INTRODUCTION

Noted earlier has been a tendency for incremental and ad hoc reform of the regulatory regime applicable to the media. The advent of the Communications Act 2003, a massive and closely scrutinised piece of legislation, might seem to be a more radical overhaul of the UK's media regulation regime, and it certainly represents a significant landmark. However, though of great and obvious significance in terms of its reform of the institutional framework of regulation, in particular through the establishment of a new super-regulator, Ofcom, on closer inspection it might be thought that the new regulatory framework established by the Act has not adequately addressed the questions of principle, and in particular citizenship interests, highlighted in previous chapters. Indeed, the Act's emphasis on ‘light touch’ regulation might even be thought to serve to marginalise such interests still further.

In this chapter we offer a brief overview of the historical legal framework for regulation prior to the Act before going on to identify the key reforms and to consider their impact on power and accountability in the regulatory regime and some significant developments since. Our emphasis here will tend to be on regulatory design, the location of regulatory power and accountability in its exercise, while in the next chapter we will turn to consider the impact of the revised regulatory framework on certain aspects of the control of media outlets, of the media infrastructure and of broadcast and published media content. Our overall objective here is to consider whether the Communications Act 2003 in general represents any significant advance on what went before.