The second phase of Ofcom’s lengthy public service broadcasting, out today, calls for websites to offer more links to public service web content. The regulator wants to make public content more discoverable online.

Though it earlier suggested sites like Yahoo give more prominence to public content in search results, it now acknowledges people find web content deliberately, rather than serendipitously, as with TV…

“(So) there may be a role for publicly funded institutions to seek opportunities to introduce users to a wider range of public service content offered by other sites”: “This might include new online tools that help people ‘bump into’ new websites which otherwise they might not have found, along the lines of stumbleupon.com or last.fm, with a public service perspective.”

While the review is predicated on the disruption being caused to TV by digital media, Ofcom’s review shows the internet “is not yet seen as a substitute for high-quality TV content” - only 62 percent of net users have ever consumed public service content online. If anyone’s going to build sites that enhance public discovery like Last.fm aides music discovery it will be Channel 4 - currently creating its £50 million 4iP public online investment fund - or the BBC - already hugely influential in this area.

Though it was mooted earlier, Ofcom appears to have abandoned the idea of creating a “public service publisher” for the web. One new long-term idea it’s proposed today would let online publishers of all stripes bid for funding to produce public content.

Elsewhere in the review…

—By 2012, the government must find £145 million and £235 million to plug a funding gap for the commercial public service channels. Between £60 million and £100 million must go to Channel 4 as a priority. C4, which has long warned of its dire straits, announced 150 job losses yesterday, including a £25 million production budget cut and another £25 million from areas including new media (via Broadcast).

—ITV (LSE: ITV) will have its public service provisions reduced, especially around news, from next year, allowing it save money. After its license expires in 2014, it may even be freed from those shackles entirely.

—Longer term, Ofcom wants views via consultation on three proposed models: 1) maintaining obligations on all the PSB broadcasters but carving responsibilities between each, 2) keeping only BBC and C4 as PSBs, and 3) allowing a whole new range of public producers other than BBC to bid for PSB funding.

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