Welcome to Digital PSB

Hi and welcome to our site.

PSB otherwise known as Public Service Broadcasting is the topic of discussion driving our website.

We are a group of MA Broadcast and International Journalists studying at the University College Falmouth in Cornwall. We have been set a task to explore how quality and diversity of news and current affairs can be maintained in the digital age and then present it to the rest of our class. (Wish us luck)

What does this mean – who knows …. we are about to find out, stay tuned!

 

Who’s killing Radio and TV?

Video may have killed the radio star … but now TV itself is suffering … and Radio seems to clawing it back – or is it?

Not according to the Guardian today (thanks Scott for the tip)

In 15 to 20 years radio could have died out all together.  Advertising in television has been depleating – well the same goes for radio.

Claire Enders, the founder of Enders Analysis she said, “There has been a dramatic change in the position of radio in the last 10 years, dramatic even though consumption has not been affected as much as newspaper consumption.”

She continued to say that outside the BBC, radio would not be commercially viable and was therefore likely to end up solely in the form of “hobbyist” models such as podcasts.

Once again it seems money truly makes the world go round … but is there enough to go around to keep every PSB and radio station afloat? In a world that is always consuming and expanding, I think we may need to consider reining back abit.

 

And finally…….

As we’re all fully aware the deadline for our blogs falls on us tomorrow. I thought I’d open one final post for our group to discuss what we’ve achieved, learned and could have done differently.

Firstly, I think we’ve all successfully achieved what Charlotte set us out to do- communicate through this blogging system. Especially through our giant work load and the IJs and BJs not so synchronized time tables blogging has proved to be a good form of accessible communication. However much of a chore it may have seemed.

Secondly, our topic, which I definitely remember rolling my eyes at when we were first put into groups, provoked a long interesting debate after the presentation and evidently in many comments on here also. On a topic which i didn’t really consider before I have definitely become more aware of the politics of public service broadcasting and the troubles that lay ahead with it.

We focused on quality and diversity. The BBC says it aims to provide a full range of diverse viewpoints and diversity may also apply to ensuring that programmes are produced from a variety of sources. However during the coverage of Gaza-Israel conflict they were notably cautious.

It was intriguing to see how our blog also pressed into the realms of the other blogs. Today, media is so dependent on multi-media and their audience. All broadcasters have an internet site, watch again play systems and numerous digital channels. It’s interesting how they all feed off each other.

I think we made a good attempt in making our presentation interactive. Unfortunately some people didn’t understand our introduction. I’ll take this opportunity to clarify why we did it. We had the different mediums of technology broadcasters use to receive media on the powerpoint behind and acted out a disaster scene. It was namely citizen journalists witnessing a chaotic scenario and using the means of twitter, photography and video to record it. All of the footage, twitter comments and photos were used in news agencies like BBC, Al jazeera, Fox Sky News and more. We didn’t make any introduction to ourselves or the presentation until we came out of the freeze frame of the scene and asked the audience “is this quality?” Making people think what level of quality is acceptable.

We could have introduced it first and explained to the audience what diversity and quality meant to PSBs, but we thought it might have been a nicer introduction having a role play. The point was that when news is breaking and agencies aren’t at the scene- do news agencies/broadcasters rely on any source of information or do they just accept verified and quality information. But will they then miss out?

This was obviously not the only element on quality but we thought it was a high impact way of introducing it. Too much jargon, especially with PSB talk, would have nodded people off.

And finally…what lies ahead for the poor old topic of PSBs in the digital world. Well, by looking at Gareth’s post below it has definitely sparked much interest among our peers and causes much controversy within the industry. David Cameron’s recent comment about a “freeze” to the license fee and highlighting that it needs to “lead by example at a time when the whole country is tightening its belt” has also certainly opened a national debate.

We eagerly await whatever happens to the future of PSB and hope that you all enjoyed reading through our research, posts and presentation.

Thanks for your co-operation

Stay classy fellow bloggers

 

Top Slicing, BBC Licence Fee, Digital Age and Channel 4

Hey guys I found this from the Guardian in the opinion section:

“”Ofcom rules out ‘top slicing’,passing a proportion of the licence fee to Channel 4.

However, it suggests either:
- giving Channel 4 the part of the licence fee ring-fenced for digital switchover;
- giving Channel 4 a share of BBC Worldwide.”"

Well …..

It seems to me that both of these still seem to be ’top slicing’ in a round about way. Perhaps an alternative is to invest the switch over money back in to the licence fee and this could help reduce it …. Recently Cameron has been calling for a freeze on the licence fee – maybe this could be a half way point?

With the recession spiralling downwards still a more radical solution may be called for concerning PSB’s.

Ofcom bases its approach on the finding that viewers value a “public service alternative beyond the BBC”, which means ruling out the privatisation route.

 

Why, then, does Ofcom warn against direct funding, either in the form of “top-slicing” the BBC’s licence fee or some other form of tax or levy?

 

In Ofcom’s words: “It is not clear that this represents the most stable economic model for Channel 4, potentially increasing its reliance on public support as pressures on the free-to-air model grow over time and presents the risk of skewed incentives.”

 

I think Ofcom is trying to make it clear that Channel 4’s predicament needs to be fixed for good in a permanent solution rather than being given a weak quick fix one.

 

The idea of a “second institution with public purposes” alongside the BBC would be an attempt to give a lasting shape to public service broadcasting in the 21st century perhaps.

 

So there are two basic ideas – merging Channel 4 with Channel Five, (as we have discussed previously in our blog) and an idea Mark Thompson considered five years ago and which he again supports today as director general of the BBC. And then there is the possibility of Channel 4 taking a stake in BBC Worldwide, the BBC’s commercial division.

The only thing that looks certain at the moment is the BBC clinging on to it’s annual fee from the licence payers. But is this fair when other channels suffer because they don’t have the luxury of secured funding?

Will diversity and quality in television especially in news soon become the victim?

 

“Wishful thinking” to new PSB says former BBC chairman

Former BBC Chairman Sir Christopher Bland has said that is was “by no means clear” that the UK could afford one properly funded public service broadcaster-let alone two- and that it would make more sense to privatise Channel 4.

Bland was part of a Royal Television Society roundtable discussion on the future of public service broadcasting and digital Britain. He said the privatisation of Channel 4 was the “least worst alternative and makes more sense than trying to create a second-class public service broadcaster when there isn’t room for more than one”

He highlighted that no country in the world has more than one public service broadcast and that some countries can’t even afford one.

He also said that Channel 4 brings nothing to BBC Worldwide. ” they have by virtue of their structure almost no international programme rights and that’s ind of baked into the way they commission programmes.”

So if no country in the world have more than one PSB how does Britain think they can afford to employ another? and can a collaboration of BBC Worldwide and Channel 4 work?

Sir Christopher bland- former BBC Chairman

[gallery]

 

TV Licence

“more cash for BBC would mean an unequal market”

David Cameron is calling for a freeze on the TV licence fee.

“The BBC needs to set an example”.

Can this level the playing field for public serice broadcasting? Can it even fix the broken economy?

Will follow with more details.

 

BBC and ITV News Sharing

A new story that’s been reported this week.  It appears the BBC and ITV regional teams are seriously considering sharing resources for their regional  news output.  The move will lead to ITV saving roughly seven million pounds a year.

Again I think it links back to the very heart of our presentation.  The increased possibilites that competitiveness may well be reduced if the boradcasters continue to make cut backs.  This is a prime example of it actually happening.

Mark Thompson, chairman of the BBC, has stated that there won’t be any cross over with regards journalists and both corporations will have their own editotial independence.  Here are selected highlights from the article:

1. BBC and ITV could share newsrooms but work in their own separate, private areas.

2. A “pool” of picture would be able to be used to both corporations.

3. Although there will be a sharing of material both corporations wil still be able to come up with their own exclusive stories.

 

Rest of the article is here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/wales_politics/7940063.stm

 

PSB Blog Presentation

Public Service Broadcasting Blog Presentation

Hello all,

I’ve uploaded our blog presentation on the site. Other bloggers can now comment on our presentation. I wonder if we can?

 

Well Done Us!

Hey guys! Brilliant presentation – I think we did a great job and worked really well as a team.

I think our strengths in our presentation was that we made it VERY clear from the get go what we were going to talk about, our aims and how we were going to do it.

In addition we used slides as a visual aid to confirm and strengthen what we were saying.

Perhaps a weakness which we have all mentioned was that we didn’t take the opportunity to use much role play like other groups did. Although Ive just said this was a weakness (I’m playing devil’s advocate now) … Maybe the type of role play would not be as appropriate for us considering our topic. Plus we were the FIRST group and it seemed that everyone developed from each others as weeks went on.

Overall I think we gave a clear argument and explained simply what the issue was concerning quality and diversity in news. Great use of interviews (audio) to break up our talking and very visual slide show but not too distracting.

I really enjoyed working with all of you … too bad we don’t have another chance to do it again.

Well done again!!!

 

Thoughts of digital in the PSB role in 2000

Back in 2000 negative thoughts emerged about the the PSB role within the digital up rise in an Independent article. They notify the importance of defining PSB within the ever changing multi-channel environment. Concerns persisted back then about news and current affairs not being so commercially successful.

It’s quite interesting to compare thoughts from today and planning a decade ahead and also where we cam from a decade ago.

Digital may mean TV channels lose public service role

 

Excellent blogging

Again, excellent work team. Think we all did a competent job in delivering a subject that’s not too exciting and engaging the audience. You could tell we captivated the audience from the enthusiastic crowd load of questions at the end.

The below website, which was posted just before our presentation, highlights everything we covered.

Ed Richards appears in a video outlining the importance of PSB and a blueprint reinforcing PSB for the next decade- indicating priorities and familiar institutions involved.

Ofcom unveils public service broadcasting blueprint for the digital decade