The holy grail of public service broadcasting

December 16th, 2008

well some people might think so?

Thompson described “the plan” as “potentially the holy grail of future public service broadcasting provision in the UK”

The plan Stan is this

The BBC said its proposals to share its online and digital technology would provide help with the production, distribution and exploitation of content across the television industry. The corporation said the plans would generate more than £120m a year for UK public service broadcasting by 2014.

And the BBC is planning to share some of its content with the Telegraph Media Group in a deal that could see the iPlayer embedded onto the Daily Telegraph’s website. The BBC refused to confirm the identity of the newspaper group, but confirmed that it was in talks about a “non-exclusive pilot scheme” which could eventually be rolled out to other newspaper groups.

More on the BBC PSB (Stephen Fry Lecture) Much to the reported consternation of Channel 4, and I would imagine many other players as well.

Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

But then they (other media players) could have gone there first. The idea that news – as in newspapers is Print and that news as in Broadcast is Audio-Visual, and never the twain shall meet is complete bunkum.

It was always the “settled” technology that decided: formats, business models, distribution and job descriptions.

As technology evolves so does the job description.

I thought, back in 2005, when we published Communities Dominate Brands that we were seeing some significant markers in what was to come. I think that we have really only just begun. My observation was then, and still is, that we are in the process of building the necessary infrastructure for the Networked Society. Look at it this way…

The full deployment of the enormous wealth-creating potential brought forth by each technological revolution requires, each time, the establishment of an adequate socio-institutional framework. The existing framework, created to handle growth based on the previous set of technologies, is unsuited to the new one. Thus, in the first decades of installation of the new industries and infrastructures, there is am increasing mis-match between techno-economic and soci-institutional spheres, as well as an internal decoupling of the economic system, between the old and new technologies. The process of re-establishing a good match and creating conditions both for recoupling and full deployment of the new potential is complex, protracted and socially painful

And many are feeling the pain right now. I mean who in their right mind is going to stand up in front of the board and shareholders and say,

You know what, having looked at our road map and having looked out the window, to sum up – we are fucked. My best observation is lets cut our losses and build for the future.

It is not going to happen is it. Which is why the BBC medicine, or the principal, is all the more painful to digest. But I think policy wonks, and others interested in communication, and enabling the flows of communication (because any constraint placed upon those flows of information, harm the economy, and harm society), need to think beyond short term to the long term.

Lord Currie of OfCom at a Royal Television Society dinner famously said

The rapid growth of first multi-channel, then digital, then PVRs and soon higher-speed broadband are simply the pre-tremors of the real volcanic eruption that technology is about to unleash. At the risk of being over-dramatic I would say that most traditional television broadcasters are today standing about the equivalent of one mile from Mount St Helens. When it blows, frankly, that will be too close and it will be too late to run.

Talking of fatal eruptions, the fall of the Roman empire was helped on its way by paper becoming in short supply and therefore, information could not be successfully transmitted throughout the Empire. And 1000 years later the newspaper owners in the UK, paid for the laying of hard roads for the postal service, paid by tolls, so that newspapers could be more widely distributed at greater quantity and greater speed. Does that commercial desire ring any bells?

The holy grail for public service broadcasting, I suggest the issue is rather bigger and broader than that. My fear is that we destroy all that is good about our broadcast culture, all of it, for the sake of a few short term vested interests, that’s the tragedy of the commons. And that really would be a fucking shame.

Oh and don’t forget the word Trust, Trust in media brands will be one of the biggest deals going. I know the Beeb has suffered, But if you were to say who were the most trusted media brand sin the UK I reckon its the BBC and the Guardian.

The rest are the grocers.

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