June 24, 2019

Ofcom has published revised guidance for public service broadcasters to ensure that television programmes made outside of London deliver more tangible creative and economic benefits to the UK’s nations and regions.

Ofcom says that production outside of London plays a crucial role in the television sector by stimulating investment and job opportunities throughout the UK. It also benefits viewers by ensuring a diverse range of programmes and editorial perspectives.

To help support and strengthen the creative economies in the nations and regions, Ofcom requires the BBC, Channel 3 services, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to meet expenditure and programme hours quotas for productions made outside of the M25 for UK-wide broadcast.

BBC One and Two, and Channel 3 services must also meet quotas to provide regional programmes that are of particular interest to people living in the area where the service is broadcast.

Ofcom explains that it publishes guidance to assist the broadcasters in meeting these obligations. Having listened to industry concerns that the guidance has not always been consistently applied in practice, and to ensure its effectiveness in light of market developments, Ofcom is making a series of changes. These include:

• strengthening the criteria that define a regional production;
• excluding self-promotional content from counting towards regional production quotas;
• adding explanatory examples about the aims of each of the criteria, and how they should be applied; and
• introducing spot checks and a clear reporting regime to improve compliance and aid enforcement.

Ofcom had proposed to require the substantive base of the production to be operational at the point of commission, as this could bring greater longer-term sustainability to the production sector in the nations and regions. Ofcom says that it still believes this to be that case, but it wishes to gather further evidence regarding this change to assess its impact, before deciding whether to implement it.

The updated guidance will come into effect for programmes broadcast from January 2021.