Investigation will have made interesting viewing for Ofcom's News Corp team

Computer-hacking revelations come at a time when News Corp's relationship with BSkyB is already under scrutiny

News Corporation's relationship with satellite broadcaster BSkyB is already under scrutiny from Ofcom. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Panorama's computer-hacking revelations come at a time when News Corporation's relationship with the satellite broadcaster BSkyB is already under scrutiny from the broadcast regulator, Ofcom. It has a duty to ensure that all broadcasters are owned and run by companies and individuals who are deemed to be "fit and proper" – and in the months following the phone-hacking and corrupt payments allegations, it has set up a special team to look at the subject as regards Britain's largest broadcaster. Dubbed Project Apple, the exercise is focused on News Corporation, which owns a 39.1% stake in BSkyB, and on James Murdoch, who is chairman of BSkyB, and was executive chairman, from late 2007 until last month, of News International, which owns the Sun and owned the News of the World.

The questions raised in Monday'sprogramme, meanwhile, focus on alleged hacking of a different type, conducted by another News Corporation company – its pay-TV technology and security division NDS, a company borne out of Israeli encryption technology but whose headquarters is near Heathrow Airport.

NDS was almost wholly owned by News Corporation at the time ITV Digital was in operation, between 1998 and 2002, but in 2008 Rupert Murdoch sold 51% to the British venture capital firm Permira. Earlier this month, News Corp then announced the whole of NDS was to be sold to the US technology giant Cisco in a $5bn deal, although that transaction will not close until later this year. For the moment, though, James Murdoch sits on the board of NDS Group Ltd – a board he also sat on between 1998 and 2003. His brother Lachlan was also on the board between 2002 and 2005.

In theory, the fit and proper exercise already under way could lead to Ofcom withdrawing Sky's licence to broadcast, but in practice the regulator has invoked this power only rarely. In November 2010, adult chat broadcaster Bang Media, the company behind the Tease Me channels, lost its broadcasting licence for "repeatedly breached rules which protect children from inappropriate material and viewers from harmful and offensive material". No major media owner has ever fallen foul of a test where the bar is set intentionally high.

It would become moot also if James Murdoch stepped down from the board of BSkyB and if News Corp sold its shareholding to the point where the company was not deemed to have any influence over the way the satellite broadcaster is run. While those two facts endure, though, Ofcom is liaising with the police over their ongoing investigations into phone hacking and corrupt payments – although the regulator said last summer it could act before the conclusion of any criminal investigation if it believes the fit and proper test has not been met.

Ofcom would only say prior to transmission that its executives would be watching Panorama; what the regulator makes of the programme and its allegations could turn out to be significant either way.

• This article was amended on 27 March 2012 to complete a sentence with four words "until later this year".