Out With A Bang

I can’t quite remember the exact line; nor can I even find the exact line.

Put ‘Oliver’ and ‘Let them eat..’ in a search box and it’s all Jamie this and Jamie that. Hopeless.

But I have it in my tiny little head that in ‘Oliver!’, there’s a line that goes something like that; that just as his lordship asks for more, so the bloke in charge says: ‘Let them eat gruel!’ Or some such paltry fare.

Anyway, the implication is the important bit – that this is all you’re getting cos this is all we’re giving you. And just be content with your meagre lot… Don’t go wanting more…

Such hazy thoughts sprang to mind on the back of the reaction of the Newspaper Society’s finest to last week’s decision by the BBC Trust to pull the plug on any plans for enhanced local video provision at the licence fee payer’s expense.

It was all covered here – and elsewhere, of course…

http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/532891.php

But within that particular piece was a lovely line from NewsQuest’s man on the digital frontline.

“All I can say is that it is welcome news and the Trust have made a very sensible decision,” said Roger Green, managing director of Newsquest Digital Media.Three Counties Radio says it all,” he said, explaining that this type of coverage illustrated the BBC’s approach to local news…

“They [the BBC] are totally irrelevant to local audience needs,” he added.

Irrespective of the fact that the ‘Eastern’ Daily Press or the ‘Western’ Morning News says as much about their approach to local news as does ‘Three Counties’ Radio, for me, there was a real ‘Let them eat *$&£’… sense going on here.

That in stamping out any hint of the BBC arriving on their back lawn in the near future, so the champions of the provincial newspaper industry were almost doing us a favour; that in denying the rest of us the kind of plurality, diversity and choice that the web so brilliantly delivers, we were almost expected to doff our caps, tug our forelocks and thank ye good gentlemen of the Press for deciding just what kind of news we could and couldn’t receive…

‘Thank yee, sir. There’s no need for them BBC types round here, is there? We like what we got; what you’ve always been so kind to provide us…’

Because they know the ‘needs’ of a local audience… and we, the local audience, don’t?

But isn’t the real danger that the local audience does know its own needs – and has, whilst you weren’t looking, gone out and provided them. For itself?

It’s a mind-set and a thought process that does so much to explain why said provincial newspaper industry is staring over the edge of an abyss.

Because whilst it might be ‘High fives!’ all round on Friday after putting the BBC in its place, the fact remains that whilst I - as your audience – might now find myself denied the kind of extra choice I would have liked in terms of local video news provision, I can at least still find the kind of plurality and diversity that I as, as a consumer, enjoy when it comes to advertising.

So, I can sell and buy my house on RightMove, I can buy and sell my car on AutoTrader, I can buy and sell my second-hand cot on E-Bay, I can find a job on Monster, etc, etc..

Because that’s your problem; that’s your challenge.

That there’s a very large ‘I’ in the word ‘Internet’.

In fact, it starts with one.

Which, in practice, means that I can do what I want, when I want and where I want…

I will find out what my FaceBook pals thought of the footie match this afternoon; I will find what my pals on Bebo thought of the new movie, the new restaurant… Local video news? I’ll find it myself, thanks…

Or rather, me and my community will. Someone’s just posted a video clip on YouTube of the car smash that delayed my journey to work. How do I know it’s there… because someone Twittered me…

Is this main-stream media behavior? No. Not yet.

But does that same, ‘Set me free…’ mind-set wholly underpin the development of future media behaviour?

Absolutely.

Put bars to choice, plurality and diversity in my way and I’ll react very badly; and don’t tell me that you know best… that you know my needs…

That in denying me the right to see what the BBC has to offer local video-wise, you’re doing me a service; protecting my long-term interest; that without your foresight and munificence now, I might only have the BBC, my pals on MySpace and Bebo, FaceBook and YouTube and an array of local mini-bloggers and Twitterers to call upon to keep me informed… because the Evening Argus might not be there in the future.

Bovvered? Me?

We have to run like never before to catch up with an audience that has long departed; that has long worked out how it can do without us. And when we do catch up with them, we have to bow, scrape and offer every little service and help that we can to win back their time and their favour.

The revolution is all but over; the people, the audience have won.

The ‘Aye’s’ have it… or rather the ‘I’s have it.