Ed Richards at the Oxford Media Convention

Ed Richards is The Prime Minister’s priniciple adviser on media matters. He’s a famously shadowy figure (he actually tried to dodge out of the frame as I took his picture!). His presentation was a fairly robust defense of the Government’s record on new services and particularly its attitude to applications from the BBC.

Critics accuse the Government of being too soft on Dyke’s BBC and too quick to grant the corporation entry to new sectors already well catered for by the private sector.

He was one of the few speakers to actually mention the Internet (or at least ‘broadband’ which seems to be the respectable way to say ‘Internet’ these days) but when I cornered him about the exclusion of the net from Ofcom’s scope he held his hands up in the now rather tired attitude of “hey, the net’s too big and complex for regulation…”