The Changing Face of TV
On Tuesday the 17th of July I went to a suppertime debate on 2007 at the Circle Club, Barton Arcade, Manchester.
The panel was Dr Gareth Palmer, Associate Head of Enterprise - School of Media and Performance Salford University, Mark Collins Head of Production at the Gate Films www.thegatefilms.com and Adam Webster, Head of Interactive also at the Gate.
Mark claimed the Public Service ethic is being destroyed and niche broadcasting is on the rise. A new generation simply does not see "public service broadcasting" the same way.
An Ofcom report has identified that for the first time British TV is in decline.
Scheduled TV is giving way to Sky + etc: TV On-Demand
And already, in the US, kids spend more time on the internet than anything, including watching TV.
Adam felt that big brands like the BBC and C4 WILL survive because they are now empowering users: learning the lessons of Web 2.0 and becoming interactive.
At the same time, perhaps insidiously, the big companies are taking a strategy of absorbing individual YouTubers/independents etc with talent, and using them to gain their own profits.
The trend is going regional, going local, like ITV Local or Manchester's Channel M. Gareth brought up the example of DrumChapel.tv, an internet TV station runi from a shed for the benefit of a tiny community in Scotland.
So perhaps the public service ethic is being reborn, as LOCAL collective repsonsibility, to a Gemeinschaft-type society. Perhaps the democracy in public service will improve, even though national norms will be fragmented into many different norms.
MODELS
Start off free> achieve cult status/get people hooked> charge a small subscription fee
Start off free> achieve cult status/get people hooked> show adverts
There was a discussion with some anxiety over what we are going to lose from the public service ethic. It was agreed that grand narratives, big stories, will always have enough appeal to keep them going: Coronation Street, Eastenders, Dr Who.
The public service ethic is coming down to an ethic of community... And personalisation! But there are also different NON-GEOGRAPHIC communities: sci-fi, chav, quiz show fan, shopping-freak, reality-TV-moron.
There was some worry that this along with populism would equal mediocre content, and that we have passed the great age of TV dramas. But this was countered by the idea that there will always be an audience for genuinely EXCELLENT content, and this audience might have more of a unique voice in future, rather than being subsumed within "The British Public".
The only worry is can economies of scaled be achieved to secure genuinely excellent content...
The challenge then is the trend to subsidise excellence (e.g. the BBC's very expensive Living Planet would never have been achieved without the supporting infrastructure of such a huge corporation and the effective subsidy that brought), and it was agreed that this - in part - is actually what "Public Service" had been about all along: producing content for an "elite" while telling everybody else that the medecine was "good for them".
Likewise, there was worry about the continuance of high-quality news and current affairs programming - essential to hold politicians to account. It was agreed that this would probably be secure, because it is such a key function there is clearly a "market" for it. The rise of Fox and ITV pseudo-news is to be mourned. But can we do anything about it? No. The hope is actually conversely as huge corporate monopolies lose dominance, Rupert Murdoch's propoganda-mill will actually lose its grip on the populace. That propoganda models works best with centralisation, and we will not have that in future.
It was agreed that in the future the Market would actually mean TV was MORE responsive to the desires of audiences.
Global markets could keep documentaries alive, even where there was not sufficient national funding; "Rome" for example, was an Italian, US and BBC co-production.
But in future we can tap into global markets for documentaries and quality programming that do not have the economy of scale to be made nationally/locally.
(I wonder if universities could not even contribute, collobaratively: some of the most excellent documentaries (esp. history, nature, science) are bordering on academic research. And let's face it, the cost of producing even HD TV is coming WAY down...)
Indeed, because broadcasting corporations are actually nationally-based and have genres flowing down from a single, national head, there is much duplication of effort at present. It might be possible in the future that collaboration and co-operation become more important and vital to see projects get sufficient funding. Instead of the BBC addressing British people with a new documentary about Antartic wildlife and ABC talking to American people with their new documentary about Antartic wildlife, they might have to find ways they can approach a project jointly.
And indeed Genre-based channels like HBO - which are subscription based - still have a future.
It was agreed that the one format whose future is assured is Live Event programming (e.g. live sports matches, and indeed news).
People watch programmes not channels. Brands matter, not channels.
On the matter of the marketing of programmes, decreasing channel-loyalty heightens the need for excellent marketing: Mark said the importance of ad trailers (and then the first couple of episodes) is such that whole series will now succeed or fall on the trailer.
Gareth noted the BBC was now quick to reschedule series to a different time-slot if they weren't working in a particular place.
It was agreed that structured advertising - tailored to the individual (IPTV) viewer would become more prevalent, and thus more effective.
Copyright issues on the internet are still a huge issue with distributing content. The BBC spent 3 years sorting out the isssues on its Virtuali Archive alone, because rules are different in every country.
mmm, perhaps an interesting
mmm, perhaps an interesting subject for an article on our new Media Art POD?
Local TV?
How interesting can Lancaster.tv really be?
As Thoreau said 'We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.' (Walden)
Phil
folly - Technical Manager
A place for Thoreau's simplicity?
Don't think I don't respect Thoreau, Phil, as somebody who was reading Walden as the last thing I did last night before going to sleep, but surely such a statement is clearly as irrelevant as the aspiration that one day there would be a telephone in every town!
There is always surely a use for technology: ok, it's normally the military, followed by academia, followed by business, followed by ordinary social interraction, but can you imagine the local businesses in Lancaster who would jump on board to fund any TV station with a viable audience? OK, it would in turn perpetuate the predominance of those local businesses but the "stakeholder" structure (i.e. leading the advertising manager to tell the Editor what to show) would likely be far more diverse than say... Fox News.. Sky.... ITV... the BBC even....??!!
And surely also the example should not be of Maine talking to Texas but of Lancastrians talking to Lancastrians. The way I see this going is partly the break down of formality. There are total strangers that I speak to - for example a photographer in Preston on Flickr last night - who instant rapport and friendliness can be struck with over the internet. Despite many people seeming to think of the internet as a dangerous, wild place, the net can frame human relations in an actually more predictable and safe manner., as well as frankly, more natural. Because this frame of "predicatable expectations" applies to local TV etc, it allows subjects to be broached in a conversational style that normal news or even entertainment reporting is never going to achieve. For example, imagine a conversation about the building site opposite our offices: anathema to national TV, but we talk about it in the office, and it DOES affect Lancaster. (Small time stuff, but it crucially not only reflects the everyday natter that people are actually interested in (i.e. proper local gossip) but explodes the myth that media comes from authority and through the ownership of vast networks and extremely expensive equipment. Apart from anything it would affect how people look at national corporate broadcasting, and give them a lower bullshit threshold. I hope).
Because no sustained thread of conversation is going on about local issues however, ownership of the issue in the town is less and there is less effective public scrutiny/discussion of its impact. This is the kind of thing I think local TV would do- and it has the capacity to be more interesting than the newspapers because TV demands that all the arguments be put in the same place at the same time and they be represented by real people with characters that you can wonder about and scrutinise.
I'm sure there's something of Thoreau's concern for place and for simplicity in this aspiration for local media. Local TV would have the power to break down the "grand narratives", generalisations, dominant culture and general pretension of even regional TV. If the producers were any good, they would go to lengths to involve the key local people on any given issue - whether it be a controversial planning application or what's on at "The Folly" [sic] this evening... , which would hugely increase participation and transparency and general involvement in community life.
Matt Wootton
folly Communications Manager