Statement: designation of television selection services - principles and methods for Ofcom’s recommendations

Statement published 23 April 2025

The Media Act 2024 introduced a new online availability and prominence regime for the public service broadcasters’ TV players distributed on connected TV platforms. This new regime will require connected TV platforms designated by the Secretary of State to ensure that BBC iPlayer and any other public service broadcaster TV players designated by Ofcom, as well as their public service content, are available, prominent, and easily accessible.   

When it comes to connected TV platforms, referred to in the Act as ‘television selection services’, our role is to provide a report to the Secretary of State setting out our recommendations on designation of these services. Before doing so, we must publish a statement about the principles and methods we will apply in preparing our report. 

In December, we published a consultation setting out our proposed Statement of Principles and Methods. Having considered stakeholders’ responses, which were largely supportive of the draft Statement, we have decided not to make any changes and to proceed with the Statement as set out in the consultation. So, we are publishing the final Statement of Principles and Methods, together with a document summarising the comments we received about our proposed Statement, our responses to those comments and the rationale for our decision. 

In the consultation we also ought views on our emerging thinking on how we will approach our first report to the Secretary of State. We are grateful for stakeholders’ input on these points and will take it into account when producing our first report, which we intend to consult on in summer 2025.