The Temporary Convention of Anarchists
Speech given at the Community Media Association Festival and AGM 2006 “Building a sustainable sector to deliver real social gain”
Date: 25/11/2006
Venue: City University, London, UK
Article
It seems almost wilfully destructive to be writing, or at least drafting, the obituary of the Community Radio Fund as we know it when it is at the height of its success. Of course any grant making organisation worth its salt can expect to receive more applications than it can grant but I have had a strong feeling from the beginning that the CRF is a rather special fund, focusing as it does on core costs rather than on got-up projects; and early on when we decided to put most of our resources into fund raisers and outreach workers I thought we were making a very distinctive contribution to a culture of self sufficiency. (Incidentally, in this round of applications we have received more than ever with an even higher ratio of requested funding to what is available. Clearly, however, people have not been looking at our web site to gauge what is a realistic pitch).
Yet we must not be self satisfied. Things that do not change will rapidly wither away. Our culture, even our digital culture, is littered with the corpses of initially vibrant but then static enterprise. If we care to look in our junk rooms we will find primitive digital devices that have been rapidly overtaken. The fact that broadcasting as a linear, analogue phenomenon remained the same in many ways from inception until the late 1990s should not obscure what is now happening and what is going to happen.
In talking about the future I want to make it clear that what I am saying is not an official view from any quarter, I am speaking as an independent analyst of eInclusion which is my daytime job as Director of humanITy.
What I have to say boils down to five major points respectively concerning:
- The means of broadcasting and publishing
- The distinction between broadcasting and publishing
- The shift from linear to on-demand
- The future of small and medium sized media enterprises; and
- Preserving plurality.
First, then, it is a commonplace that the means of broadcasting and publishing have expanded massively since the inception of digital data and the methods of disseminating it. We are bombarded with figures about the exponential expansion of data creation, consumption and processing. There are questions of how much new data there is, as opposed to data that is:
- Recycled digitally (such as the digitisation of books)
- Duplicated across channels (the same piece of music on more stations); or
- Altered slightly (such as Wiki amendment).
But behind all these qualifications the fact remains that the volume of data is increasing massively and we are only at the beginning. We have, for the past decade, lived in the gentle age of text and the static graphic on the internet with analogue spectrum becoming crowded; but we must now face the convergence that swamps the internet with moving pictures and audio. This, in turn, will mean a shift from the kind of web standard setting accomplished by the World Wide Web consortium to standard by Hollywood fiat. This, of course, means that the distinction between pictures on the radio and audio television with a few pictures will soon disappear.
(1) This makes it impossible for us to maintain the current regime of grants for analogue community radio but not for digital radio, nor to maintain a distinction between community radio and community television.
Secondly, we are coming to the end of the traditional split between broadcasting and publishing. If you define the difference as referring to the size and homogeneity of the audience, you might argue that The Sunday Times is a broadcast and that BBC Radio 3 is a publishing enterprise. If you argue, on the other hand, that the distinction has to do with the medium of delivery, then that distinction is breaking down.
This presents us with a serious problem because the laws governing broadcasting and publishing are very different with the former being much more restricted than the latter. Where do we want to strike the balance?
(2) My proposal is that the balance should be struck by keeping regulation on the accessibility and availability of both free and commercial content but replacing regulation on such matters as taste, decency, harm and offence with labelling on the basis that the more accurate the label the less onerous the regulation. In other words, we should veer much more towards a publishing than a traditional broadcasting regime
Thirdly, the shift from linear to on-demand will not be as radical as is frequently predicted. This is not because many people will not want on-demand services but because 80% of current media users are surfers and only 20% are planners. That ratio will change as some of the 80% gradually learn to use a favourites list and, effectively, surf in a narrow range; but there will still be many who want a trouble-free, trusted information broker such as local or national radio or television channels.
(3) Nonetheless, in looking at the way community media is supported, we need to abandon the distinction between linear and non linear.
Fourthly, the media will almost inevitably split between the very small and the very large with the middle sized players being swallowed by the biggest, or simply dying. This does not mean that we should be defensive about acquisition and death, that has always been the way of enterprise ecology, mimicking biology in an uncanny way, but what it does mean is that there needs to be a rich supply of, to extend the biological metaphor, fertiliser to incubate new and small enterprises.
(4) This, in turn, means that we need a community media fund which continually incubates new enterprises whether they are radio, television, linear or on-demand; but that also means no repeat grants, no second chances, no closed shop.
(5) In summary, then, any community radio fund should be for any digital information enterprise.
Finally, the problem for small enterprises is in making market impact. Community media enterprises cannot survive in this globalised world simply by repeating the pious mantra that people want local content, so they will pay for it. I don't think this is true. Some people want some local content, particularly about traffic (but this will decline as vehicle flow and then vehicles themselves are remotely monitored and operated) and they want local information notably when there is a crisis like a snow storm or a hurricane. But the increasing availability of global archive material on demand means that mediocre content, including mediocre community media, will be driven out by an unrelenting quality ratchet.
This means that whatever quality product local media produce should be valued which, in turn, means:
- Archiving
- Marketing; and
- Collecting.
I believe that these three functions should be the core of any derivative of the initial Ofcom Public Service Publisher (PSP) proposal. The reason why this is so important is that we need an alternative 'fuzzy pillar' of heterodox and even wild content to stand out starkly in contrast with commercial empires and the mildly but predictably heterodox BBC, and even Channel 4.
- Archiving. There is an important debate to be had on whether community resources should be archived by the BBC on behalf of producers and delivered through the player or whether they should be allocated PSP-type funding to run their own show. Personally, I think that a PSP entity should agree archiving metadata and standards with the BBC but it should not integrate with it. You don't want BBC lawyers crawling all over the content to see if it accords with corporate standards; in some ways one hopes it would not.
- Marketing. Clearly, the most important aspect of current content consumption is marketing. Material that begins as local has regional national and even global potential. Look, for example, at the market for content made today on the transformation of Stratford in preparation for the 2012 Olympics. Local radio enterprises and the University of East London could collect hundreds of hours of uncut archive now which can be packaged for global channels in 2012.
- Collection. Of course, individual enterprises could collect through services like Paypal but any broker needs subscription revenue rather than casual payment.
(6) My proposal is that a second leg of community media funding should be devoted to these three functions (archiving, marketing and collection).
This does not need the daunting £300 million top-slicing which frightened the horses and which fundamentally misunderstood the market. There is a mass of high quality self published content which people want to upload and on which they would be happy to collect modest amounts for minimal trouble. There are bits of the social media which will always be hopelessly self indulgent, exhibitionist or simply low quality but there will be much that has an economic potential. We don't want another alternative television enterprise. If the BBC had stuck to its charter we wouldn't have needed Channel Four and if it had stuck to its remit we wouldn't need the PSP; but we do.
What matters now is that we perform the almost impossible task of organising a temporary convention of anarchists which lasts just long enough to get this agenda executed.