Live blog: The Edinburgh PSB Review

12.32: Welcome to our live blog of The Edinburgh PSB Review, with panellists Andy Duncan (CEO, C4), Emily Bell (The Guardian), Jana Bennett (head of BBC Vision), Lord Melvyn Bragg (controller of specialist factual and arts at ITV) and Ofcom board member Tim Gardam taking a look at the future of British public service broadcasting.

12.33: Red and green cards have been distributed to the gathered delegates, adding a touch of vintage Ready Steady Cook to proceedings.

12.37: Chairman Steve Hewlett brings us up to date with phase 2 of Ofcom's PSB consultation. Four options: 1) Evolution, where all the PSBs continue to provide PSB programmes with extra public funding or fewer obligations; 2) BBC only, where ITV, C4 and Five become fully commercial; 3) BBC and C4 plus extra competitive funding for PSB programming; 4) broad competitive funding where many providers bid for funding to provide competition for the BBC.

12.41: Gardam is asked about Fincham being "quite rude to Ofcom" in last night's MacTaggart - the "deathless language" quote is picked out in particular. Gardam responds: "I thought the great thing about the speech was it was vintage Fincham... he believes that television is special... he was saying that what television does matters as much in the online world as what it has done in the past. What I didn't really understand is what he wanted Ofcom to do."

12.42: "What Ofcom has always said about ITV... is that it should always have a big programme budget and produce" British programming. "On the purposes of PSB, the [part of the] Communications Act is 75 lines long - we did well to cut it down." Gardam adds that further down Ofcom's report on PSB is "the language of television", which Fincham complained was notably absent. "All those words there are absolutely the words he was using."

12.44: Asked by Emily Bell what Ofcom should do now, Gardam says the regulator is talking to broadcasters about ways to keep PSB "as vibrant and relevant in a world where the economic rules have changed".

12.45: Gardam suggests that a future model for PSB could end up being a hybrid of the four suggested models. However, he reiterates that the current system will result in ITV and C4 declining and the BBC having a monopoly on PSB. "The viewers don't want that," he says.

12.46: Gardam agrees with Fincham that "television is special... the public have a visceral connection with it... they love it."

12.47: Next up is Lord Bragg with a 5 minute speech. The highlights:
- ITV the biggest PSB in the world
- "ITV is the most extraordinary broadcasting phenomenon", blending commercial instinct with PSB.
- "The old game is up". He warns of a continued decline in advertising.
- ITV's ancien regulatory regime is "unsustainable".

12.49: Bragg compares ITV's out-of-London programming, and number of drama commissions, to those of the BBC. ITV's programme budget goes into 80% British productions. "That's the greatest benefit" of ITV's PSB obligations. He notes that "predators" interested in purchasing ITV would have got it back to financial fitness by cutting British production.

12.51: "We can't go forward at ITV without a radical decrease in regulations."

12.52: Bragg says the choice is between ITV's shareholders insisting the analogue licences are handed back as switchover approaches or a "programme led" business model keeping an emphasis on British production.

12.53: He calls for an "unleashed, non-nanny state ITV".

12.54: CRR "should be readdressed as soon as possible", Bragg says of which obligations should be dumped and when. "Regions are a massive expense for ITV... they cost £115-£120m. We can't afford that any more. We're seeking to trim that, to reduce that cost but still to keep nine regional stations."

12.55: Bragg emphasises "things have changed... we have to adapt and address it or perish".

12.56: Emily Bell asks whether ITV would be better off being owned by Sky. "Certainly not," replies Bragg.

12.57: "You're cherry-picking the rules," suggests Bell. "What's cherry-picking - over the last 25 years, ITV has been the whipping-boy. We've been left with the clutter. We have to push quite a bit out of the way to continue to make strong programmes," replies Bragg, praising Grade for securing a large programme budget for the next two years.

12.58: Bell asks how the PSB, British production-emphasising ethos can be maintained after regulatory constraint is removed and current management moves on. Bragg responds that Bell's newspaper, The Guardian, could turn into the Daily Mail - Bell points out that the Scott Trust would prevent such a change.

"I think very little's guaranteed in this world", says Bragg. "The sort of written guarantees you want for the BBC or the Scott Trust - how very privileged you are - we don't have that." He further suggests that ITV must come out and fight and to stop being a "whipping boy".

13.00: Gardam is asked how likely it is that ITV will hand back its licences.

"Commercial public service broadcasting has always been a deal," he responds. He notes that Ofcom's calculation still has a £45m benefit, down from £200m+, of being a PSB. "If ITV were to hand its licences back, there would be a process. It would lose its gifted spectrum. We believe there is a major benefit in ITV remaining a PSB."

13.02: "Viewers like" ITV regional news the further out of London they are, adds Gardam.

13.03: Asked whether a deal can be reached with ITV, Gardam says that the PSB review should deliver a "flexible framework" to take into account all "public service content in the market".

13.04: Andy Duncan's turn now. He agrees with Bragg that "the world is changing very fast".

13.05: "Very profound change is going on," he says, warning that the current system is "in more danger than a lot of people in the industry and a lot of politicians think".

13.06: Google comes up; Duncan says they take in almost half the total UK TV ad market but do not invest in content. He warns that global economic change affecting both public and advertising funds his hitting hard, but adds that underlying structural change - less money coming out of TV advertising - continues anyway.

13.07: "The prize is to get a system" where the ethos of "great quality programmes" available free of charge to everyone for the long term, he says. He praises Ofcom's PSB review and describes the divide between the review document and Fincham's comments is "paper thin".

13.09: He encourages Ofcom to "set ITV free... the game's over". He predicts ITV will not give up its PSB obligations: "There's huge value in EPG number 3 - more than Ofcom gives it," he notes and says regional news makes the network "distinctive". Five is "in balance". C4 needs to find a new source of funding to replace gifted analogue licences to deliver a workable business model.

13.10: "It's not rocket science", says Duncan, asking that another 5 years are not spent determining what the next move should be.

13.11: Duncan passionately argues: "Let's get this sorted out, let's join together as an industry, let's argue".

13.12: He suggests C4 should be the BBC's main multigenre competition because ITV and Five are commercial companies answerable to shareholders who may not want an hour of current affairs in peak.

13.16: Duncan does not offer a precise answer to a question from Emily Bell asking where any extra public funds would be invested. "I'm primarily saying our television budgets are at threat," he says, but brings up 4IP - where money is invested in public service content not necessarily for broadcast. "The gap in the money is absolutely about TV budgets," he reiterates.

13.20: Duncan says that any accountability (such as by a public service authority) or regulatory structure for C4 would have to take into account the organisation's aims and not stifle the channel's creativity. He notes that other broadcasters are able to be creative in their respective regulatory structures.

13.21: Jana Bennett now speaks for the BBC. She suggests that the choices faced by the industry are not binary: "There are some fundamentals that aren't changing. Britain remains the second largest exporter of programme hours - we account for 53% of format hours exported."

13.22: She says that a commitment to high quality programming underpins the future of PSB, and says ITV is essential for maintaining plurality. "ITV is also part of this system, even if they were to lose some regulatory commitments. They will always be giving the BBC a runs for its money. Their being liberated could help."

13.24: Bennett says it is important for ITV to remain "a mass reach organisation". On C4, Bennett suggests that a pot-of-money based model "has a lot of questions" and suggests taking money out of the licence fee could further "destabilise" an already unstable system.

13.26: "The one bit of certainty in this system would become destabilised," she reiterates. "I question the model where we are digging up the roads again." She notes that the licence fee settlement has also resulted in 20% being pulled from factual programming and argues that top-slicing to give C4 - or other public service providers - a variable amount of money would destabilise the BBC.

13.28: "We want to be supporting partnerships," says Bennett, citing technology sharing as a possible way of sharing resources across the industry - "finding a dynamic way" to assist C4 rather than a numbers-based approach.

13.31: Bennett suggests a recent Guardian poll suggesting a drop in support for the licence fee "has some limitations", and says polls commissioned, but not done, by the BBC suggest that support for the licence fee remains high. She acknowledges that licence fee money is being spent on going out of London in part because outside the capital appreciation for the BBC is not as high.

13.33: Gardam says that "the BBC needs certainty", and that a strong BBC is central to the future of PSB. He adds that diminished commercial PSBs would result in a monopoly for the BBC, and therefore a model has to be found where the commercials will survive but the BBC remains strong. He notes that "it is very unlikely" that public cash will come in outside the licence fee for the future of PSB, and refuses to rule out that licence fee money will be used despite Bennett's remarks that such a move could destabilise the broadcaster.

13.37: A questioner from BBC Wales asks whether, for all the discussion about plurality, the BBC will be left to provide programmes in the nations and regions. Bragg denies ITV is dumping regional programming - "it's simply not true".

13.39: Bragg says money for other public service broadcasters should not be taken from the licence fee, and suggests the BBC will have enough problems - especially if the Tories come to power at the next election - to cope with going forward. He adds, of those who might contest for licence fee money: "What would they bring to the table? What have the 200 digital channels brought to the table?"

13.41: Gardam points out that Discovery produces PSB-like content; however, it is counter-pointed that they have been doing that on their own for commercial reasons, raising a question over why public funds would be needed.

13.42: Duncan warns that this issue must be dealt with before the next election. "We will collectively all suffer if this drags on."

13.43: "Contestability turns the money into a form of lottery," says Bennett in her closing remarks. "It doesn't guarantee the centre-piece being high quality origination with scale and impact."

13.45: Show-of-hands-time: more people in the hall don't want the licence fee top-sliced.