So James Murdock has a go at the BBC and Ofcom at 2009 Edinburgh TV Festival (the James MacTaggart Lecture). One thing you have to admit about Sky and the Murdocks is their consistency. At any conference where I have seen any exec from Sky speak that have not deviated from blaming regulation and the BBC for the problems of the industry.
The pace is heating up as newspapers (a Murdock interest) are starting to diminish in circulations and revenue. Ask yourself how many people you see under 30 buying a news paper compared to those that don’t. Now think back just 10 years and the trend is obvious. Suddenly the BBC is the reason that the newspapers can’t charge for new online. I say suddenly but that really means that the Murdocks now see online revenues as the way forward but realise that if they charge the customers will just go to a free service provider.
The BBC and Ofcom are part of the market and BSkyB needs to get used to it.
One of the things he says is wrong is central planning and limited choice. This from a media empire that is “controlled” by the head of News Corp!
On the other hand (as with most propaganda) there is an element of truth. The BBC does dominate online news and not just in the UK. It’s a respected non-sensational source of news. With breaking news it will not present speculation as fact and is consequentially slower the CNN and Sky News. But the real problem is news is a commodity with a very short shelf life. Murdock may say that TV regulation is based on spectrum scarcity and that there is no choice, but news scarcity and limited access is how the newspaper got so big and powerful.
Like magicians the aim is to misdirect you so you are not looking at what they are really doing.
Murdock says that we have a analogue thinking in a digital age but he then wants to limit and control and to commercialise the digital age when the digital age is about freedom and choice. Trying to put the gene back in the bottle is difficult if not impossible. While his analogy of TV executives as frogs in water gradually being heated is one of the most accurate I‘ve heard for some time.
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