[webcast-l] Re: [Community Television] Via the Internet,
TV's future promises to be more eclectic
Dave Rushton
local.tv at virgin.net
Wed May 18 16:27:09 BST 2005
Dear Bill and List
Where is the CMA going with community TV?
Community TV and community radio have nothing much in common - so far
as ambition, communications policy or membership of the CMA goes:
community and local TV aims for public service broadcasting recognition
(which community radio has not required and does not demand). With
local PSB comes the possibility of must carry and universal
availability - a local or community TV station in every borough or
council area across the UK on the best available platforms to take the
signal to the homes' TV free-to-air to sit alongside national and
regional TV. Is that what the CMA's calling for or lobbying for - or is
community TV perceived as serving a 'niche' audience?
The 'best available platforms for local TV' are DTT, cable, broadband
on TV (BT's version or Homechoice) or possibly the options that Bill
Best outlines in his recent mailing (see below) - requiring Tivo or
Bill Gates' or a DaveTV box - really, but it's no relation!
A difference in objectives between the local and community TV
protagonists and other CMA members (or perhaps it's a difference with
the CMA HQ view on community TV at least) is that local and community
TV require a network to enable their local programmes to be shared to
reach community of interest viewers. In the ongoing debate inside the
CMA - that has been underway since the AGM of 2003 - there has been no
evidence of a demand being made by members for isolated local and
community TV stations to pop up here and there (whether from bedrooms
or grander settings). We're not seeking to deliver services (in the
form of programmes) to 'niche' audiences, nor are the members active in
this area considering the prospect of TV services for towns or cities
only where community or commercial entrepreneurs can see an immediate
opportunity for a local TV service: in that respect its not like
community radio either. The structure of the local TV ambition and its
objectives is simply quite different from those found in the lobby for
community radio. Why is this?
Local TV is a whole missing layer of the TV network - more than that,
regional ITV has long been recognised as a misplaced arbitrary layer
occupying local TV's territory: community radio has never argued for
being either the rightful or even the missing layer of broadcasting, it
has framed its argument for services for distinct communities often
from a position of knowing those communities where members have made
radio or want to make radio - in essence, the desire for a radio
station in a specific location has been melded into a movement
representing a very concrete but basically me-too and stand-alone
singular set of entities - community radio stations. The CRA history is
by example - perpetuating numerous examples of community radio
stations. That's very positive - I'm not knocking it - but it's hardly
a demand for universal access to a local or community channel. For
radio its about the right to have a station: for TV its about the value
of the service.
Just because the local TV ambition is more abstract should not imply
its any better or more worthy - however it does require a
representative association to have a different mindset from that
occupying the CMA which still wears the wrong CRA trousers. Yet - not
all is difference.
If you stop and think about a community radio station, just like local
radio - it might be made up of anything from 50-90% music tracks,
mostly popular music, mostly drawn from national or international and
(rarely) ethnic or culturally specific sources: even more rarely
exclusively local in origin. It's mostly chart or nearby chart stuff.
Forgotten in the struggle to achieve each distinctive community radio
station is their similarity - and in effect - an unacknowledged
commercial copyright-oriented network spine is in place offering
quality music tracks that makes most radio stations in the commercial
and community sectors more alike than they are different.
What distinguishes each radio station from its neighbour are the bits
in between the music, the points of view, jingles, phone ins - the
language and tone of presentation and the spoken dialect. Look at the
RSLs - the TV RSLs that is - most of them struggled to find
programming, realising that their own original contribution might be an
hour or two a day at most - with a studio - possibly less without live
capabilities. Where did the RSLs turn to for programming to fill the
gap - to Sky, to ITN and Shopping Channels - often carrying built in
commercials and extending the reach of satellite TV.
So .... while most of the content of community and local commercial
radio is bought or brought in, it is at least (seems to be, sometimes
isn't I know) locally modified, locally selected and locally scheduled
- allowing local taste to dictate texture if not content. So the
character of a local and community radio station listened to across
several minutes at any time of the day will - probably - be localised
by voice, jingle or commercial. But with local TV - at least with most
of the RSLs - this has not been the case - there are local elements and
then often swathes of cheaply available seemingly arbitrary fill,
bearing no relation to local demand, participation or production -
other than the desire of large-scale TV to secure an audience wherever
it can.
Some of the thinking for the future of local TV could apply to
community radio - take greater control of the 'imported' material - the
music clips - even pursue a policy that supports local bands to
showcase their CDs and (on TV) music videos - swop these with other
community radio or local TV stations here and abroad, encourage
production within that largely forgotten but biggest element of the
community radio station and (in a few) local TV channels: the music
element.
There is a great deal of international emphasis in the CMA's approach
to community radio - sometimes it seems like the CMA is a would-be
developing country NGO trapped inside a prosperous country. This was
pointed out recently in a brief but heated debate on the cma-list - and
if its the wrong view, where is the evidence of community to community
networking? Are there examples of programmes made in one place in the
UK being relevant elsewhere - not on the bigger centrally coordinated
issues of racism or women or international days etc - no, where are the
networks of debates on eg fighting a school or hospital closure, or
less politically - programmes on a local poet, artist, a review of
books by local authors .... etc programmes that can be circulated (as
audio files) on the web. Are there any community radio stations making
programmes, specialising in programmes on topics their communities
expound - but also made for community radio 'export'? How frequently
are the showcase.commedia audio files used on community radio? There
aren't very many of them are there?
Is there a vibrant exchange happening outside the discourse of the CMA
- are there other micro-organisations (like ACTO) operating within the
CMA, having written the centre off for most of the nitty gritty
activism and even written it off for activity? Or is this just
leftist-utopianism - that community is now a self-interested radio/TV
group who introduce politics from outside rather than develop it at
home to share? There's so little to go on from the CMA's
correspondence, form Airflash - so who knows? To be hopeful, how is the
trafficking in radio programmes across the community sector
represented, is there a database, if so who looks after it - how do CMA
members access the audio files from other community stations?
I sense that by pointing to Californian templates for community TV Bill
is clutching at straws - a solution in search of a problem and that
here there are a least two dangers of a wayward organisation being
represented: a lack of passion identified in the home country as well
as at community TV HQ in Sheffield a thirst to respond to technical
solutions regardless of their relevance to solving real communications
problems.
Should we distinguish local from community TV? ... or from local public
service TV, from local authority TV or city TV etc - we've tried
'small-scale TV' to cover everything below regional scale (in the UK)
.... well no, we shouldn't distinguish them - not yet anyway - because
it's generally become accepted that the short-hand 'local TV' covers
all of these and the non-commercial interests are very far from being
marginalised just now. Fighting for 'local' is itself a valuable part
of the process: I'm reminded of 'Scottish TV, your local station' - a
TV station that was/is neither Scottish or local in its reach! The
local and community TV agendas may be different, but they do not fall
cleanly into 'local is commercial' and 'community is not commercial'.
The CMA commands a certain amount of coordinating and economic energy
in the public domain gathered historically on the strength of some of
its members being involved in community TV and choosing to be
represented within the CMA. The radio in CRA became media and CMA
emerged for good reason in 1995/6, not least because in Scotland (where
the change was agreed upon) the need to pursue radio and TV objectives
had taken place jointly in the Scottish Association of small-scale
Broadcasters founded in 1989 and this did not force older radio
objectives into an inappropriate template to tackle TV.
Today the CMA doesn't actually represent very many community TV
broadcasters, or even the ambitions of would-be community TV
broadcasters - as broadcasters with broadcasting that is. So Bill's
writing about the internet prospects is trying to fill a vacuum,
finding a way forward perhaps which might reconcile the lack of
interest among most of the membership with a new 'TV idea'. But while
the CMA claims to represent local and community TV most of the CMA
members involved in or aspiring to 'broadcasting TV' are also
represented via ACTO and/or the commercial local TV sector lobby.
The days of the Local independent Television Network (which the CMA set
up and provided the secretariat for) are over. The internal CMA
complaints with LiTN were twofold - why only broadcasters (terrestrial
broadcasters) and why organise together possibly conflicting local and
community commercial and non-commercial bodies? Some argued that the
'terrestrial broadcast' sector needed to be organised because it shared
a regulator who 'inspired' a set of problems and needs for an
association to represent - at the expense of the non broadcast, cable,
broadband - or even - the not very interested elements of the community
and non-broadcast TV sector. With LiTN away - has the non-terrestrial
community TV sector developed an ideology or even a strategy inside
the CMA - or has the 'community' distinction from 'commercial' been
made to stand up? Is there a vibrant non-broadcast membership, active
in discussion, policy formation and so on - we'll, sadly, no there is
not. There is no rallying centre at the CMA, no coherence. Efforts at
stimulating debate have failed - the community TV list is mostly
underused, or often used to circulate news of the BBC's interventions
in local TV activities. The BBC says 'thanks'.
The CMA made several mistakes of omission in not following through its
lobbying for TV during the final stages of the Broadcasting Bill in
2003; the CMA took its foot off the pedal, settled back as its valuable
radio achievements began to become clear and then - not least -
accepted Ofcom's judgement that community TV should await the outcome
of community radio experiments at its AGM in 2003.
Since then there has been an ideological struggle inside the CMA -
there are those who remain members but who argue for a coherent and
early advance in local TV planning and engineering (which has meant a
focus on DTT because the space in which to progress argument has been
through the Ofcom PSB reviews). These lobbyists went to meet Ofcom in
early 2004 to recover the lost ground given up by the CMA - because the
CMA refused to represent their interests and they have since become
involved together as the Association of Community TV Operators - ACTO.
I think the argument for local TV as a universally accessible form of
public service television (on whatever combination of platforms that
might involve) is probably the most important area of current
discussion. There are both social problems of recognition,
representation and change and then the technical problems of how to
achieve their solution: it may not be entirely problem free to
distribute video via the web - whether to a computer or a TV (and
Homechoice is the currently available option for that, but to date only
in parts of London). But let's not confuse the character or value of
the different endeavours: the broadcasting wing of the CMA aspires to
have local (including community) TV on the same platform as regional or
national TV, as accessible, as available, as free: that element of the
membership is not and has not for a couple of years been best
represented by the CMA - by its staff or by its Council and working
party.
This broadcasting wing of the 'party' is rooted in the democratic
ambition that rights of access are represented (and can be
misrepresented) in the broadcasting process, that broadcasting has to
date been centralised and largely metropolitan, commercial and even
(now) global (or abstracting) in its character with implications for
democracy, accountability and representation. The local TV argument
(presented in Citizen Television in 1993 and since) is that control of
the means of broadcast distribution modifies the character, the
intention as well as content of the production process and that within
a geographical and civic area as accepted, understood and identified
with by viewers will have an impact upon the identity and
identification of the receiving communities. In short, local TV is a
political and social ambition for viewers as well as makers, redefining
both audience and programme supply and content.
By contrast as a programme maker I can (and do through
showcase.commedia) put videos on the web and by various means encourage
viewers to watch - or rather - peruse them - the more eccentric and odd
then (perhaps) the more idiosyncratic or cult-like the following: a
niche perhaps. But this is an auteristic approach - even vanity TV.
The broadcasting objective in local TV underlines the universal
character and places a participating audience central to the
making-and-distributing local TV culture - the local audience is not
(like commercial TV) an audience that cannot know itself (see Don
Quixote's Art & Television, 1998) but an audience that is closely (and
can be more closely) linked through representation and debate on civic
issues and cultural activities held to be the common even
differentiating goods owned and shared by one community as distinct
from another.
In the civic audience a shared or shareable interest will permeate many
choices, forming common or collective goals in a local democratic
setting, while 'community of interest' is usually distinguished as a
singular shared interest in spite of or irrelevant to the local
circumstances of location. The civic community is geographically
bounded with shared and debated interests and resolutions in common
while the community of interest is bounded by its shared interest
perhaps to the exclusion of the diversity of debate in the immediate
lived arena. Having an interest in 'community TV' should never, ever be
described as a 'niche' interest - that may apply to community radio,
but I would not presume it does: we undermine all we might hold in
common by presuming that what we do is of itself the interest and not
the means to an end; the introduction or restoration of more equitable
frameworks of communication (of something less wordy along those lines).
Large scale TV will argue that the shared interest of an otherwise
abstracted spread out audience is fulfilled by an interest in watching
the programme the channel is showing - or on a more general basis,
their is an interest expressed by a particular grouping of viewers in a
channel which demonstrates an identity by showing particular kinds of
programmes.
At the large scale there is attention to building demographic
communities ('virtual audiences' - Don Quixote's Art and Television)
from abstracted viewers. For commercial television demographic
communities are constructed as audiences with potentially shared and
knowable purchasing interests.
At the end of the day local or community TV is not a species of
programme but an interdependent scale of audience. So community TV ....
serving ..... a niche audience is wrong on several counts .....
Regards
Dave
On Tuesday, May 17, 2005, at 05:05 PM, Bill Best wrote:
> Hi
>
> There is an interesting article in today's Seattle Times profiling a
> new Internet television company called Brightcove along with a
> programme on 'hog cooking' (???) to be broadcast on the Barbeque
> Network by DaveTV.
>
> DaveTV and Brightcove, along with companies like Akimbo, Total Vid,
> Open Media Network and OurMedia are part of a growing new group of
> companies called internetworks that are seeking to compete with
> regular network television and offer alternative niche video content.
>
> These offerings are likely to be delivered to the domestic user via
> platforms like TiVo and Microsoft's Media Center shortly.
>
> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/
> 2002276076_btinternettv16.html
>
> I believe that the Internet is going to play a greater role in
> delivering television content in the very near future - take the news
> from the BBC today for example
> (http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/05_may/
> 16/imp.shtml) - and that 'store-and-forward' delivery methods for
> television will possibly become the norm.
>
> I think this has particular relevance to community television as it is
> such a cheap and convenient way to transmit content to what is
> perceived to be a niche audience.
>
> There is so much of this news that comes out on a daily basis that I
> try to keep track of some of it via my blog at:
>
> http://www.colondot.blogspot.com/
>
> Best regards
>
> Bill Best
> --
> Community Media Association
> _______________________________________________
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> comtv-l at commedia.org.uk
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>
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