The relevance of content regulation, based on traditional models of broadcasting, is being challenged by technological developments in the communications media industry. Increasingly the control of content – how it is delivered, how it is accessed and how it is chosen – is being placed in the hands of the audience or user and within an environment to which it is difficult to apply traditional licence-based regulatory mechanisms.
Regulatory organisations across the world, like the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA), are evaluating their role as regulators and weighing that against the changing media content environment. Different forms of regulation, which share the responsibility for content supervision between regulators and the communications industries, are being used increasingly by many public bodies across the world, as is a more active role in the raising of media literacy and awareness among audiences and users. This report focuses on these issues facing broadcast content regulation.
Purpose
- Considers assumptions and definitions that underpin content regulation, and the policy implications for content regulation in New Zealand
- Examines the drivers for regulatory change including the advance of technology and the content regulatory structure in New Zealand
Key Results
- Content regulation has been based upon a model of content transmission (linear and broadcast) that is becoming outmoded in many countries with the rapid advances in communication technology
- Significant changes – radical increase in choice and affordability of content; and substantial increases in viewer control over the time and place in which they enjoy their choice of content
- Many governments review the role and implementation of content regulation, often against a backdrop of overall regulatory reform in all aspects of public services
- Content regulation – methods by which intervention into access or supply of certain forms of broadcast and electronic content, either for protective reasons such as the protection of children, or proactive reasons such as requiring quotas for local content or providing for public service broadcasting
- Statutory regulation – predominant content regulation model for broadcasting internationally
- Different approaches in regulating content delivery over newer platforms such as mobile delivery
- Increasing responsibility placed on the audience or user to negotiate content delivered via the new technologies
- Different territories have chosen different approaches to suit their own cultural specificities
- Content regulatory systems continue to support and maintain key principles such as those that preserve national identity or those that encourage domestically-produced content
- Many territories have required their regulators to develop or encourage media literacy initiatives or awareness raising programmes to ensure that people are prepared for this role
- New Zealand needs to create a framework which uses evidence-based approaches that enable it to recognise and react to changes in the broadcasting and electronic content environment