In a curious way though what has taken place here on our television screens over the last two months has its

In a curious way, though, what has taken place here on our television screens over the last two months has its positive side. Pace Huxley, man does not flourish in a hedonistic environment. One of the last group activities of the final week involved the four remaining inmates – Jade, Alex, Jonny and Kate – laying out their weekly income. Predictably enough, they spent it on drink for a party, were promptly sick and lay around the floor singing songs of inconceivable silliness.This seemed to me to illustrate another important truth – one that practically every social planner, futurist guru and whatnot forgets – which is that, by and large, the average human being does not want most of the appurtenances of a secular heaven that are regularly dangled in their faces by the ad men. To judge from the average TV show, the summit of most human ambition is to own a DVD player and take five holidays a year. At the same time, there is another part of the soul that wants blood, sweat, toil and lofted banners: the distance between Jonny vomiting his supper (not without its amusing side, if you like that kind of thing) and the dull thump of car bombs and bullets tap-tapping from the machine-gun nests is smaller than you think.It is a point that Mr Blair and President Bush, as they make their dispositions for the future shape of our lives, might care to ponder.The live final of ‘Big Brother’ is on tonight at 8.30pm and 10pm on Channel 4 George Orwell was talking to D J TAYLOR, who, curiously enough, is currently at work on a major new biography of the author. This is a multimedia era.

The days when a newspaper owner confined himself to the printed word and the broadcaster was content with his small-screen output are long gone. There was a time when television programmes were watched only on television screens, radio shows heard only on the wireless and telephones were just for conversation
But that was before the digital age. Now content can be accessed via mobile phones or the internet, using cables or satellites However you like, in fact. In this multimedia age, companies which could once afford to confine themselves to radio, films or television now span the sector. Rupert Murdoch’s empire, which combines newspapers, film production studios, television channels, websites and much more, is typical In the UK, the job of regulating these behemoths ­ monitoring the quality and decency of their output, ensuring that control is sufficiently divided to prevent one tycoon accumulating too much power ­ has until now been the preserve of a rather quaint quintet of bodies. That will end next year when a single body, Ofcom, takes charge.

Yesterday, the identity of the man chosen to run the super-regulator and stand up to the media moguls was revealed, and he immediately walked into a row about government cronyism.It is easy to see why the appointment of Lord Currie of Marylebone ­ a former Labour peer who resigned the party whip to take the job ­ is politically sensitive. It is not just politicians, however, but also newspaper readers, television viewers, radio listeners and internet browsers who should keep track of his performance.Lord Currie’s empire will merge five existing fiefdoms: the Radio Communications Authority, which manages civil radio spectrums in the UK; the Radio Authority, which licenses commercial radio stations; the Independent Television Commission, which regulates independent television companies; the Broadcasting Standards Commission, which sets public decency guidelines on broadcast content; and Oftel, the telecommunications regulator.The problem with this system has been its focus on specific sectors, rather than broader economic regulation It has also been mired in bureaucracy and duplicated effort. In some cases, television broadcasters have received complaints about the same issue from the ITC, the BSC and other bodies including the Broadcasting Complaints Commission and the BBC board of governors. Not only was it necessary to respond to all of them but also, on occasion, the regulators disagreed among themselves on the issues with which they were dealing.The Government is banking on Lord Currie to ease Britain into the digital age But he has been handed a vast canvas. Competition, or economic objectives, are only one consideration ­ diversity, plurality and quality are equally important. Presumably, that is why Ofcom has been awarded parallel competition powers with the Office of Fair Trading, although quite how the two authorities will divide those powers remains to be seen. Perhaps most difficult of all will be Ofcom’s need to manage Mr Murdoch’s News Corporation; his relationship with Labour has been a constant thorn in Tony Blair’s side.The company has manoeuvred itself into a position where it controls some of the most compelling media content available in the UK ­ notably the rights to show sport and films ­ as well as the means to distribute it through British Sky Broadcasting.Crucially for Labour, the company reaches the lion’s share of newspaper readers in Britain as well.

Managing the vertical integration of television content and distribution so that competitors get equal access to both is arguably the toughest issue facing Ofcom, one that has foxed the Office of Fair Trading for the past three years. Oiling the digital wheels will inevitably jeopardise the delicate strategic relationship between Mr Blair and Mr Murdoch. Hence the concern among the Prime Minister’s political opponents that he has entrusted the lubricant to a Labour peer. The power assumed by Lord Currie may worry some people, but the world has been changed irrevocably by the digital revolution, and the existence of five separate regulators no longer makes sense. Telecommunications has merged into a broader category called digital communications, which also encompasses media and online content.