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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

I declare my interest as deputy chairman of Channel 4. I hope to help the noble Lord, Lord Howard, get his head around the challenges to Channel 4. First, no public funds come into Channel 4; it exists entirely within the commercial marketplace, which presents its own challenges. More important than that is what has happened with the explosion of digital opportunities that the channel is attempting to take advantage of. We are discovering that by putting programming together with the opportunities that that programming allows online we are getting a dramatically increased impact in terms of our public service obligations. That is so particularly in the area of health. The noble Lord mentioned the iPhone application linked to exercise. We are beginning to understand dozens of things about the way in which behaviours can be influenced by a programme. A programme can generate the initial interest but behaviours, ironically, are generated more by the online opportunity that a programme creates. We think we may have a tool which is of enormous public service interest and public service benefit. It is very early days and we are very much in the experimental phase, but I sincerely believe that some of the experimental work being done, by 4iP in particular, may end up being of enormous national importance and of real interest in helping us to navigate through some of the social problems that we, as a nation, are trying to address.