You could envisage people zapping in to the one that interested them most which
Posted in General on 24. Sep, 2010
You could envisage people zapping in to the one that interested them most, which could be a sports event or a documentary delivered over the web.What we certainly know – because it’s happening already in print and radio – is that the new technologies give a global footprint to small and medium-sized media. Classic FM now has a substantial US audience, which listens over the net. Journalists on this newspaper find they have readers all over the globe in a way that would not have been practicable five years ago.What we don’t know is whether technology ultimately undermines the BBC or whether it boosts it by giving it full global reach. Some people have argued that this enhances television at the expense of the computer: big screen is ideal for leisure use. With the extra quality of digital, it may give conventional television a new lease of life, enabling it to fight back against the computer.
But is he pioneering the new way we will all watch TV in the future, or will the TV and the computer remain separate boxes, used for different purposes?Or take big screen. A colleague’s 17-year-old son does not bother to watch British TV at all. He simply downloads the US programmes he wants to watch on his computer. We are just on the cusp of three technological changes that will utterly change visual media. They are digital, broadband and big screen.You never know the effects of a technology – even if you can see the technology clearly – until you see how people want to use it That takes time. We can see those three technologies clearly enough, but what we cannot see is the way they will interact with each other.Take digital. Is this simply a means to make available more channels or is its real significance the integration, at last, of the television and the computer? Take broadband.
That leads into questions about its ownership and revenue sources. Would it be better able to compete in the global marketplace if it could tap finance markets for investment funds. If so, should it be a shareholder-owned corporation, or maybe a not-for-profit company but quite separate from the state and funded by a variety of sources, of which the licence fee would be a minor element?Any debate about the broadcasting companies does not take place in a vacuum. Hence the issue as to whether some of the licence fee should be taken away from the BBC and given to other broadcasters, so that they, too, can offer public broadcasting services.On the other hand, you can have a quite separate debate about the best way of ensuring that the BBC competes effectively on a world stage. On the one hand, you can talk about the future of the BBC in terms of the best way of providing public service broadcasting to the British domestic market.
At any rate, it is the best shot the UK has at securing global media clout.Thedifferent ways of seeing the organisation lead to different sorts of analysis. There are plenty of ways in which its sports and entertainment services could be supplied to the country. You don’t need a state-financed company to supply a programme such as Fame Academy or to cover Wimbledon. But, for historical reasons, what are essentially commercial products have been supplied along with public service ones. You would not invent the BBC if you were starting from here.But it works and works wonderfully well. If you look at it in global terms, it is (and I know this is subjective) the best-regarded broadcasting organisation in the world.