But…. Are They Any Good?
Posted on December 8, 2006
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |
One of the many elements that get missed out of the debate about media innovation is how good are the stories? As somebody who frequently has stories turned down (by TV stations and by newspapers and magazines, and even by websites) here’s a point or two, an observation.
The great innovation of YouTube was not easy upload or clip mania. It was no censorship. Newspapers are a great instutition and one of their virtues is they generally manage the compromise between truth, full disclosure and the partial interests of owners and industry, pretty well. Of course many of us want to choke reading a sentence like that. It’s only when you come to TV though that you get consistent, strident, arrogant, often unwitting and senseless censorship.
Newspapers have many pages to fill everyday and lots of talented writers around. It’s a tough business and many of us wear disappointment as a kind of professional injury. TV on the other hand turned its back on real story telling about a decade ago - execs there will tell you they reinvented story telling. They brought in simulation - the historical reality TV, the current affairs reality TV.
In place of setting an agenda for the establishment to front up - occasionally - TV has become more of a talent scout for celebrity. It could still do its old fashioned story telling but my guess, and experience, is that it has its own talent shortfall. After so many years of trying to reinvent the form, it’s lost the people who knew about the content.
The trough for UK TV was the interview a decade back with Princess Diana - great for audience numbers of course but giving an hour to a woman who already had top notch coverage and exposure and whose intelligence was almost wholly focused on her own ego bode ill for the business of revealing society to itself.
TV is hungry for more minutes like this when, it kids itself, it punches above its weight - read through any TV commissining manifesto and that’s the phrase you hear - how to punch above your weight in the schedules.
The routine excuse for censorship of good ideas, great stories and the full range of great stories out there is that the bandwidth of broadcasting is extremely limited. There are only so many hours in the day. That argument no longer holds true but we now have a generation of managers who don’t realise it, and who have imbibed the philosophy of being able to make a lot of noise with little money, regardless of its purpose - or rather as the only purpose.
Also unique to TV is the level of self congratulation in multiple awards ceremonies. At least I thought it was unique until I saw how many awards’ ceremonies bloggers have managed to organise in such a short existence.
These thoughts are brought to you because David Putnam - who now dares label his person as Lord Putnam - wrote about it last week in London’s New Statesman, finding that Rupert Murdoch was responsible for Britain’s journalism ills. What? No TV people responsible? No martyrs out there who offered their careers to ideas about the truth? Well, yes, he also has a dig at the BBC but he lacks any analysis of what stories are not being told, what shortcomings Murdoch has instigated and maintains.
And these thoughts are brought to you because the major TV networks are thinking of setting up a YouTube clone. Lads - you’re hiring the wrong people. Worse. New broadcasters like the telecoms companies moving into IPTV are hiring TV execs. As are some web portals. We’re in for a long spell of doo-doo culture.
The literary world recently held its annual bad sex awards - prizes for writers who write the worst sex scenes. I propose an awards’ ceremony for TV broadcasters who’ve done the least to move society on, the least to hold politicians accountable, to have innovated least with political, social and narrative ideas, in short to have given in to passive censorship most. I don’t expect it to happen but you can tell anyway that this particular blog is becoming agitated.
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Pretty trenchant stuff there Haydn. I agree though. All the focus on celebrity and cheap user driven content drives me nuts. I don’t really watch much tv any more. Just need to organise my IPTV sources a bit better to get a wider world view.
hello paul
It comes down to being a bit fed up. Time i wrote a bit more about life outside the media.