It’s rare in life that we find a group of people, many of them experts in their field, agreeing wholeheartedly on a subject woven into their lives. The agreement amongst media professionals, particularly when pondering upon broadcast media, is, as far as I can tell, universal.
Everyone agrees that they don’t know what is going to happen.
Secretary of State for Culture, Jeremy Hunt, used his first speech on media matters to confirm many of the ideas he spoke of when in opposition over the last couple of years. Indeed, such was the similarity that he dusted off and re-used his favourite anecdote (I’ve heard him knock this one out at least twice before) about how Birmingham, Alabama has eight local television stations, yet Birmingham, England has none. As both cities have a population of just over one million, this, Mr Hunt feels, exemplifies the opportunities that await the citizens of Central England.
Earlier this week, I had a discussion with Alex Connock, chief executive of the multimedia company, Ten Alps. Alex has a strong view that local is the way forward, and he envisages television stations presenting local news every thirty minutes, with chat shows, infomercials, and perhaps blockbusters such as Lost, holding the network together. This station would form only part of a multimedia mix, including web, print, radio and video.
I differ in view from Alex on two aspects of the push towards ‘local’; on the grounds of geography and potential quality (or lack thereof).
I live in Berkshire, about thirty miles from London, yet my default television stations for local news are ‘South’, and thus I get the latest news from Southampton and Bognor, at the expense of my closer neighbourhoods of Acton and Kensington. To which I say, “Bugger Bognor.”
With due apologies to our friends from the south, there generally isn’t a great deal of news that will keep me entranced for five minutes, never mind the longer time grab demanded by advertisers. Of course, I haven’t conducted a survey, but I sense that interest in localisation is diminishing rather than expanding, and as we grow ever closer throughout the world and shrink even more into the global village, we show as much awareness of the oil spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico as we do with the news from the South Of England Show at Ardingley (dominating the website at BBC Sussex as I write this piece).
I wonder if I am in a significant minority in having a great deal more interest in the wider news, than that taking place within my county. The latest score from the 20/20 cricket match between Sussex and Gloucestershire has its place, but I should not wish to know about it at the expense of breaking news from the conflict in Afghanistan.
Equally, our desire to follow the American model is blinding us with the light of opportunity and ignores the unavoidable reality that US television is, in the main, terrible.
Cheap, relentless and over-cheerful commercials – with the owners of car sales businesses shouting their wares, as they attempt to achieve their fix of low level fame. Hours of game shows, “Let’s spin that wheel!” and apparently never ending soaps, “But Grace, Luke can’t be the father because he was born a woman!"
Any visitor to the United States, whether to Birmingham, Alabama, or Prescott, Arizona, swiftly finds the novelty of ‘different’ television wearing as thin as the plot to ‘All My Children.’
Putting aside the ‘quality issue’ (and I do so with metaphorical alarm bells ringing), can this localisation (localistation?) of television create profits for potential investors? The possibilities gain more credibility when we acknowledge that OFCOM are musing upon relaxing the currently rather tight limits on how many local stations (or newspapers) can be owned by a single company or investor.
It is believed that Jeremy Hunt is of the view that the controls should be reviewed or even removed altogether.
Yet it remains speculative. In the last six months I have attended dozens of seminars, debates, talks and presentations on ‘the future of the media’. The overwhelmingly clear message has remained the same. Nobody knows.
Meanwhile, in the South of England Show today, Mr D McPherson won the 600 class in the Show Jumping Area Trial.
Terence Dackombe June 2010
