The Future of TV Programming

It might come as a shock to the US readers, but here in the UK we have only experienced multiple TV channels in recent years.  By multiple TV channels, I mean more than three.

In fact, when I was a young 'un we only had two TV channels, and they were both in Black and White. Plus a lot of grey, as I recall.  And to show I possess a phenomenal memory, I even recall the names of these two channels - BBC and ITV.  Mock if you will, you try recalling all the channel names from your youth when you're in your mid fifties.

Shortly after, sometime around the time of the moonshot, we got colour TV (not us at home, the UK - colour TV didn't appear in my life until the mid Seventies).  We also got our third TV Channel, BBC 2.  Fast forward until I'd been in the RAF for five years, just after the Falklands War finished, and Britain celebrated with its fourth TV channel, using our customary imaginative style naming it Channel 4.  It wasn't until just before the end of the Century that we got our fifth, and final, analogue TV channel - Channel 5.  In comparison the US had accumulated more than five TV channels two years before John Logie Baird invented the TV.

Of course some in the UK had realised that two, three, four or even five channels were insufficient for them and had discovered cable TV for a few selected locations and Sky TV for the rest of the country.  Satellite dishes sprung up like a rash of mushrooms on the vertical surfaces on British houses.

Now we've gone digital and we've all got seemingly inexhaustible amounts of channels that I can't begin to enumerate let alone remember.  We've got a lot of choice and a variety of quality.  We can record on our DVR machines and, of course, Sky were in that game pretty early on too.  The listings magazines are getting thicker and are starting to resemble telephone directories of old.

But I don't think the journey is over, I think we are still travelling.  Despite the seemingly thousands of TV channels, multiple cable and satellite options, terrestrial broadcasts and the newcomers, on-demand TV via the internet, most programming is still based on fixed timeslots.  Sure, most programmes and films are broadcast multiple times, with new channels such as ITV3+1 - which is ITV4, surely? - popping up to broadcast the same content as the parent channel only an hour later.

The game-changers, though not mature enough to challenge the current paradigm yet, are the Lovefilm and Netflix packages.  Add to these the likes of the BBC iPlayer which makes programmes available world-wide over the internet for up to seven days after the first broadcast and you're losing the old standards rapidly.

The glue still holding the old guard together is the advertising revenue for the commercial TV stations and the BBC TV licence - a permit to watch any broadcast programming in the UK that funds an organisation that then makes it available for the rest of the world to watch for free.  Considering that TV ownership is pretty much universal in this country and that the TV license fee is mandatory for any household that has a TV, regardless of which channels you watch or even whether you watch TV at all, it's technically another tax, just one directed at providing entertainment, news reportage and sports coverage for the masses.

But advertising isn't paying, and the commercial stations are floundering around for other ways to raise money.  Phone-in competitions can't support a thousand TV channels forever and DVR has wiped out the effectiveness of advertising since it allows the viewer to fast forward through the adverts anyway.  The populace is tiring of the involuntary tax on viewing via the license fee and the BBC is under a lot of pressure to justify its continuance.  Giving away the programming we're compelled to pay for to the world for free rankles a lot of fee payers.  It is argued we get  some of the best television in the world, but for around £180 a year each, perhaps that's not unreasonable.

Of course, those on Sky are paying up to £90 a month for their extended programming, and that's on top of the license fee, so perhaps those of us who have shunned Sky and its rivals such as Virgin Media can't complain.  Most don't pay that much and it's become a bit of a game for many Sky customers to argue down the fee each year, sometimes by juggling with the package, sometimes by threatening to walk away.  Lovefilm and Netflix are making some inroads into the deal but their packages are not comprehensive enough and often too dated to compete fully.  And I doubt if either company produce any original programming, which the terrestrial and extra terrestrial programmers do.

My vision is that we can buy a package - perhaps it would be credits to  be applied to  any programmes we accessed - maybe the credits could be applied to any provider.  Drop the advertising and the license fees and apply a free economy and we might be seeing a new future.  Lovefile and Netflix could be part of that, so could the BBC as both a producer and prime broadcaster.  Instead of programmes being broadcast at specific times, they could be released for viewing from specific times.  From that point on they could be accessed, just as the on-demand media is now.  New programmes and films could attract a premium credit, so the early adopters and those with more disposable income could view them first.  The rest of us - well we could wait a few days, maybe, attracting a lower credit price.  Once a programme becomes less of a novelty and more of a commodity, then perhaps there could be a market for various providers to compete to provide it.  Hmm, market forces in programming.

Smart TVs would need to get a whole lot smarter, broadband much broader.  Importantly, everyone has to be prepared to take control of their own individual programming.  There would be no national barriers, no missed opportunities.  It probably won't pan out like this, not exactly.  Predicting paradigm shifts is tricky at the best of times, looking at changes in long established technologies almost impossible to second guess.  Ultimately the only losers would be the listing magazines - there would be a market to announce the new programming to be released but I suspect smarter ways than flicking through a weekly magazine would develop pretty quickly, and I suspect those new-fangled tablet computers could play a part in that.

And our children won't have to worry about remembering a myriad of TV Channels when they are in their mid-fifties.  Just their favourite programming database.

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Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here

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When Not to Share

In the UK over the last week there has been a lot of controversy that has rocked an already unsteady BBC. In the wake of the allegations against former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile of sexual abuse of minors, plus other very serious allegations, there was a BBC programme that allrged that a Nineteen Eighties politician engaged in child abuse at a north Wales children's home.

The programme didn't name names, so the specific allegation hasn't been made publicly by the BBC, but the rumours started flying around the social media sites about a specific person who has since been paid a substantial sum from the BBC in compensation for the harm his reputation has suffered.  I'm not mentioning his name - there's been enough attention on the claims which the BBC has clearly acknowledged to be untrue - and it has caused the Director General to resign in the midst of all of this.

As far as I can tell, the speculation about the name of the person appears to have been fought outside the BBC, particularly on Twitter, with a specific name ending up trending as a result.  Hence the unwarranted reputational harm that the BBC has felt the need to compensate for and allow its titular head to resign over.

Now it seems that the lawyers who are acting for the person wronged by the allegations have settled out of court with the Corporation, and the person they represent has settled for a sum that probably doesn't even start to reflect the harm such allegations can do but has been tempered by the fact that it is public money that forms the compensation.  That is very noble.

However the lawyers haven't finished, not by a long chalk.  It appears they are trawling through the many Tweets that named their client, in order to determine who did what harm to him.

You see, when dealing with defamation you have two forms.  The first is slander, where a person says something about another that is untrue and tarnishes their reputation. The second is libel, where someone or some body - such as a newspaper or a corporation such as the BBC - publishes something that is untrue and tarnishes someone's reputation. Libel is generally seen as the more serious offence as slander tends to affect a localised group and the harm can be limited.  OK, sure enough if someone bad mouths a colleague in front of their boss and the statements are untrue then that can have serious consequences for them, so any subsequent slander case could result in major damages.

But libel tends to allow an untruth to permeate further, to reach deeper and cause more harm that is longer lasting.  So the interest in the Tweets should be making a few people a little nervous.  In fact, more than a few as to get a person's name to trend it takes an awfully large amount of Tweets and Retweets.  Which means that while only a few people may have made an incorrect link to the upcoming BBC documentary, or perhaps may have been leaked information that has not subsequently been substantiated - after all, the BBC clearly agrees it has done something wrong here, and as they didn't screen the documentary it must have been something that they allowed off air - they did so  to sufficient numbers who probably retweeted glibly to their own list of followers.

There could be some serious ramifications of this analysis by the lawyers, because I'm certain they're not doing this as a technical exercise.  If this ends up with people in court defending their Tweets and Retweets we could see a sea change in the usage of social media - don't forget that Facebook has just launched the Share function which allows FB users to redistribute posts to all of their Friends.  As a minimum, users of Twitter and Facebook should think carefully before posting or reposting allegations about a person - most of us are not going to be in receipt of the facts of these cases and it is all too easy to get carried away with the call for blood that we're witnessing over in the UK right now, and it could cost individuals a lot of money if they contribute to defaming a person's reputation by the simple act of pushing a virtual button.

Long term this could be seen as the point that social media grew up and started to understand its social responsibilities.  Take care when Tweeting, Retweeting or Sharing.

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here

Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to?  Take a look at his website here

Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs?  Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!