Entertainment For Lively Minds
Two Tribes and the BBC
I’ve spent too much time in the past week reading comment boxes below 6Music stories across the Web. Two things have struck me: one a small point about perceptions, the other larger about the BBC’s future.
1) There are supporters of 6 who will suggest ditching Radio 3: after all, aren’t they catered for by Classic FM? This is the mindset you’re more accustomed to seeing from some classical devotees, for whom ‘pop’ is one great amorphous mass, indistinguishable. I’d thought this group was shrinking, at least partly for demographic reasons. But maybe the numbers are simply being added to the other side of the cultural canyon. Can most listeners to pop music no longer tell the difference between the outputs of Radio 3 and Classic FM? (As a side issue, many comments suggest that these people can’t tell the difference between BBC3 and BBC4.)
2) Leave aside for a moment the merits—or otherwise—of 6. The programmes that seem to crop up most often in defences are the likes of Maconie’s Freakzone. Despite the fact that it runs against the grain of my Larkin-influenced view of art, this is about as clear-cut an example of Reithian principles in action as it is possible to imagine in the area of pop—even if Reith himself would have hated every minute of it. But there is no big audience out there for it, even if it is the fanciful notion of avant-gardists everywhere that, y’know, if only people got to hear this stuff, they’d really love it. And radio is, relatively, cheap. The BBC is established on a contradiction of sorts, and one that for the last fifty years they managed to make work. But a poll tax/licence fee that is demanded from everyone coupled with a mandate to provide certain types of programming will, I feel, be the downfall of it soon.
I’d like a BBC. Probably, we all would. So we have to think about what we give it, and what we want from it, a little harder than we are at the moment.
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Nice food for thought there
and I know what you mean.
I'm guilty of vaguely being supportive of the BBC while not really thinking hard about it's merits and choices and the future it has. I just kind of accept it.
Excellent post
I particularly like the "the fanciful notion of avant-gardists everywhere that, y’know, if only people got to hear this stuff, they’d really love it" point.
I think that's a point worth considering with all so-called "serious music" radio. They couldn't make jazz radio work in this country because the one thing that all jazz fans had in common was that they thought that the jazz they liked was the only true jazz. Radio 3 has the same problem. Many of the people who like Wagner probably don't like string quartets. Many of the people who like avant garde maybe don't like Brahms. Classic FM get round this problem by hardly playing classical music at all. They just play The Lark Ascending round the clock because they've found that they can get a big audience just supplying a comforting orchestral noise. It works. I tune in for about an hour of it every week. I'm sure Radio 3 listeners would consider me a terrible philistine, just as many 6 Music listeners might look down on Radio 2 listeners for enjoying Mariah Carey. The majority of music radio listeners aren't dreadfully bothered about music. It's "company" or "background". That's fine. The challenge for specialist music services is to bring on board a lot of people who are not specialist listeners. That's very hard to do.
Mass fear / fear of the masses...
I wouldn't say the majority of people only use music as wallpaper, just a large proportion. Besides, I think this whole BBC storm is only the modern equivalent of a argument that rages regularly in history - that of the intellectuals versus the masses. Trip back to the turn of the last century, and some of our heritage authors were launching some pretty contentious opinions about the dangers of letting the masses take over what were considered to be the bastions of the invaluable intellectual few. The fear being that if the masses were allowed to decide how novels and music and the arts were defined, then we'd - in modern terms - risk dumbing the entire human race down. Now, with mainstream media operating as our current state of the art transmitter, once again lines are being illuminated in the sands; the concerns of the intellectual are being aired in fear of the impact of mass-orientated radio play-lists/TV schedules.
The weird thing about our multi-channel society is... choice. We love it, and twenty years ago, choice was an aspirational notion, something to be strived for. We wanted choice because it was the future. But choice is only seen as a good thing when it's easy and works in our favour; flick on your digital TV set-top box, and find there's several things you want to watch at once, and you're content. Alternatively, look through the Guardian Guide and find there's b*gger-all you want, and the usual argument surfaces: all these channels, and nothing to watch. The point being, that in the latter, there is in fact things you can watch, it's just that you now have to work at finding it, rather than have it dumped straight in your lap. We like lots of channels when it's simple, but decry this choice when it requires applied concentration.
This is why Classic FM works. It's easy, and requires very little investment to gain from - just turn it on, and it does what it says on the tin; that, and the inevitable fact that it's the music equivalent of hanging a reproduction of Constable's Haywain in our semi-detached suburban living room. Whereas Radio 3 requires the listener to be a little more informed in their time-slot selection. Equally, Radio 3 is playing to a broader demographic; and not one that is narrowly defined by salivating advertising revenue poll-makers.
Radio 3 has its Freakzone slots, does play avant garde music, it just does it late at night. Often I've driven home in the dark from some metropolitan gig, to the sounds of a storytelling genre mash-up or soundscape. The point is to provide stations that are broad in their programming, which is the quality we often otherwise define as being 'intelligent'; the outcome of providing 'intelligent content'.
who pays?
Maybe you’re right. But if I took issue with some of what you say, it would probably start with the slight skewing of DH’s point. He was (I think) talking about the way radio is used, and not ‘music’ itself. There’s an overlap, for sure, but some significant differences as well.
The intellectual/masses trope is interesting. I’d argue that for a good portion of its history the BBC was an organization which embodied that idea—for good and ill. But it had little choice; that was embodied in its charter and was the primary reason given for its continued existence—as it still is today in many quarters.
Is the problem that the “masses” are, in a sense, the focus of large areas of the BBC’s output? This isn’t really about which programmes are good, or which are bad. It’s about which ones they should be making.
Is it “intelligent” TV and radio that reaches small audiences but does not reach a lot of people who pay the bills? Personally, I’d love a lot of it. But what if I was one of the other group? Not sure I’d see why I was coughing up a hundred a year.
Also, the idea that Radio 3 is playing to a “broader demographic” than Classic FM? Well, I’m not sure about that either. But the reason 3 can do the things you mention is because we all pay for it. There is an argument to be made that we should do this; but as a society we have grown mistrustful of the assumptions that the argument would be rooted in. So we get Mark Thompson spouting abstract nouns and tech-clichés in a desperate attempt to avoid the impression of elitism.
Follow-up edit.
Can a society with our current set of values about culture and tradition actually sustain a BBC in its current form? That question may have been what I've been fumbling towards for two long posts.
the BBC exists in a paradox...
Captain Spalding, you've hit the nail on the head; no, the BBC cannot operate effectively in the current climate.
The BBC is stuck in a something of a paradox: it is duty bound by its own remit to provide/safeguard content that is not generated in the current market (the line generally applied when talking about Songs of Praise), but is also supposed to be accountable to the license paying public. This is something which, in our commercially orientated mass media world, is a contradiction waiting - and bound, inevitably - to happen. If the BBC provides BBC6 or the Asian Network, it is fulfilling part one of its remit, but if those stations subsequently pull in less of an audience (by sheer definition of being out on the fringes; not being something that is slap-bang in the middle of the commercial market), then the BBC is open to criticism... because it is supposed to be accountable (for the cash it spends).
But... if the BBC bases its judgment calls on audience figures reaching over some unspecified bottom line, then it is negating the very notion of providing something that is less than commercial "hot right now" (as Zoolander would say). Fine if you're an institution like Songs of Praise; and by definition an institution linked to that other institution: the core religion of our land. But open to sniping if you're not.
The BBC is therefore damned if it does, damned if it doesn't. Scientists or philosophers often talk about changing the question if it doesn't fit the answer. No matter how we argue the current state of the BBC, the question and the answer are never going to match. They don't - and can't - equal each other, no matter how we mangle the data.
Add to this the fact that the BBC is also supposed to refrain from being political - or, to put it more specifically, playing politics - and cannot be seen to be arguing its own case, and you have a mammoth institution reduced to putty in the hands of whichever politician or headline-chasing journalist is using it to batter home their comment on society.
As a result of this contradictory situation it faces, the BBC cannot operate under its own remit; it has become, principally because of the very nature of our commercially driven media industry, politically unworkable. The BBC has joined the NHS as the main whipping bodies of the UK. No-one has a better idea, but everyone sure as heck wants to batter it with criticism.
So, we either do away with the license fee, thus freeing the BBC from having to be publicly accountable. But if we do, the BBC then becomes a bona fide, 100% standalone commercial body that can do, say and broadcast whatever safeguards its place in the commercial marketplace. It also ceases to be tied to providing/safeguarding productions that the free market would not support.
Our current situation began at the end of the 90s, when the BBC realised that it had to start being more efficient; had to move like the indies TV companies did. In the first instance, this meant making its camera department redundant. The irony being that, in the short-term, a great deal of said department took the redundancy package, used the cash to buy up the camera gear and crew vehicles the BBC were selling off as part of the department liquidation, then reported back to the BBC the following Monday, only on higher (freelance) daily rates. Long-term, those camera ops have fanned out into the broader free market; some still work, others don't.
If the BBC stops paying the ilk of Jonathan Ross, or reduces its staff, it risks the quality of its draw - it's content. No big name stars, no chance of competing as they all elope with big fat contracts dangled elsewhere. Risk that happening, and the BBC risks becoming that thing that ITV currently appears to be - a station that very few would admit to loving. So, do you get around the high fee for presenters by creating your own stable, and locking them in to '"more realistic"' salaries? Create a future of Zoe Balls, that move up through the ranks until they hit prime-time? That's all well and good, but how do you then fire the ones that don't mature as you would hope? It can't be done. A commercial market has to work the way it does, not the way you tell it to. Banks being a case in point.
PS: What I can't understand is why American shows (or foreign content; but we all know the bone of contention is American product) are being picked on. Think of how many of the actual American shows in our current landscape actually appear on the BBC. Sopranos? No. Breaking Bad? Nope. The only ones I can think of right now are Mad Men and Nurse Betty. The Wire appeared a year or so back, but that was way after the hype had peaked. In truth, the BBC shows far less American or foreign content that other channels. And besides, wouldn't our landscape be worse off without the hidden gems of Australian comedy, or American hi-end productions? Absolutely. And shouldn't we be watching global shows? French films don't get lambasted like this.
"Nurse Betty"?
Frank Spencer meets Carmela Soprano?
I'm scribbling a script for that as we speak!
You're the DG - here are a few of your problems
The BBC's licence fee is justified so long as it pays for distinctive, quality programming that you can't get anywhere else. At the same time the BBC has to do really broad, popular things to justify the fact that it's financed through a tax. That's a very difficult balancing act.
And as if that wasn't hard enough, the licence fee was established in an era when all it had to do was finance a handful of radio stations and two TV channels. Nowadays media comes at you via a plethora of different channels - digital radio, the web and mobile being just three of the new ones - and the BBC has to decide whether it wishes to have a presence on these channels and whether it can get you to pay for them.
At the same time they are facing a demographic time bomb in that teenagers growing up now consume their media in a very different way. The Today programme had an item about this very phenomenon only yesterday. "Ver kids" have grown up with the web and they don't accept the idea of broadcasting at all. They watch what they want when they want and what they want is often not what's good for them. In some cases last year Blue Peter was watched by less than 100,000 people. That's just one indicator of the seismic changes that are taking place in broadcasting.
If you think it's difficult now it's going to get even more difficult in the future.
David Mitchell's solution
David Mitchell has a piece in the Observer today. His analysis of the problem is, barring the usual Murdoch-bashing, pretty good.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/07/david-mitchell-lord-...
However, it gets a bit fuzzy near the bottom. Still, I think his solution runs something like this: everybody please shut up about it and leave the BBC alone. For ever.
I don't think that kind of argument will do any more
The future of the BBC is not in the hands of the people who argue about its merits. It's not up to devout believers like David Mitchell or alleged wreckers like Rupert Murdoch. It's utimately in the hands of the people who don't know why they should be paying for it.
Cost and value, value or cost?
Given Mr Hepworth's comment, I think this is why the BBC are bluffing at the moment; calling the government's hand by threatening the public with a reduction of content. People moan about the license fee because, as a form of tax, it's something (along with death) we can't avoid paying, and thus object to. Equal to the problem with illegal downloading in music, the value of the BBC's programming has become dislocated from the actual monetary cost involved. We don't liking paying. But equally we don't like not having. We bemoan the BBC, but equally groan and sneer at Channel 4 because the ad breaks are far to loud, and run way too often during our favourite shows. As Oscar Wilde said, (we apparently) "know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing."
Now that the public has reared up in defense of BBC6, and as of Saturday a campaign has surfaced to defend the Asian Network, the BBC has justification on its side. Auntie Beeb can look across the boardroom at the government (and media), and say the masses don't want this to happen; the paying customers don't like the idea of the new, stripped back service you're forcing us into providing. The government will need to respond in kind, or risk looking like the bad guys.
The reason why I mentioned about the camera crews being made redundant in my last post was because I was trying to reference the fact that the BBC deserves some of the criticism it has received over the last few decades for being institutionalized, working with blank cheques at the license payers' expense. Equally, the jobs-for-life nature of BBC employment meant it didn't benefit from the more energized development of the hungry independent commercial sector. Channel 4 was constantly providing better, more edgy, seemingly more relevant programming. Whereas, these days, with the BBC favouring the value of the freelance market more in terms of production staff and development, the brand is exhibiting a more healthy lease of life with shows that often surpass what Channel 4 is evidently capable of.
But the fact remains, in terms of business practice, the BBC is inherently institutionalized and thus out of shape; deluded by virtue of its inner credo, because the rules of the good old days still linger in the corridors of Broadcasting House. I've known so many people that have worked at the BBC that speak of crazy waste; not least in the on-air promos department, where the very nature of its sign-off process means that one senior member of staff gives the green light on a project, then another judges it once its been made. If it passes this stage, it goes on air. If it fails to impress, they bin the film. Which, given that BBC on-air promos can run to five figures without breaking a sweat, is a suicidal business model.
The BBC is a commercial outfit, it's obvious. Even if you're not talking about it competing at a financial level, it still has to compete in the mercurial world of the interesting idea. Shows the BBC create, for the best part, and in the mainstream, have to work with the zeitgeist, otherwise the UK audience would all be watching other channels. Alternatively, if the BBC created a brand new format that grabbed the moment, revolutionized the face of Saturday night TV for the next 18-months, if other channels ripped off the format for a piece of the action, should the BBC then dump said format because they're inadvertently now competing against other channels? An example in point being the comedy quiz panel show genre that has spread from Radio 4 onto just about every TV channel going? Should the BBC cancel all its successful original programming for fear of diverting another channels potential audience?
So, yes, there are the cuts that should be made, but instead of reductions in actual content, the BBC should continue to modernize its practices. The customer should not be forced to seed the blinkered business practices of a body that, let's face it IS a commercial outfit, but which is defended from the realities of commercial failure by the supposed bottomless pocket of the masses. (Jeez, I've turned into a Neo-Liberal over the weekend!). However, politics (and by extension the media) are going to be involved in this painful, protracted process.
Lots of excellent points
and my twopence worth:
The inherent contradiction within the BBC of "commercial v non-commercial" in not new - witness the Grace Archer v Opening Night of ITV in the 1950s. The current diversity of the media has just exacerbated the situation
However, one thing that no-one has yet mentioned is the "trust" in the BBC that people have, which is probably a legacy of World War 2 but has continued through the generations. I know people (and I'm one myself on occasions, such as the death of Michael Jackson) who won't believe news stories unless they have been on the BBC. People don't see their relationship with the BBC as simply customers. (I know people will come back with criticisms of BBC and its current news output, but that's no different to the point that people may moan about specific issues in the NHS but don't want it dismantled as a result)
As a final point, if you accept the argument that I'm a paying customer, who wants 6 Music, Songs of Praise and revision services for teenagers from the BBC, why is my view/money less valid than someone else who wants Celebrity East Enders on Ice, or Snog Horne and Corden?
Unlike a local council, where I get a right to vote on who makes the decisions on where money is spent, the BBC isn't a democracy so all licence payers views must be equally valid.
Mitchell's Observer column does ask one telling question
is there another public service broadcaster anywhere in the world that delivers the quality of service that the BBC delivers?
And yes, in the words of the old cliché, the BBC is the envy of the world. It still has a huge reserve of goodwill and trust in many places across the world. It still occupies a particular place in the hearts of many in the UK, even amongst the young because of radio and the web.
And of coourse, poor old Auntie can't win, because it is bound to provide mass market entertainment and distinctive niche provision at the same time. In posts I've made before I've mentioned the Radio 3 argument, if only to point out how ridiculous Thompson's commercial argument is. Stations like 3 and 6 provide things that will not be provided in any other way. It doesn't need everyone to love these things, just for an audience to love it (and 6 is actually quite cost effective in this regard).
What is clear is that, in some quarters, a desire to hack way at the BBC exists. I for one will be making this an issue at election time; it seems trivial but isn't when you think about the cultural life of the country. It needs all of us who believe the Beeb is important to stand up and tell the political classes that this kind of short-termist cultural vandalism is, in the wry words of Churchill, "something up with which we will not put".
Yoda, quote, are you not sure?
You sure that wasn't Yoda?
I *heart* the BBC
I'll defend it to the hilt, gladly pay my license fee every year and, in my eyes, they can do no wrong.
However, I think I'm part of a shrinking minority. Give most people the choice and I would imagine they'd do away with the license fee because for what you want to watch, the BBC isn't streets ahead of its competitors. Where the BBC excels is in some of the more marginal stuff, such as BBC4 docs and Radio 3, but if you love your soaps and you're paying £142.50 for Eastenders but getting Corrie for free, you're pretty brassed off that Eastenders isn't a veritable tour de force. So, I'd say for the vast majority of the population, the decision looks like this.
- Pay £142.50 a year and get programs with no adverts
- Pay nothing and get no adverts
In this age of multi-channel viewing and Sky+, adverts aren't such an issue to sit through anymore. I can't see the BBC existing as a publicly-funded body in twenty years' time, and that makes me very sad.
What I find really annoying
What I find really annoying about the whole debate, is that people complain bitterly for paying a pound a day (or whatever it is) for the BBC which does do it's best to churn out quality programming across all its platforms, and who'd miss it dreadfully if it were gone.
But no one blinks an eye at shelling out around £400+ a year for Sky and all those channels that have nothing but repeats on them.
Why is this?
Why Sky?
The Saint’s answer below is correct in broad terms. Choice is the rational, intellectually legitimate answer to the question.
But I think there may be another answer, one that’s probably truer—sport. And it’s no good saying that if wasn’t for Sky I’d be able to watch it for nothing. What I’m paying for is the stuff that the BBC never showed, and never would: England’s Test matches abroad, tennis that isn’t Wimbledon or the French Open final, US golf.
Even here, though, there may be problems. Football is Sky’s foundation stone, its reason to exist in some ways. But I don’t think I’m the only one who has lost a large portion of their interest in domestic football. I get the sense that there are a growing number of people who feel like this. And if it’s true then Sky will be in terrible trouble. Because there aren’t enough people, I suspect, who share my taste in other sports, and are willing and able to pay through the nose to get them.
Why
do you think Murdoch and his kinfolk have chosen now to start upping their tactical sniping on the BBC?
Murdoch
You may be right, Illuminatus. But it's seemed to me over the last few years that if you really wanted to see an anti-BBC campaign in action then you'd be looking at The Mail, not NewsCorp papers.
But in the scenario I outlined, I don't see how no BBC equals good news for Sky—it wouldn’t change their financial facts of life much at all.
One more thing. Murdoch’s always a convenient scapegoat. And yes, his papers may push an agenda that’s designed to further his wider media interests. But that doesn’t, per se, make that agenda wrong. It’s the ad hominem fallacy. There is an argument to be made that the BBC should not exist at all in its current form. I don’t think I’d agree with it; you probably wouldn’t agree with it. But too often I hear the counter-arguments couched in terms that treat the BBC as something sacred; that opponents are heretical, doctrinally wrong. In some ways it’s why I started the thread. And I’m pretty certain this attitude, this way of framing the debate, will lead to the BBC’s destruction. And it would be, perversely, its most vocal supporters that ensured it.
Choice is all...
Because to have Sky is a consumer choice, whereas getting the BBC (by virtue of paying your compulsory TV license, and therefore having it forced upon you) is not.
Let me throw in another thought
Whenever the licence fee is debated it seems to be assumed that TV funded by advertising will be a sustainable option in the future. It certainly has been so far but it won't always be so in the future. TV advertising flourishes on really big channels getting really big audiences, not on niche channels, no matter how desirable their audiences might be. Add in the introduction of technology that allows the viewers to avoid watching adverts and you start to see why marketing organisations are spending less of their money on "interruptive" advertising and more on things like programme sponsorship.
The screen will be a landfill...
That's not to underestimate the use of online television content sponsorship, too; and as Mr Hepworth said, non-interruptive advertising formats: in other words, branded content (or, branded entertainment, as seems to be the more popular tag amongst marketing types).
In terms of online sponsorship presence, ITV is a prime example of a channel that has grasped the potential of fast-response, and well supported online content aligned with the conventional television broadcast, but which is struggling with the placement and presence of advertising on its pages and embedded clips. Whilst I'm not an ITV viewer, I do think their online campaign easily competes with the BBC and C4, despite the actual shows being less inspiring; the notion of DVD extras properly translated across into the real-time domain of broadcasting. In other words, ITV is providing the means for non-linear consumption of its products. Programmes like This Morning have their 'must-see moments' uploaded as embeddable clips within a matter of hours, allowing people to flag and forward moments like Ricky Gervais on the couch discussing his Golden Globes nose-dive; Coronation Street constantly streams behind the scenes reports, bigging up events on the Street, so they feel filmic; and shows like Stars on Ice support the main weekend shows with mid-week training clips, etc.
However, the problem with ITV's online presentation at the moment (and the vast majority of heavily surfed sites) - as I see it - is that sites are cluttered and overloaded; we've got over-excited by technological potential and subsequently hung too many Flash bells and interactive-widget-y whistles on our 2.0 sites. Go and have a look at one of ITV's sites, and they're a mess; everything is fighting for your attention. And advertisers will only stand for so much of that. In order to grant potential revenue streams some kind of prime screen real-estate, broadcasters' online pages will need to start taking the kind of care afforded to newspaper and magazine layouts.
And my main fear is that, now that online has absorbed the principles of television and radio broadcasting, the creep is about to go the other way; television is about to start looking more like the internet: over-crowded with messages, dominated by the itchy repetitive sign-posting of marketing professionals - all at the expense of the entertaining programme you're watching.
In the first instance, I reckon the branded content bomb is finally about to explode. It's only taken about ten years since the debate really rose onto the agenda for it to actually start happening, but I think the internet has irreversibly thrust the potential of this form of marketing-message-as-content programming to the fore. ITV ran the second series of Beat: Life On The Street recently, a reality production sponsored by and based around police on the beat (used to promote the image of community policing). Plus, legislation was relaxed a month or so back, loosening the parameters of acceptable product placement within TV shows. These are both things that have been taboo in broadcasting, possibly for fear that we would go the way of old US television, with shows prominently featuring sponsors making ludicrous claims about their products.
However, with brands like Adidas, Nike or Playstation prepared to spend big money to encourage brand enhancement through online films, and the example of how Red Bull has so successfully attached itself to extreme sports - almost becoming a stamp of approval by association - how long will it be before their marketing spends eclipse the potential for spectacle available to digital, and then darker corners of terrestrial channel names? Equally, younger audiences will have different relationships with brands, through more aggressive marketing and online branded content; so as they grow older their acceptance level of brand-stamped shows will be lower than previous generations.
A few weeks ago, I (illegally, I accept) downloaded a torrent of one of the early Caprica episodes from the States, and the screen had three constant adverts showing in the top-right, and both bottom corners. These showed on top of the show I was trying to watch: the channel bug up top-right, an ad in the bottom-right hand corner for a show later that night that was stamped through the entire show; and a revolving flash bug that popped up every five minutes in the bottom-left corner, telling you what you were watching. This, I found quite oppressive, and given that UK channels like those from Virgin Media already subscribe to this itchy need to counter the fear that viewers might flip channels if they don't know what's coming up next, somewhat scary by way of the broadcast development on our shores. It was the televisual equivalent of what Jeff Buckley said about the proliferation of large billboards - The Sky's A Landfill.
Digital spin-offs like ITV2 and ITV3 are the biggest and second most watched digital channels in Freeview-assisted homes, and they are becoming cluttered with branding. How long before viewers become acclimatised to the slow-crawl into heavy branding presence and branded content, and said notions make the viral jump to the main terrestrial ITV channel?
The BBC is, like our NHS, in many ways the last bastion of an old age; a barrier between old values, and our market-dominated age. Whilst this might sound like hyperbole, can you imagine what would happen to health care in this country if the NHS folded tomorrow? Well, I have little doubt that the same thing would happen to the standards of what we've come to accept in broadcasting if the BBC was breached; either on radio, or via TV. The BBC, as many have said here, sets the benchmark; or put more readily, at best safeguards UK broadcasting's decline into hyper-commercial content in all its forms (and at worst, is at least slowing it down).
We would descend at pace into a world of television that is frenetic by virtue of broadcaster paranoia that audiences are about to change channels - thus losing valuable advertising-friendly viewing figures - and television screens will become more like internet pages; scattered with bugs, Flash pop-ups and text graphics, telling you what you're watching, what's coming up next, things the sponsor wants you to know, and all sorts of information irrelevant to the show you're watching. That little red button, and the adjacent dot in the top right-hand corner of your screen would begin to creep, and the screen would become a foreground of sponsored messages. We do it now with live SMS'ing on-screen. Imagine that, but paid for by a rabid, results-orientated marketeer, collating hits and monitoring response times and/or demographics?
DVR
I don’t have any idea how many people in this country have DVR. But I don’t think it will be long before it’s as ubiquitous as VCR became during the eighties. In-show adverts survived that encounter; I don’t think they’ll survive this one.
It’s never wise to assume others will share the same habits as you. But, speaking for myself, I watch absolutely nothing live—except sport. Everything else comes from the drive, with adverts sped through if it’s from ‘commercial’ broadcasters, and those irritating pre-caps (what the hell are they called?) avoided if it’s one of the BBC’s recent excellent run of documentary series.
So sponsorship may have to be the future. But does it work? And how many shows would attract enough to fund them?