TV OD

From K-Punk's latest post:

“the kind of "entrepreneurs" that dominate our culture - whether they be Bill Gates, Simon Cowell or Duncan Bannatyne - have not invented new products or forms, they have just invented new ways of making money”

“and for all the bluster about entrepreneurialism, it is remarkable how risk-averse late capitalism's culture is”

And makes particular reference to TV. A few points then:

“Risk averse” – British Capitalism has always been risk averse, in fact this has been one of its defining features from the start. Whereas other countries have traditions of banks having closing ties to industry, and even specific banks for specific industries, our banks’ (and company shareholders’, and all gentleman capitalists’…) fear of long-term commitment, and desire for quick returns without soiling one’s hands in the actual production of something new, is intimately linked to our cultural, social and industrial stagnation. And the City of London was world leader as far as inventing “new ways of making money” goes. The ‘funny’ thing now, though, is how ridiculous the ‘risk averse’ attitude looks now in the light of the economic crisis – the risk was only perceived in terms of long-term investment in the UK but not in, say, the international trading of debt.

As for TV… I have some experience of the world of cable/satellite broadcasting through my day job. TV companies are constantly jittery, fiddling and fussing with schedules to improve the ratings (and therefore retain/increase advertising revenue) while mostly just shifting the same old effluent around the schedules, or exchanging it amongst themselves (“You’ve seen every episode of ‘Friends’ over a hundred times – but have you seen it on our channel?”); re-branding channels without making any significant changes to the actual content, coming up with diminishing-returns format ideas that are always X (a series that rated well) meets Y (another series that rated well) or X with a twist; wasting money and energy in months of work for half-baked celebreality series that might be canned after two episodes if they don’t rate well. Ask people involved what their idea of good TV is, though, the paragon, and they’ll say ‘Mad Men’ or something along those lines. (But they’ll respect the makers of awful programmes that get high ratings). It’s not that they don’t know what good TV is (as opposed to ‘good TV’ –ie populist, gets the ratings), it’s just that “bless them, it’s what the Freeview viewers (or whoever) go for.” And all of this useless activity is largely colluded with by TV journalists and celeb mags.

It’s clear the BBC, or the idea of the BBC, needs to be defended – otherwise we wouldn’t even have BBC4 and the occasional other decent programmes it can produce. But does that mean protecting the license fee in its current form? Part of the BBC’s problem is that it is isolated, a lone public service broadcaster that is perversely expected to compete against the commercial standards of other broadcasters ie get the ratings. So perhaps the idea of opening up the TV tax to other broadcasters is not a bad idea, but this would need to come with a public service remit – and obviously, that would have to be preceded by a very serious conversation about what public service means. But while TV companies are prey to stats and the whims of advertisers, nothing will change and TV will keep spiralling down the plug-hole. (Also antithetical, at least it appears to be at the moment, to TV’s potential social function is non-linear TV: Video On Demand, series linking etc – all the methods for offering customers ‘more choice’ not just about what they watch but when they watch it).

Another model is HBO, which established a direct relationship with its viewers, has demonstrated that people will pay for quality, raised money without advertising, and built up loyalty through not patronising its viewers, Could the two options be used together? Either broadcasters accept a ‘public service’ remit, receive public money and are free to air, or their revenue has to come solely from charging customers directly. For this to work, Sky-type ‘packages’ would need to be prohibited as well as advertising – a customer would have to choose to pay for each channel individually, and the channel would have to be funded solely from that revenue, HBO-style. Those channels would obviously have to charge more than Sky/Virgin etc currently do – and then we might see what people are really prepared to pay for.

And finally…Newswipe. One of the strangest things about the segments of the show where real clips from the news are shown (like Channel 4 News’s mock interrogation of Tony Blair) is the impression that news broadcasters, far from being shamed by the way the fictional new stories on The Day Today were presented, watched them and thought “Brilliant, let’s do that!”