funded by the government but makes it's earning by being part of the advertising industry. These are the people who others go to if there is an advert which has not been perceived well by the public due to explicit content or an unsuitable meaning. It is their job to then look at this advert and decided whether to remove the advert or not from radio or television.
THE RADIO REGULATORY BOARD (RRB)
This is another relgulatory body which is associated with the radio industry within the media. The main task that the RRB has to carry out is to act as a kind of watchdog so that they can moniter compliance with the Radio Regulations. They set out compatible ways for 41 different radio services to work without interference and they also deal with a huge frequency range, which starts from 9kHz to 275GHz.
The RRB is a treaty text of the International Telecommunication Union (more commonly known as ITU), which is based in Geneva and is a specialised agency of the United Nations. Whilst covering both legal and technical issues, the ITU serves as international management of the radio spectrum. The things that the Radio Regulations define are:
- The allocation of different frequency bands to different radio stations
- Prodcedures for the coordination and notification of frequency assignments made to radio stations by national goverments.
RECENT REGULATORY ISSUES WITHIN RADIO
There was a huge uproar about the scandal involving Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross when, during The Russell Brand Show on BBC Radio 2, both Jonathan Ross and Brand decided to leave a crude message on the voicemail of Andrew Sachs. This was after he was invited to the show as a guest and to be interviewed but failed to turn up. So Russell Brand decided to call his phone to see where he was but he failed to pick up his phone. This was when both Ross and Brand had the idea that they would leave crude and obscene messages to Andrew Sachs, some of which involved allegations of his granddaughter. It caused the listeners of the show to become shocked at what they had just heard and witnessed and thousnads of complaints had already been counted by the next day.
Both Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were criticised by people such as Gordon Brown, past prime minister, at what they had done. It was uncalled for and they had caused humilliation upon Andrew Sachs as well as themselves. Both the BBC and Ofcom launched investigations as to what had happened and why they had felt the need to do this. A lot of questions were asked as to how they managed to get away with it in the first place during a live broadcast, when they were under strict rules and supervision by the BBC. In the end, due to their lack of being able to control thier presenters and the outrage that had been caused by what had happened, Ofcom fined the BBC £150,000.
Before the call, Russell Brand worked on the station with a fellow presenter called Matt Morgan. He was mainly there to steer Russell into talking about things which would be of interest to the listeners and which would never be classed as rude or disrepectful. However, after a row over the MTV Awards, which Russell Brand hosted, Matt Morgan refused to work on the show with Russell Brand any longer and so Brand would call in his celebrity friends to help him on the show. The BBC stated that they could never have seen what had happened before it did and they also said that if it were Matt Morgan on the show with Brand, then he would never have allowed the phone call to have happened. However, after the call had been made, the BBC still decided to broadcast the show to listeners, which in turn figured out to be a bad decision as they were sued thousands of pounds.
On 29 October 2008, the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, announced that Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross were suspended, pending the report of an investigation by Tim Davie, director of BBC audio and music. The suspension meant that for the week, Ross would not be appearing on his regular Fridy Night With Jonathan Ross television show or his Saturday-morning Radio 2 show, and similarly Brand would not be hosting his regular Saturday-night Radio 2 show or his appearance as a guest captain on Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
On the evening of 30 October it was announced that Controller of Radio 2Lesley Douglas had tendered her resignation, which had been accepted. Her resignation letter did not address the question of whether Douglas herself had approved the pre-recorded show for transmission. On the same day, Ross was suspended without pay from all BBC shows for a period of 12 weeks. The Daily Mail estimated that this would result in his losing £1,344,000 in wages.
The BBC issued an apology over the incident on 8 November, stating that the telephone calls were "grossly offensive" and a "serious breach of editorial standards".] The corporation apologized specifically to Sachs and Baillie, and also to the license fee payer. David Barber, the head of specialist music and compliance at Radio 2, resigned the evening before the formal apology. Like Douglas, he had been aware of the contents of the show, and had sanctioned the segment's broadcast.
Without these regulatory bodies, situations like these would allow people to get away with it with no consequences for thier actions. By being able to sue companies and suspend presenters and employees, it allows them to realise that what they have done is wrong and that they cannot get away with this and they will be punished depending on what the severity of their actions are and it could even lead to them losing their job over it.They will lose repsect and dignity from people of the public which could affect anything else they decide to do in thier career.
CENSORSHIP/SELF-CENSORSHIP
Self censorship is when people censor or classify their own work out of fear of what people may say about it when compared to their own thoughts and opinions. It is most commonly done by film producers, directors and authors as they do not want to be known as the person that made or wrote something about a certain subject, knowing that some people will not agree with it and have their own opinions about why they disagree with it. This way they are not linked to the complaints themselves because no one really knows who they are apart from close family and friends.
Censorship is when someone else takes the explicit or unreadable content of something, such as a film or book, as it is their job. So, self censorship is when someone knows that what they have written or created will be seen as inappropriate by the public and so they censor themselves and thier identity. And then censorship is when someone else has the job to censor anything that could be seen as inappropriate or used against someone because of a statement that has been written, and so they must remove this information.
An example of censorship in radio would be if a song with explicit words was recorded and everybody downloaded it, this would then make it's way into the UK Chart show on a sunday. So, before it can be played to the audience, it must be censored and all the explicit content within the song must be removed so that it is no longer inappropriate to play on air when people of any ages can be listening.
Possible constraints that can occur within the radio industry, due to the fact that they have to follow radio regulations, is that the presenters can feel restricted about what they can talk about during thier show. This can create bordeom and repitivness within the show and maybe lose the station some listeners because they are always talking about the same thing. Especially during lunchtime news reports, not too much information can be given about the main headline story. This could be due to the fact that it is quite gruesome and there are people under the age of 18 who may be listening suring lunchtime and so, as it applies to television, news after 9pm can contain more detail as this is the contract that has been created. Parents of young children realise that after 9pm, more explicit and indepth conversations and news stories may be spoken about on the radio and so it is their duty to avoid their children listening to them if they do not want them to hear this stuff.
Task 3 - Distinction. Amber watch out for your spelling of 'their'.
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