Courtesy of my good friend and colleague in IREN, Professor Jean-Jacques Cheval, some memories of AIERI 2007. Shown below are Peter Lewis, Professor Stanislaw Jedrzejewski and me, before I was appointed Professor of Radio and Journalism.
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Update
Well a year has passed, and what a year!
Here are some thoughts on the current state of the media in the UK.
The pace of change in the media has increased exponentially over the past decade and a half. Dramatic changes in the UK regulatory environment have coincided with a range of developments in production and distribution technology that have promoted huge increases in both content availability and levels of public access to the media. Parallel to this has occurred a significant disruption to the long-established duopoly in television and radio that has supported a mixed economy of public and private, popular and public service broadcasting.
Consolidation of ownership of traditional media in the commercial sector has been countered by the growth of alternative provision – much of it outside statutory regulation. The traditional ‘wireless’, in its radio and televisual forms, is now challenged by increasingly ‘wired’ media, distributed over telephone wires and latterly fibre optic cable. Yet, regulation focuses on broadcasting and lacks powers to influence what is available on the internet.
Charges of ‘dumbing down’ raise issues around quality and changes in ownership threaten regional and local content production.
The BBC licence fee is predicated on the need to sustain public service broadcasting, yet television receivers are no longer necessary to receive televisual content. Licence income is being used to fund additional services that are accessible only to those with internet access, and preferably broadband, while other providers are emerging as credible bidders for a slice of that income.
Suddenly, economic issues again threaten the stability of the commercial sector, so Ofcom must balance notions of quality and localness with economic viability and the profit motive. Taste and decency issues now vie with issues of trust in the broadcast media for public scrutiny and the BBC is having to come to terms with more scrupulous – and more punitive - external regulation.
Digital terrestrial broadcasting is well developed in the UK, most surprisingly in radio, where DAB has found far greater success than anywhere else – although the commercial sector has suffered a recent crisis of confidence just as manufacturers and retailers have developed an offer that is reasonably priced enough for digital switchover in radio to begin to appear possible, while Channel Four’s foray into radio is looking less sure-footed than a year ago.
Community media through broadcast platforms is finally taking off, just as the internet offers ways of circumventing regulatory gatekeeping and amateur production is finding audiences through YouTube and other new alternative portals.
As modern media have become more pervasive and arguably more influential, I have written and spoken on the importance of media literacy, encouraging school teachers and college lecturers to promote and develop it in their students. How better to prepare a population for a media environment that is becoming increasingly diverse and challenging?
Here are some thoughts on the current state of the media in the UK.
The pace of change in the media has increased exponentially over the past decade and a half. Dramatic changes in the UK regulatory environment have coincided with a range of developments in production and distribution technology that have promoted huge increases in both content availability and levels of public access to the media. Parallel to this has occurred a significant disruption to the long-established duopoly in television and radio that has supported a mixed economy of public and private, popular and public service broadcasting.
Consolidation of ownership of traditional media in the commercial sector has been countered by the growth of alternative provision – much of it outside statutory regulation. The traditional ‘wireless’, in its radio and televisual forms, is now challenged by increasingly ‘wired’ media, distributed over telephone wires and latterly fibre optic cable. Yet, regulation focuses on broadcasting and lacks powers to influence what is available on the internet.
Charges of ‘dumbing down’ raise issues around quality and changes in ownership threaten regional and local content production.
The BBC licence fee is predicated on the need to sustain public service broadcasting, yet television receivers are no longer necessary to receive televisual content. Licence income is being used to fund additional services that are accessible only to those with internet access, and preferably broadband, while other providers are emerging as credible bidders for a slice of that income.
Suddenly, economic issues again threaten the stability of the commercial sector, so Ofcom must balance notions of quality and localness with economic viability and the profit motive. Taste and decency issues now vie with issues of trust in the broadcast media for public scrutiny and the BBC is having to come to terms with more scrupulous – and more punitive - external regulation.
Digital terrestrial broadcasting is well developed in the UK, most surprisingly in radio, where DAB has found far greater success than anywhere else – although the commercial sector has suffered a recent crisis of confidence just as manufacturers and retailers have developed an offer that is reasonably priced enough for digital switchover in radio to begin to appear possible, while Channel Four’s foray into radio is looking less sure-footed than a year ago.
Community media through broadcast platforms is finally taking off, just as the internet offers ways of circumventing regulatory gatekeeping and amateur production is finding audiences through YouTube and other new alternative portals.
As modern media have become more pervasive and arguably more influential, I have written and spoken on the importance of media literacy, encouraging school teachers and college lecturers to promote and develop it in their students. How better to prepare a population for a media environment that is becoming increasingly diverse and challenging?
Friday, 18 May 2007
IREN-2
So little time, so little time to blog! A huge amount of time and effort has gone into the IREN-2 application to the European Union 7th Framework Programme, to run a research project entitled Creativity, Culture and Democracy: The Role of Radio.
Saturday, 10 March 2007
Paris meeting
So much going on, so little time to post! Last weekend we held a meeting of a number of IREN-2 partners at the Sorbonne - courtesy of Albino Pedroia of GRER. Chairing a meeting in both English and French was a new experience, and a hugely enjoyable one too, even though we worked hard from 10am-8pm. I also provided some Spanish translations for one of the delegates!
It's always good to meet up with our European colleagues, and they certainly know how to have a good time. On the Friday I ate my first snail. Vive la France!
It's always good to meet up with our European colleagues, and they certainly know how to have a good time. On the Friday I ate my first snail. Vive la France!
Sunday, 21 January 2007
European cooperation
It's been a busy start to 2007, not least because we have just hosted a meeting of a number of the partners in the first IREN project. There's been a lot to discuss, not least the way forward for research into radio on a pan-European basis, and there'll be a lot more work behind the scenes until a big announcement is made later in the year. Meantime, IREN continues within the framework of ECREA.
Friday, 29 December 2006
2006: Radio Day
In between all the hard work this year it was particularly nice to have been able to find time to attend the Radio Day in Amsterdam as an invited guest and a panel member. The antithesis of an academic conference, it was just a really interesting day, a chance to meet some people I hadn't seen for some time, and an opportunity to make some new friends. Plus, there was absolutely no preparation needed! Within hours of the day coming to an end, seventy-two pictures of the event had appeared on the web at http://www.offshore-radio.de/radioday/. Congratulations to the organisers, Hans Knott and Dr. Martin van der Ven, as well as to Robbie Owen for providing us with such an amusing commentary to his slide show! Robbie (pictured left) was quick to remind me that it was a phone call from me that was his first big break in radio. Hans is well known for his monthly radio report, sent via email. Noam Tal was recording interviews with us and some actuality for a TV report on the day. It's at http://www.offshoreradio.de/radioday/2006/vop-reunion.wmv and as you'll see, he had the good sense to edit out the bits with me in them.
Thursday, 28 December 2006
2006: Conferences and publications
This has been the final year of the IREN project (International Radio Research Network), an EU-funded Framework 6 initiative led by Jean-Jacques Cheval, a leading scholar in the field of radio who is based in Bordeaux, France. Although I was not one of the original thirteen partners from ten European countries, IREN have made me most welcome from the beginning, to the extent that Jean-Jacques called me the membre caché at the final conference held by IREN, in Belgium in November! I considered that quite a compliment.
The project has provided an excellent stimulus for research into a wide variety of aspects of radio, as well as a lively forum for radio academics from Europe and beyond to meet, discuss and collaborate in a number of very positive ways. During 2006 I have given the following three papers at IREN conferences:
The democratisation of the media through proliferation: new technologies, changes in regulation and community broadcasting at the Jornadas Internacionales de la Radio y la Television, Bilbao, Spain, January (http://www.kazetaritza.com/).
Regulation and democracy – PSB, commercial and participatory radio in the 20th and 21st centuries at The Medium with the Promising Future (Radio in Central and Eastern European Countries), Lublin, Poland, June.
Radio: theorising the future/theorising in future (or in French Radio : théoriser le futur / théoriser au futur) at Quelles voix/voies pour le futur, Brussels, November. I was particularly pleased to be invited to give a keynote address at this conference, which was split between the town of Louvain-la-Neuve and the Belgian capital, Brussels.
All three papers are being published in bound volumes along with other contributions to those respective conferences, and although the Bilbao paper was presented in English to a PowerPoint presentation in Spanish, I have translated it into Spanish for the book.
Although IREN in its first incarnation has now come to the end of its contractual life, it lives on, not least within ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association) but also as a federation of national radio research groups - with a further exciting initiative to follow in 2007.
A fourth 2006 conference, La radiodiffusion aux tournants des siècles, at Lyon, France, in June, was organised by the French radio research group, GRER (le Groupe de Recherches et d'Etudes sur la Radio), of which I became a member. I wrote the paper in French and presented it in French after a little cosmetic tweaking by two other GRER members, Elvina Fesneau and Béatrice Donzelle, to whom went many thanks and a nice meal afterwards. The title was Mais, est-ce encore de la radio? Programmation et transmission en mutation en temps de crises http://radio2006.org. This paper is also being published, in the original French.
At Sunderland we hosted two excellent conferences of particular interest this year, Martin Shingler's Sounding Out 3 in September, and Michael Higgins's Politics and the Media in November. While making only brief appearances to introduce speakers at Sounding Out 3, I gave a fifth paper at Politics and the Media, Regulation and democracy: representation of politics in the media – a comparative study.
I do have plans to work on conference papers in 2007, but it is unlikely that I will have the time to give quite so many!
The project has provided an excellent stimulus for research into a wide variety of aspects of radio, as well as a lively forum for radio academics from Europe and beyond to meet, discuss and collaborate in a number of very positive ways. During 2006 I have given the following three papers at IREN conferences:
The democratisation of the media through proliferation: new technologies, changes in regulation and community broadcasting at the Jornadas Internacionales de la Radio y la Television, Bilbao, Spain, January (http://www.kazetaritza.com/).
Regulation and democracy – PSB, commercial and participatory radio in the 20th and 21st centuries at The Medium with the Promising Future (Radio in Central and Eastern European Countries), Lublin, Poland, June.
Radio: theorising the future/theorising in future (or in French Radio : théoriser le futur / théoriser au futur) at Quelles voix/voies pour le futur, Brussels, November. I was particularly pleased to be invited to give a keynote address at this conference, which was split between the town of Louvain-la-Neuve and the Belgian capital, Brussels.
All three papers are being published in bound volumes along with other contributions to those respective conferences, and although the Bilbao paper was presented in English to a PowerPoint presentation in Spanish, I have translated it into Spanish for the book.
Although IREN in its first incarnation has now come to the end of its contractual life, it lives on, not least within ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association) but also as a federation of national radio research groups - with a further exciting initiative to follow in 2007.
A fourth 2006 conference, La radiodiffusion aux tournants des siècles, at Lyon, France, in June, was organised by the French radio research group, GRER (le Groupe de Recherches et d'Etudes sur la Radio), of which I became a member. I wrote the paper in French and presented it in French after a little cosmetic tweaking by two other GRER members, Elvina Fesneau and Béatrice Donzelle, to whom went many thanks and a nice meal afterwards. The title was Mais, est-ce encore de la radio? Programmation et transmission en mutation en temps de crises http://radio2006.org. This paper is also being published, in the original French.
At Sunderland we hosted two excellent conferences of particular interest this year, Martin Shingler's Sounding Out 3 in September, and Michael Higgins's Politics and the Media in November. While making only brief appearances to introduce speakers at Sounding Out 3, I gave a fifth paper at Politics and the Media, Regulation and democracy: representation of politics in the media – a comparative study.
I do have plans to work on conference papers in 2007, but it is unlikely that I will have the time to give quite so many!
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