What crisis? No crisis says Martin Le Jeune

I have just had a quick flick through the preamble from the Centre for policy studies report out today "To inform, educate and entertain? British broadcasting in the 21st century."

It is a fairly damning attack on the BBC from Martin Le Jeune,a former head of public affairs at Sky who maintains that

if the market is providing more – and it is – then the state should do less.

The state of course being the BBC and Channel 4 which has a very limited role to play in the age of multi-channel television

“A lot of capital has been invested in the idea of saving PSB plurality. Some sort of deal will be stitched together in the next few weeks to ensure that a second PSB broadcaster survives, probably by reengineering Channel 4.
Nonetheless, this effort is futile. And the principle behind it is misguided. The effort is futile because it flies in the face of market trends and can at best keep a new entity afloat for a few years. But the principle is also wrong. There is no longer a need for an alternative PSB provider.

The headlines from the report are that the media medium is being adequately looked after by the free market and that the public service broadcaster should simply fill in the gaps that are missing.