Television production, regulation and enforcement reasons for broadcasters' non-compliance and a weakened state of regulatory affairs

• Main Author: Gooch, Rebecca L.
• Published: London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) 2012
• Subjects: PN1990 Broadcasting
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.550769

This thesis examines a group of television-makers that aimed to circumvent the regulations affecting standards of content and to reshape the boundaries of permissible violent content. It also examines the regulators who, in a period of significant regulatory restructuring, were required to police those boundaries and protect viewers from ‘harmful’ or ‘offensive’ content, and programme-contributors from ‘unfair’ treatment. In doing so, the aim is to offer a broader, empirically rich understanding of the individual, organisational and external factors that can lead to non-compliance and the relaxation of regulatory affairs over time; and to understand how rules or regulations can get pushed and reshaped. My findings revealed that both regulators and television-makers were confronted by conflicting economic and public interest objectives/responsibilities, and that, due to a variety of individual, organisational and external-level factors, they tended to prioritise their economic obligations, and this led to a loosening of the standards of consumer protection. The factors that influenced television-makers’ and regulators’ decision-making, and thereby this sequence of events, included, but were not limited to, the government’s shift toward deregulation, technological advancements, changing politics, a competitive organisational culture and a lack of sufficient accountability for television-makers.