Andrew Graham is an economist and Master of Balliol College. His trenchant and entertaining views on media regulation are well known. He famously said that “if you could measure quality it would just be quantity”. One of his observations in Oxford was that the effect of the Communications Bill and Ofcom’s arrival is that broadcasting has been overrun by economists. Mark Thompson bore this out by basing his keynote presentation on a term obviously borrowed from economics (even if only the Bluffer’s Guide): ‘Merit goods’. Graham predicts that the next wave of colonists will be the lawyers, once they get their teeth into the opportunities created by the new legislation.
In which I try, after 25 years of blogging, to drop my ironic stance a bit.