I have, of late, been rather head down with all things Addiply.
So I arrive late to Jeremy Hunt’s latest vision for the future of ‘Local TV’ in this country; a subject that has long been dear to our hearts round here.
It is a question that we discussed at #1000flowers last November; it is a question that everyone from Nick Shott to OfCom to Greg Dyke to Roger Parry have pondered – and delivered about as many answers to as there are questions.
In Shott’s eyes the answer was ‘10-15′, for OfCom it was nearer 25, Dyke has found 60; Parry delivered Hunt’s magic number of 80 – the latter about this time last year when I sat on the same panel as Alan Rusbridger, Sly Bailey, Stuart Purvis and Helen Boaden and discussed the future of local news in the UK at the Oxford Media Convention. The same #OMC11 event that Jeremy this week delivered his vision for Local TV.
This is the bones of Jeremy’s new vision; or rather the ’spine’ of the thing…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/19/jeremy-hunt-itv-regional-news
For me, it is Claire Enders who delivers the best line; throwing the word ‘ubiquitous’ into the vast melting pot that is the future of Local TV in this country.
“He is not understanding that there will be a deficit [in content] at a regional level that cannot be filled by his local plans as they don’t deliver ubiquitous coverage,” said Ms Enders. And I have to say, I’m warming to the woman.
Because as anyone who has bothered to delve into the very depths of that OfCom feasibility study knows, ubiquitous is not the word that springs to mind on The Wirral.
For if the answer is – as Jeremy and his spectrum pals maintain – indeed a DTT-based solution, then you better find an army of fellas to get up every roof-top on Birkenhead and re-align every aerial to ensure that you’re getting the right ‘local’ TV station off your ‘local’ transmitter.
Actually, given the proposed timetable to all this… something up and running by 2015… the words ‘long’ and ‘grass’ spring to mind.
In fact, if you wanted a one-word answer to Jeremy’s bold plan of action it would be ‘Whatever…’
People are finding their own solutions to the challenges of their times in the finest traditions of their revolutionary forebears; they’re doing it for themselves, Jeremy, as you and yours insist on playing with your big boys toys. Like Winter Hill mast.
But there are lines within the accomanying report that are fascinating…
“The eventual aim for local TV is that it is made available throughout the UK, providing local and relevant content to all who want to access it,” the DCMS plan says. Fine.
“However, given the commercial uncertainty involved in relation to acquiring capacity and developing a sustainable revenue proposition, it is clear that local TV cannot simply be launched across the UK immediately.”
Why is it that clear? Local ‘TV’ has already been launched across Cornwall by Dorian and the boys and girls; WitneyTV have plans in the pipeline to hook up their county via their OxBox platform.
That sounds smart; sounds ‘ubiquitous’ to the people of said county, too. Ms Enders might even approve.
And it’s not a simple question of ‘capacity’ – it’s as simple as which way someone’s f*cking aerial is pointing; that’s when it falls apart… delivering content out of silos; not the ‘ubiquitous’ solution that Ms Enders points to and the Web delivers.
It’s a good word ‘ubiquitous’. I’d like to think that Addiply offered that; that it could be a ‘ubiquitous’ ad solution to the county of Oxfordshire. Or Cornwall.
There is another point here; and it comes back to that original Roger Parry report; the one that offered 80 as answer.
Because to my mind, Roger and the Web don’t always get on too well; they make for uneasy bedfellows… as the Web does with Guy Hands; another supposed master of our media universe.
So if Rog could be found buying print presses in 2005, sniffing around record shops in 2006-2007 and hanging his coat off a TV transmitter mast in 2011, I’m not altogether sure he ‘gets’ this world.
Go back 200-odd years and you’d find similar gentlemen of the realm proposing to widen the Irlam Canal just as this funny, puffing thing coughed its way across Chat Moss.
Nothing changes.
There wouldn’t be a problem if we weren’t being held to ransom by the copper cabal. If we had a futureproof ubiquitous fibre telecom network in this country all ourTV needs would be catered for. It would just work. People could start their own channels and do all sorts of innovative stuff.
We just need to get the politicians on a physics lesson, or we are left for infinity on copper phone lines, which can’t deliver what we need.
We need symmetry, and the ability to be able to access as much internet capacity as we want, need and are prepared to pay for.
Currently a third of the country can’t even play compressed tiny youtube videos. This needs rectifying, and the funding made available must go to the right place. The final third. Not urban cabinets.
chris
[...] what it defines as ‘local’. It relies heavily on technology like transmitters. As Rick Waghorn has eloquently written, if you want to provide local TV on DTT ‘then you better find an army of fellas to get up every [...]