In his latest column, PopCon Director, Mark LIttlewood, looks at the changing media landscape and how political parties, think tanks, campaign organisations, and pressure groups who realise that the new world of online broad/narrowcasting is now the most viable way of presenting their case will be those that win the battle of ideas.
A huge amount has been written (including quite a lot in these newsletter columns!) about the fracturing of the party political system. But another fracturing has been underway for some time, and it may have an even greater long-term impact on the way we conduct public discourse.
At some point, party politics will find a new equilibrium, but that’s not true of the television broadcasting sector, which has been transformed beyond recognition in recent years and is never going to snap back into place.
This coming week marks 71 years since ITV went on air (bringing British households their first-ever taste of TV commercials, with their debut advertisement being for Gibbs SR toothpaste). Next week also marks 52 years since the BBC launched its Ceefax service. We now look back fondly on this as a quaint, antiquated time when you’d have to wait for pages to scroll to see the next item of news or an update on live football scores. But at the time it was revolutionary – news was now available on demand, and you didn’t need to wait until a major broadcaster’s scheduled bulletin to see what had happened in the world.
In fact, today it is increasingly rare for people to rely on broadcasters for breaking news at all. I have childhood memories of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II and the Challenger space shuttle disaster first coming to the attention of the nation through the children’s show John Craven’s Newsround. Today, people would know about such events within milliseconds, and word would spread by text and WhatsApp messages almost immediately.
The big behemoths of television are beginning to crumble. ITV is unlikely to survive much longer in its current form (simply being guaranteed the number-three slot on TV menus is not of any value compared to the old days when TV sets only had a few buttons to press to determine which channel you wanted to watch). The BBC will, at some point, lose the licence fee. The key justification for this funding model has disintegrated. In the twentieth century, you either sent TV signals to everyone or no one. Now subscription models are the norm. Different people on the same street can easily choose the channels they want and those they don’t. Indeed, it is now almost impossible to sensibly define what a television is – people now watch programmes on mobile phones or computer screens.
It might also be time to retire the term “broadcasting”. In reality, we are now in a world of “narrowcasting”. Concurrent with this is the fact that much of what is badged as “news” is really discussion about the news – largely assuming the audience already knows the broad outline of the key stories and instead offering opinions about them.
Like many other communication breakthroughs, there will be a battle between these new freedoms and the state’s desire to control them. We already face the ludicrous idea that the UK government will attempt to force online platforms to give greater prominence to “trusted” sources in a battle to combat “disinformation”. The idea that the state can curate such things is both misguided and malign. It isn’t a million miles away from Pravda being the official newspaper of the USSR (the open market couldn’t be relied upon to share the “truth” with potential readers, according to state authorities).
The exciting thing is that barriers to entry are collapsing. This is similar to the cost of printing falling to such an extent that it became easy for competent amateurs to compete in the magazine market.
What does any of this have to do with the mission of PopCon? We exist to argue and agitate for a complete overhaul of the machinery of government and a genuine reset of constitutional and democratic principles, not to offer commentary on how television viewing is changing.
The important thing is that the way to spread a message successfully has changed. Those who rely wholly on tried-and-tested techniques (leaflets, pamphlets, press releases, and conferences) will get left behind. All of these communications techniques still have their place (I especially think that face-to-face, “bricks-and-mortar” meetings are a vital way to put forward ideas – especially if the concepts are radical, controversial, or both), but the way to shift public opinion is to become as broad a narrowcaster as you can.
On a personal note, I now co-host (alongside comedian Paul Cox) a two-hour online show every weekday from 10am to noon on the UK Live Online YouTube channel. We attract an online audience of thousands of people every single day and reach tens of thousands of people over the course of a week. Of course, I’m not hired simply to lecture people about PopCon’s core message, but – because the show is all about commenting on the news in an entertaining and engaging fashion – I am able to get an impressive number of viewers to at least consider my broad thesis of the way our country needs to change.
The political parties, think tanks, campaign organisations, and pressure groups who realise that the new world of online broad/narrowcasting is now the most viable way of presenting their case will be those that win the battle of ideas. I’m determined to position PopCon on the cusp of this new, exciting wave.
Keep the flag of freedom flying!