The first thing I'd like to say, as the person whose job it was to get approval for our additional digital channels, is that I can assure you it was hard work. And if it looked easy, believe me it wasn't.
First of all, we own our capacity on Freeview; we own our multiplexes. So in terms of digital terrestrial distribution, we have a certain amount of capacity and we divide that up by the services we want to show through that capacity. On Sky and on cable we have to win our places, but they are obliged to carry public service channels.
In order to get approval for a new channel, what we do is first of all come up with the proposition from my side of the house, from the executive, a description of what the service is. We then take that to the trust, who agree with us how the public value of that proposition should be assessed. We put a submission to the trust saying this is what we'd like to do and this is what we think its value would be. The trust then makes a further assessment of that public value, consulting the public, consulting licence payers. Are they willing to pay for this? Do they want it?
Ofcom, the independent broadcasting regulator, assesses what its market impact is likely to be, and the trust then determines whether in its opinion the public value outweighs the market impact or not.
Finally, the secretary of state signs off the ultimate decision from a procedural point of view. He's not taking a view as to the merits of the case but on whether we have done the assessment properly.
It's a pretty rigorous process. I just got approval yesterday for a very small channel that will broadcast in Gaelic to the Gaelic speakers of the western isles of Scotland. We had to go backwards and forwards to the trust on a number of occasions to persuade them that this was a proper thing for us to be doing, etc.
So it is a pretty rigorous process.