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Archive: Sky

User generated content doesn’t belong on the mainstream media

19 February 2007 15:06

Categories: Blogging, Current affairs, Entertainment, Internet, Radio, Technology, Television

I’ve been thinking a bit recently about “citizen journalism” and its relationship with the mainstream media. “User generated content” is very trendy at the moment. I had expected that to happen, but it hasn’t turned out quite the way I expected it.

Some people seem dead set on framing the whole issue as some kind of colossal battle between the mainstream media and citizen journalism. But bloggers often depend on the mainstream media for its stories — with a few notable exceptions of course. And by the same token, the mainstream media depends on citizens more and more to send in images of big news events such as the London bombings.

This is all well and good, but unfortunately it has become a sickeningly trendy thing for news outlets to do now. Now every time a turkey sneezes it’s all, “Send us your pictures to news@sky.com”, or even worse, “Have your say by recording yourself on your 3G phone.” I mean really. UGC has become a gimmick used by news channels to make them look all hip and cool.

Channel Five News seems particularly keen on the idea of citizen journalism. But they are so eager to push it forward that they end up completely missing the point. For one thing, one report I saw was an irredeemably dull item about cycle lanes. Not cycle lanes in general. Cycle lanes in one gentleman’s town.

Clearly, this man was quite concerned about cycle lanes (I can’t remember why, it was so boring). But what had obviously happened was that he emailed some special “Speak your brains” email address and some producer picked it up and said, “Great! That’s a really boring story, just like what them citizen journalists are into. Let’s do it!” And then they sent along a professional production crew and got this chap to talk about cycle lanes.

But that isn’t citizen journalism at all. The production crew probably made the decision that he would cheesily present the whole item in his cycling gear, riding down the cycle lanes and then “happening to bump into a camera” and mouth off about cycle lanes in a monotone fashion.

All they needed was a pointless two-way and that would have been it — citizen journalism becomes everything that’s bad about the mainstream media. Essentially it was a normal news report in every way, except that it was presented by somebody with little or no television experience. This is more like Points of View than blogging. In the blogosphere, this “story” about cycle lanes would never have attracted any attention whatsoever. Channel Five decided to put it on its prime time news programme.

The point for me about blogging is that normal-ish people have a big conversation. Sometimes they write about their own experiences and create their own stories about the world around them. People eventually find like-minded people and share their experiences, debate and have a conversation. Channel Five just took some guy with a hobby horse and plonked him in front of a camera.

Radio Five Live recently had some boring thing called “Your Five Live” or something. I think it lasted an entire week. And it was terrible. All week they were trailing a special debate to be. chaired by that voice of reason Stephen Nolan, about “the issue you told us concerned you the most”. Yes, you guessed it — immigration. That issue that seems to attract the regular Five Live phone-in callers but doesn’t seem to fuss people in the blogosphere that much.

I didn’t listen to the debate. I would probably have found it too depressing. It would have been a carnival of the knuckle-draggers. Maybe I am being a snob. Surely these are normal people who have every right to voice their opinion. Well, yes. But any old fool can rant down a microphone.

As I said, the point about blogging is that you have a proper discussion and a debate. Sometimes Five Live manages this, but more often it doesn’t. You just get somebody inflicting us with his verbal diarrhoea before being cut off by the presenter because it’s time for the news.

And just have a look at BBC News 24 or Sky News. Large chunks of the day are often dedicated to “Have your say” “debates”. What this actually means is numbskulls sending in emails and some editor somewhere picking the juiciest ones which a presenter then reads one line of. What you get is half a dozen emailers all of which have their own personal chips on their shoulder — but no conversation, no debate, no intelligence.

A new programme on Channel 4 caught my eye this weekend. It’s called Homemade, and it actually bills itself as YouTube for the television. People generate their own content and submit it to Channel 4. But once again this completely misses the point. The point about YouTube is that you decide for yourself what you want to watch.

Homemade is still put together by a bunch of television professionals who have chosen what they would like us to watch. The viewer gets no choice in the matter here. And we could especially do without the annoying Dave Berry presenting links between all of the clips.

All we have now is a rag-bag of items filmed on poor-quality cameras. Presumably the producers of Homemade thought the randomness and low quality images was what made YouTube popular. Well, not so. Most people just use YouTube to watch actual television programmes anyway.

The mainstream media needs to realise what user generated content can actually be useful for. At the moment, it is just a trendy gimmick — and its uses get more annoying by the week. People will always want television stations to create quality, big-budget programmes. If people wanted something home made they would watch YouTube, not Channel 4.

As for the news programmes, they need to be more aware that their job is to report the big news stories with expert analysis. If people wanted to know what people on the street thought, they would just read a blog. As things stand, user generated content on news programmes are toe-curlingly embarassing and always encourage me to switch off.

That is not to say that citizens can’t have an input in the news. Images of Concorde on fire and the inside of the bombed train in London genuinely added to the story, and professionals were not in a position to film these. That is the sort of cooperation between “citizens” and the “mainstream media” that can work brilliantly. The rest is just awful, gimmicky rubbish.

This post by Kevin Anderson is very interesting. The key quote:

The mainstream media believes that “user-generated content” has to come through their sites, their walled gardens of tightly controlled participation, so they miss the vastly larger opportunity that exists on the internet as a whole.

11 comments

Broadcasters should now be biased if they want to be

23 September 2006 16:21

Categories: Blogging, Current affairs, Entertainment, Internet, Newspapers, Politics, Radio, Technology, Television

The media is changing very quickly, and there are a lot of difficult issues that have to be sorted out. With the massive (and still growing, maybe even still accellerating) success of blogging, podcasting and vlogging, the boundaries between the mainstream media and the pamphleteers are becoming ever-more blurred. This week Michael Grade wondered about the digital challenge.

…I do not believe we are more than two or three elections away from the moment when some commercial channels will be ready to proclaim: “We win it for Tony, Dave, Ming (or whoever).”

Grade notes the difference in culture between the print media and broadcasters:

In the UK, we have developed quite different expectations of different media. With broadcasting, balance and impartiality have been statutory requirements: democracy is judged to be served by the absence of bias and partisan editorial agendas. For print, with its long history of struggle against state censorship, democracy is seen to be served by freedom of expression, and is characterised by partisan editorialising.

Television channels are still fairly heavily regulated by Ofcom. This is designed to keep television news impartial, which is said to ensure a healthy democracy. But were newspapers to be regulated in this way it would be rightly called an undemocratic suppression of free speech.

It might seem like a discrepancy. But up until recently, broadcasters were part of a privileged elite. A television channel could have a lot of power. You don’t have to go back far to find an era where the UK had only three and a half channels. People would be stuck with what they were fed. Television audiences of over 20 million, although almost unheard of today, were not that unusual back then.

A license to broadcast was a powerful thing to have. It was a privilege, and with that privilege came responsibilities. As such it was reasonable to regulate these channels’ news output. Otherwise just two or three companies would have had a ridiculous amount of influence over the electorate.

It was very different with newspapers. In theory, anybody could publish a newspaper. It certainly had fewer barriers to entry than broadcasting did. As such, press freedoms were cherished. A diversity of opinions unimaginable to broadcasting was available in print.

Today it’s a very different story. In just a few years it will be the norm for every television owner to have access to a few dozen different channels. There are hundreds available on Sky. It is now cheaper to run some television stations than it is to publish a magazine. And there are certainly more television channels than there are national newspapers.

The traditional analogue terrestrial channels are seeing audiences dwindle. The BBC, ITN, even Sky are all becoming less powerful. Competition has increased greatly. Viewers have so many choices, and broadcasting is no longer so much of a privilege. Yes, many of the new channels have been set up by the traditional broadcasters — but this is more of a damage limitation exercise than anything else.

But it’s not just the advent of digital television that is giving the traditional media companies food for thought. A far bigger problem is being posed by the internet. Young people spend far more time on websites like YouTube and MySpace than watching television. We live in an age where the world seems to be increasingly run by large, soulless corporations. But the internet is making those large, soulless corporations run scared.

Viacom (MTV) is particularly miffed that Generation MTV is fizzling out and almost bought Bebo to try and stay hip (it laucnhed MTV Flux instead). Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought MySpace after being slow off the mark to adapt to a new world in love with the internet. Most strangely of all, ITV bought Friends Reunited.

But in terms of news coverage, the emergence of citizen journalism should usher in a new era of free speech in broadcasting. With the advent of vlogging and websites like YouTube, who is to say what is and isn’t broadcasting? It is conceivable that one day soon there will be a blogger or a vlogger who is just as influential as somebody on the television.

For some governments, this means that you should regulate citizen journalists in the same way as you would regulate broadcasters. This year in Singapore the government attempted to gag bloggers during the election campaign. The Indian government also ordered ISPs to block popular blogging sites Blogspot, Typepad and Geocities. Two years ago, French authorities famously arrested a blogger for criticising the city mayor. Does that not all sound like a suppression of free speech?

Citizen journalism has created a new category of person somewhere in between the traditional journalist and the pub ranter. It’s a grey area. We would expect the traditional journalist to adhere to certain standards; we certainly would not expect the pub ranter to. So what should we expect the citizen journalist to do?

People in this arena are becoming increasingly ambitious. There will soon be the launch of a new internet television channel, 18 Doughty Street. Those involved are already among the most successful bloggers around. If 18 Doughty Street succeeds (still a big ‘if’, of course), traditional media companies will have to take notice.

As I said, the reason broadcasters are regulated is because they were in a privileged position. But they are now no longer in such a privileged position. We can get our news from a growing number of different outlets. Today, anybody can write an article or make a film and reach a large audience. There is now genuine competition in the media. There will always be a place for the mainstream media, but they are surely becoming less powerful.

Soon enough Ofcom’s impartiality regulations will look like an anachronism. Soon it should be time to wave goodbye to the impartiality regulations in favour of freedom of speech. Of course, this doesn’t mean that every news outlet would have to become a Fox- or Independent-style ‘views’ outlet. Broadcasters — particularly the BBC — will always want to appear unbiased. There probably isn’t much of an appetite in the UK for a Fox News-style channel — although I can see an opinionated channel based on The Sun being successful.

The point is that we are now lucky enough to be in a position where we have pretty much unlimited access to as many different opinions as we want. So it’s time to celebrate this diversity instead of suppressing it. Murdoch wants to launch a Fox-style channel in the UK? Why not let him? There’ll be thousands of citizen journalists ready to challenge.

2 comments

Wimblogedon

29 June 2006 15:53

Categories: Blogging, Current affairs, Scotland, Sport, Technology

Apparently the craze sweeping the tennis players at Wimbledon this year is blogging.

…for many of the players, the [rainy] weather meant the chance for many to turn to their favourite pastime â€” blogging.

Is that a recipe for disaster? Usually when public figures and celebrities try their hand at blogging it is absolutely shit.

Andy Murray’s blog is attracting a fair bit of controversy, which is a good start for a blogger. I cannot stand Murray myself. What a miserable bastard he is. Have you ever seen him smile? I haven’t. Infact, most of the time he is just grumping about a journalist or something. He seems like the sort of person who would frown when he hears he’s won the lottery. Cheer up man! You’ve got a career playing tennis, not bloody toilet cleaning!

Nevertheless, I do like this man’s blog.

I realise my hairâ€™s a bit of a state but it doesnâ€™t really phase me too much. Why get a hair cut when you can just put a cap on? Its cheaper to buy a cap than pay for half a dozen haircuts a year!

Quite right! Even in this post about haircuts and autographs he is still getting a barrage of comments from chippy Englishmen who can’t understand why Murray won’t support a foreign football team (beats me!). For instance, stats is a charming fellow:

typical scotman wont get his hand out of his pocket, get a haircut you tight git!!!

Now who is the racist between Murray and stats? All I can say is, at least Murray is man enough to have unmoderated comments on his blog.

Rafael Nadal is “blogging” for the ATP’s website, but I am taking one look at it and saying, “that is not a blog”. I know that’s getting into the boring old debate about what is and isn’t a blog, but face it: this is a static web page with no comments and not even permalinks.

All I can see is a load of boring photographs and some totally banal writing, completely playing into the stereotype of bloggers writing about their breakfast (for the record, I had two Weetabix today, but I am still bloody shattered). Just as well he was only writing it for the French Open.

All of the many ATP blogs follow along the same lines. I have never heard of Bob and Mike Bryan but apparently they are revolutionary doubles players. Their “blogging” is anything but revolutionary.

Dmitry Tursunov’s “blog” is much more like it. I like his sense of humour. And he is a bit of a typical blogger in that he uses far too many exclamation marks. Good on him I say.

So ATP has asked me to tone down on exclamation points! Oh really?!?! You donâ€™t like them?! Maybe thatâ€™s how I feel! Maybe I feel like putting exclamation points!!! Maybe I just like them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It smells like Bryanne [Stewart]â€™s hand has been in it. Sheâ€™s been turning ATP against my exclamation points!!! The only way to battle it is to put more exclamation points!!!!

But now I am just wondering what Bryanne Stewart’s hand smells like it’s been in… She has her own blog, but hers is a bit different because she is videoblogging, vlogging, vodcasting, whatever the hell you want to call it.

The problem is that it’s quite wooden. It is like watching James Rubin again. “Sorry I missed yesterday,” she says monotonously, “but I had other priorities. Um. Australia was playing in the soccer yesterday.” It ends rather abruptly. There is no goodbye. She just looks at somebody to the right of the camera with an expression that says, “Can I be finished yet?”

So the Wimblogedon revolution hasn’t quite been the complete disaster it threatened to be. Just like all blogs, it is a mixed bag and there are good and bad ones. If this was a tournament it would be a close final between Tursonov and Murray. Unfortunately Tursonov hasn’t written a single word since May, so victory goes to Andy Murray!

Comments closed

Sky: Broadcaster of quality

1 June 2006 14:49

Categories: Entertainment, Nostalgia, Television

I have just been watching Sky Three, which is Sky’s cheapo Freeview channel. It’s supposed to be like Sky One but a year behind or something. Sometimes it has some good stuff on it. I’m talking about Futurama here, nothing else.

Anyway, the idea behind many channels on Freeview (Sky Three, The Hits, TMF, Ftn, Sky Sports News, etc, etc) is to basically act as 24 hour advertisements for subscription services. So if you like the look of Sky Three, this is meant to tempt you to go and buy a Sky box and a subscription to Sky One immediately. But sometimes I can’t help thinking that Sky Three acts as more of a deterrent.

The programme I have just seen is a nightmarish mutant child of Trisha and Judge Judy. The graphics are all mock tabloid headlines: big bold white italic sans-serif text on a red background. The set is shaped like a courtroom, except it is the sort of courtroom that you could only see on trashy television programmes. It’s a techno-court with flashing lights and white metallic platforms instead of the usual modest wooden dock.

Sitting in this metal dock is the late 1990s equivalent of a chav; the sort of person who before the invention of the word ‘chav’ was known as ‘Trisha guest’. You remember the late 1990s: she is wearing not a Burberry baseball cap but a sky blue camisole that really emphasises her shape (and by ‘shape’ I mean ‘weight’). The whole thing just looks like it’s straight out of the 1990s. Even the sort of bonehead who will regularly tune into a programme like this won’t be fooled: this is a repeat.

At the end of the programme, the centrepiece of the set is revealed: a flashing sign that lights up (NOT) GUILTY, exactly like a (DON’T) WALK sign.

I can’t help wondering, though, if the usual British standards of fairness and justice are somewhat compromised by the name of the programme: GUILTY! Yes, including an exclamation mark. And at the end of the programme when the credits are rolling, the audience chants: “GUILTY! [clap clap] GUILTY! [clap clap] GUILTY! [clap clap]…”

I stayed until the end of the programme because I was curious to find out when it was made. 2001? 2000? Well it turns out that it was made in 1998. Somebody at Sky Towers has made this decision. Not just any old trashy tabloid programme will do to promote the Sky channels on Freeview. They have decided that only this eight-year-old programme called ‘GUILTY!’ will do.

I won’t be getting Sky Digital any time soon.

1 comment

And we interrupt this report to bring you a sneeze

21 April 2006 23:57

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Television

I wouldn’t like to criticise newsreaders too harshly. I imagine their job is pretty difficult, particularly on the rolling news channels where there must be a lot to keep on top of. Lots of people seem to bemoan the fact that newsreaders supposedly have an easy job because it consists merely of “reading the autocue”. As if that would be easy. Have they not seen recent series of ‘Have I Got News For You’? (Well, I haven’t, because it’s shit, but that’s not the point.)

But the news channels have recently become pretty unwatchable in the evening. Whenever I tune into News 24′s hyped-up star lineup of Emily Maitlis and Ben Brown it seems awfully uncomfortable. There seem to be awkward pauses, stilted banter and duff links all over the shop. Last week I saw Ben Brown interrupt himself when he was reading the autocue: “– as my colleage just has a sneeze there…” I’m sure Emily Maitlis was delighted that he pointed it out!

I don’t doubt that Ben Brown has had enough of getting shot at in warzones, but he never looks quite at home when he’s sitting at the desk. He always has an expression on his face like a sullen schoolboy, still in the huff having just returned from standing in the corner. I bet his shirt isn’t tucked in underneath the desk.

At the same time on the other side, though, it’s so much worse. Sky News’ James uhhh Rubin is really errr quite uhhh wooden a-a-nd uhhh… hesitant. But I guess you should expect some of that as he’s not had much experience as a television presenter (makes him an odd person for Sky News to employ as a prime time news presenter though). Mind you, he certainly seems to know his stuff.

Rubin never seems startled — he never looks like a ‘rabbit caught in the headlights’ as some newsreaders do from time to time. Instead, he just stares. And stares and stares and stares. I think he’s actually trying to solve a Magic Eye puzzle.

“I think I can see a pyramid!”