Edinburgh: ‘IPod moment’ could render print extinct, predicts Guardian editor

Posted by Colin Crummy on 25 August 2007 at 16:33
Tags: Channel 4, E-paper, Edinburgh 2007, Edinburgh International Television Festival, Guardian, ITN, Journalism, Podcasting

The newspaper industry could be rocked by its own “iPod moment” where a device reads text so well that renders print extinct, according to the editor of The Guardian.

At a session entitled “Who’ll Win the Web?” at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Alan Rusbridger said: “For the newspaper there will be an iPod moment where someone creates a device that is so brilliant at reading text, the newspaper becomes irrelevant.”

Rusbridger also said the death of The Guardian in print would “in some ways make life simpler” and said that he was confident his team would continue to produce the product within the same Guardian spirit elsewhere. “I’d be quite relaxed about it,” he added.

He admitted that The Guardian was tying up people experimenting with podcasts that gained few listeners but said it was because the newspaper was experimenting with everything. “There’s a fair amount of wasted effort at the moment but we’re learning all the time.”

The debate centred on whether print media or broadcasters might prosper in the digital age.

Rod Henwood, new business director at Channel 4 said: “In some ways we are less threatened than newspapers because free broadcasters don’t have paying customers to lose. We have paying customers to gain through the internet.”

He said that broadcasters could better retain exclusivity on products in a way that news providers could not. “News is very much commodised on the net. Immersive, long form video entertainment is harder to commodise. For broadcasters that have got rights that are their own, have a chance to stand out on the internet more than purely news providers.”

ITN chief executive Mark Wood said newspapers were more than just news and it was crucial to make those elements – like lifestyle sections - pay in a multimedia strategy.

Rusbridger said: “The BBC, CNN, ITN – it’s sort of an article of faith that they are impartial and unbiased. We can be as impartial and biased as we like and on comment is free we have thousands of robust opinions.” He foresaw this as “an interesting battleground” which would be partly settled by regulator.

Edinburgh: Channel 4 promises more documentaries as part of public service commitment

Posted by Colin Crummy on 24 August 2007 at 16:06
Tags: Channel 4, Dispatches, Edinburgh 2007, Edinburgh International Television Festival

Channel 4 is to overhaul its schedules - investing in documentaries and educational programming, and moving a raft of factual entertainment programmes to its digital offshoots or off the channel altogether.

Kevin Lygo, Channel 4’s director of television and content, said in a speech at the Edinburgh International TV Festival, that the broadcaster would clear the schedule of ratings hits such as Celebrity Big Brother – its highest rating programme on the channel - to make way for programmes that would better serve its public service remit.

The move is part of a range of initiatives launched by Channel 4 from today [Friday 24 August] to refocus the broadcaster’s public service remit after a tumultuous year of criticism on its output.

“These are non-commercial decisions - if we wanted to take the easy path we’d recommission all of these shows - we’d probably do two series of Celebrity Big Brother if ratings were all we’re after. No - these are the decisions of a public service broadcaster in search of the new and the exciting.”

In the 9pm slot, only one popular factual programme will return, Grand Designs.

“I’m not a psychopath, I’m not going to cut everything,” quipped Lygo. Shows like Celebrity Big Brother will be rested and others axed.

Lygo said this would inevitably mean a fall in ratings. “We are prepared for this and strongly believe it is the right thing to do. Much better to be an interesting channel at 8 per cent than a less interesting one at 10 per cent.”

He reiterated the broadcaster’s commitment to news and current affairs through its public service ethos and said its news programmes scheduled in peak time “offer greater analysis than competitor bulletins on other channels and tackle subject matter, particularly international affairs, that other channels devote less time to.”

“The point is that we are determined to open up space for argument,” he added.

Lygos also underlined his support for the Dispatches programme Undercover Mosque which is under investigation by Ofcom for alleged distortion of viewpoints within the edition.

Lygos said it was “a fantastic piece of first rate journalism which has been completely vindicated”.

Channel 4 is currently seeking more than £100 million of public money and if it didn’t get public service money, Lygo said the first thing to go would be serious investigative journalism – news and current affairs programming.

“It would be a different channel and not nearly as interesting,” he said.

Monthly ABCe figures for broadcasters’ streaming content?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 June 2007 at 13:42
Tags: ABCe, BBC, Channel 4, Five, ITV, Television

Broadcast is reporting that a working party of leading broadcasters, including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, Sky has tasked ABCe to “provide basic statistical reports using agreed criteria” about streaming media on their web sites.

The working party also includes the broadcast ratings organisation Barb and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

Broadcast says ABCe reports will be available by the end of the year, and describes the move as “the industry’s first step toward the holy grail of online audience measurement”.

@NMK: Big media and interactivity

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 June 2007 at 12:22
Tags: BBC, CNET, Channel 4, Guardian Unlimited, Journalism, NMK

This morning’s panel at the New Media Knowledge Forum at St Luke’s on Old Street is looking at “how the MSM (Mainstream Media) facing up to the new wave of interest in social media?”

• Jem Stone: BBC New Media
• Tom Bureau: Managing Director, CNET Networks UK
• Meg Pickard: Head of Editorial development, Guardian Unlimited
• Adam Gee: New Media Commissioner, Factual at Channel 4 Television
• Paul Pod: Co-Founder, TIOTI (Tape It Off The Internet)
• Ashley Norris: Co-founder, Shiny Media
• Nico Macdonald: Spy.co.uk
• Jeff Revoy, VP of Search and Social Media, Yahoo! Europe

Nothing really earth-shattering was said in what should have been an excellent panel. Still, some highlights:

Gee: Traditional are media are well-positioned to do public tasks by providing the architecture for interactive projects. He points to a Channel 4 map of public artwork being created by “a willing public” armed with cameraphones.

Revoy: The development of interactive tools online is being driven by the growth of broadband penetration and the wide availability of applications. It’s not a trend, just evolution of the medium. In a few years’ time, it won’t be considered a trend, but will just be the way people interact with the internet.

Bureau: CNET uses “architecture of participation” to solicit and encourage high-value users’ interaction on its web sites and that their contributions are treated in a similar vein as the contributions from the professional journalists on their sites. What professional journalists create is just the starting point, and a challenge is to change the way they look at the world and relate to their users to reflect that. Silicon.com, for example caters for high-level technology executives. The question has to be who knows more about the subject — a journalist or some members of such a specialst audience. When you have a specialist audience, you’ll inevitably have a proportion — perhaps 10 to 20 per cent — who are greater expects. They may not have the presentation skills to express that knowledge as well as the journalists, though.

Pickard: The Guardian is becoming more “granular” in its thinking about user interactivity. She outlined various classes of user interactivity, starting with casual, passive viewers, followed by interaction (such as leaving comments), curation, and finally content creation. Many big media organiations are still only getting the first chunk. The trick is to find ways to move people from being mere consumers to more creators. This should be a fundimental part of the proposition.

Norris: Lot of journalists despise new media, because they are accustomed to delivering tablets of stone, and this is still something that affects most news organisations. He singles out the Daily Mail and the Sun for frequently picking up stories from blogs, but rarely links out from their sites to acknowledge them. Even the BBC, he says, rarely links to the many blogs in the British blogosphere.

Stone: Responding to Norris, he says this may not be because the journalists don’t respect the bloggers, but just because they aren’t aware of their posts. Norris retorts: “That’s like saying journalists aren’t aware of news stories.”

See also: Kevin Anderson, Jemima Kiss, Robin Hamman.

3 comments

AOP: The evolving content model

Posted by Martin Stabe on 4 October 2006 at 10:26
Tags: Bebo, Channel 4, Incisive Media, Journalism, Sunday Times, Times, Times Media, UK AOP

The first panel of the day features Ron Henwood, new business director of Channel 4, Times Media digital publisher Zach Leonard, Incisive media chairman Tim Weller and Jim Scheinman of Bebo.

The famously “platform agnostic” Weller praises Incisive Media’s “fantastic” B2B journalists, but says that one challenge is been to wean them off the habit of clinging onto their stories until they appear under a byline in a printed magazine.

Having established printing as quickly as possible in online publications as the norm at Incisive, however, leadto new challenges for reinventing the established print products.

“Print products need to be more discoursive, forward-thinking, and analystical” rather than just printing news, Weller says.

In the  Q&A, the the panel is asked several questions touching on the competition between businesses focusing on horizontal content and those concentrating on narrow vertical niches. One question touches on whether the growth of vertical search engines is a threat to B2B publishers like Weller.

He rejects this, saying that vertical search is an opportunity for Incisive, and one which the company is already exploring in the insurance industry.

But Weller says narrower is generally better, and that his company always hopes to create products that appeal to the most specific community of buyers as possible.

Times Media’s Zach Leonard, however, says that for “horizontal” general interest publications like the Times titles, the correct response it to create many specific vertical channels that allow advertisers to target readers more precisely.

Leonard is also asked whether the Times has any plans for paid content products. He alludes to the Times newspapers’ vast archive, stretching back into the 18th century, which it is looking to use better online.

Basic archives can be used to simply increase traffic, but specific packages of that content could become paid-for content. He mentions that Virginia Woolfe once wrote film reviews for the Times and that this might be something that could be a product to monetize through reader payment.