Out With A Bang

One of the many ‘jobs to do’ on www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity is to replace that static pic on the home page with a TV feed.

So we can start showing YouTube clips of Darren Huckerby in action in San Jose, for example.

That and see if, in the spirit of working with the local independents, we can’t start to do a little content sharing with the BBC. After all, there is an onus on them now to start to out-source some of their local content provision and what could be more valuable and useful to them than a ‘beat’ football reporter? Turning all those audio quotes into a joined up story that keeps eye-balls fixed to, say here…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/sport/index.shtml

Particularly given one whose ‘beat’ is the Championship – if not League One next year given Norwich’s current perilous position in the table.

Because, as we all know, from this summer the BBC have the TV rights to the Football League – whose 70-odd teams are tailor-made for a provincial ‘news’ network. The Plymouths, Swanseas, Hartelpools and Coventrys of this world have kept their respective evening newspaper titles in readers since time immemorial.

So, slap in some i-Player thing; drop some code in and all of a sudden the BBC can market out their new Football League content to a whole new, digital audience – the 40,000-odd punters that gather around www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity every transfer window month.

Add a little tag and we can tailor-make that video content into Norwich-only goals, action, interviews and highlights.

Change a tag again and we can do the same for Ipswich Town.

And Colchester. And Bristol City. And Leicester City. And Wolves. And Plymouth. And Swansea.

All we do is re-skin www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity to ‘fit’ whichever provincial town or city our fancy takes us.

And because our content flow isn’t beholden to print press deadlines and paper rounds, so we can cross-publish simultaneously across different platforms; no skin off my nose if a story pops up on www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/sport/index.shtml at the same time.

It’s not as if I’m losing readers from my print product as a result.

And for the BBC, the deal is easy – just as it was for the Daily Telegraph sports desk when we briefly trialled a content feed deal into their on-line sports desk last summer.

It’s one deal. Same timing across the board; same delivery product-wise; a ’standard’ fit – that can plug into, say, http://www.bbc.co.uk/lancashire/content/articles/2007/08/02/burnley_audio_new_2007_2008.shtml just as easily as it can our old friends at Radio Norfolk… http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/sport/index.shtml.

Simple. One neat, tidy fit. And when www.myfootballwriter.com/burnley plays www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity so we can content swap; we can run news from all 24 Championship clubs through one ‘mother’ portal from where we can then syndicate our content up again into the national portal that pays the biggest bucks…

Simple. Elegant. Efficient. Networked.

And, let’s be frank, there to be bought.

Just as www.myrugbyleaguewriter.com might offer one provincial newspaper group the chance to re-route all their local rugby league writer’s content into, say, http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/super_league/bradford/default.stm…

And what we can do for rugby league out of Bradford, so we can do for basketball out of Boston, baseball out of Baltimore. And for anyone with one eye on the US market, that could be interesting.

So for at least two of the ‘Secret Seven’ having tea with Lord Carter, access to www.myfootballwriter.com/burnley would have just as much network appeal as www.mybasketballwriter/redsox – because all you’re doing is re-routing all those local eye-balls up into your hyper-national portal…

… and cos you’ve got that elegance to your network, all you’re also doing is re-routing all those hyper-national advertisers down in front of your local eye-balls.

Elegant. Efficient. And effortless.

What’s neither elegant nor efficient is trying to persuade the BBC and HM Government of the benefits of content syndication deals when you command just 72% of the market. It will take a lot of effort to persuade the BBC that they’ll only get their MK Dons content on a Thursday when the weekly Citizen is published – and unless someone invites the Kent Messenger Group to the table, who is going to do Gillingham?

So as the seven executives sit there in the guise of the Local Media Alliance, that’s their dilemma… that if anyone one of their number opts to fly solo and do a network instead of a silo, then they’re all f*cked. Or else they all have to start thinking networks and all smash down the silo walls that earned them such a handsome living for the last 300 years.

The thought has clearly crossed Trinity’s mind; they have already been a-buying ‘banter’ sites in Archant-land…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=80

Ditto GMG as they work out whether they need to get out of Manchester and Reading in a hurry…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=178

The temptation to break ranks and give yourself the chance of a networked future must be growing; if I was a Mr Fry, I’d be watching each and everyone of my ‘friends’ around that table like a hawk to see just who had designs on Sheffield; who – even now – was making plans for www.sheffieldunited-banter.co.uk or www.guardian-cities.co.uk/sheffield

But, for now, those gentleman’s agreements appear to be holding; that if they’re going to go down, they’ll go down seperately, together.

But an elegant and networked vision of the future is there; there are other models for the survival of provincial journalism that don’t rely on silos; that are geography-lite and platform-heavy.

One is sat on my kitchen table. Others maybe little more than a twinkle in an entreprenuer’s eye.

But the future is networks, no silos. And no more gentlemen’s agreements.�