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?
