Out With A Bang

Here we go again… round the same block… this time it’s Carolyn McCall from GMG and Sly Bailey from Trinity giving anything in a BBC blazer a good kicking… this time in front of another select committee…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/04/bbc-pressandpublishing

Without repeating ourselves over and over again, McCall’s ‘get off our lawn…’ speech was interesting.

Because she’s quite right; in this multi-media age you can’t have a local website without video.

Thereafter, however, I’d take issue with her…

“You can’t have a local website without video; it has taken local publishers a long time to get the investment to do video and to actually do video on a return-on-investment basis,” McCall added.

“We are having to go to quite a lot of pain to justify the capital expenditure required to put video on websites, because at the moment websites don’t have return on investment commercially, so you have to take risks.

“The BBC would be able to do local video much more quickly with much more deeper pockets and they would be able to leapfrog the regional press in terms of what they can do and that is going to be unbelievably damaging for local media that might not be able to survive that kind of onslaught…

The point is no-one asked the Manchester Evening News to re-invent itself as a digital broadcaster; yes, it’s website needs video content; we all do…

But why does it have to be the MEN that has to deliver that content? Why can’t its audience? Why can’t backpackdave08 offer up his digital efforts? Why not pal up with MSN or Bebo and run their latest ’show’ through MEN?

Why not, actually, sit down with the BBC and swap your content? Do the BBC do Manchester United or Manchester City football coverage as well as the MEN? No.

Right, so you swap your football content for their local video offerings. Or bits of; clearly you keep the ‘exclusives’ to yourself, but by and large you fill in the BBC’s content ‘gaps’ with some of your own…

It’s called the ‘link economy’ – and as financial necessity proves to be the mother of all re-inventions, take it to heart – do what you do best, link to the rest…

In the current climate – cyclically and structurally – can you afford to kid yourself that you, too, can be a digital TV broadcaster of the BBC’s ilk; I know technology has levelled the playing field beyond measure, but have you the time, the staff or, indeed, the basic will to try and compete with 70-odd years of broadcasting experience?

Or might you not be better served by saying, you know what, let’s work on the basis that a combination of the BBC, backpackdave08 and MSN/Bebo/YouTube can do this TV thing… what resources we have left, we’ll concentrate on doing what we do best…

… on doing what we’ve actually been doing best for the last 200 years and sourcing original written content from Manchester and beyond…

… that’s what we – still – do best, thereafter let’s link to the rest.

And let the rest link back to what we do best… write.

Get off your high horse; get a grip of who you are and what, realistically, you can actually deliver with any certainty and style in these current, apocalyptic times and pull your wagons tight in around those that are still of any value.

Your writers.

And then swallow your pride – and link.