Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if he will make an assessment of the (a) representation of BME programming and channels available on Freeview and (b) the barriers to BME channels being on Freeview.

The Government is interested in the fair representation of BAME people in the media and on television and we are pleased to note that the Creative Diversity Network is developing a monitoring system, Project Diamond, to collect standardised and comparable diversity data on-screen and off-screen. Project Diamond is due to start collecting data later in the year.

In addition, the Communications Act includes a duty on Ofcom to periodically assess the extent to which public service broadcasting purposes and objectives are being met by all the PSB channels taken together. The purposes and objectives include meeting the needs and satisfying the interests of as many different audiences as practicable; and providing a sufficient quantity of programmes that reflect the lives and concerns of different communities and cultural interests and traditions within the United Kingdom, and locally in different parts of the United Kingdom.

On the selection of programming and channels on Freeview, it is for individual channels serving different BAME communities to take a commercial view about whether or not to broadcast their services on Freeview and to then seek carriage from the digital terrestrial TV multiplex operator and a digital television service programme licence from Ofcom. Prospective channels can apply for a UK broadcasting licence from Ofcom, provided they meet the statutory criteria. Channels that mainly serve the BAME community have tended to broadcast on pay platforms, particularly satellite, rather than Freeview, as this gives them access to subscription revenues as well as from advertising and programme sponsorship.