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Charlie Beckett

January 17th, 2008

Torygraph TV: it's ok but why watch?

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Charlie Beckett

January 17th, 2008

Torygraph TV: it's ok but why watch?

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

The Telegraph continues to be the unlikely trailblazer for New Media offerings with its ITN-made Telegraph TV. At a practical level it works beautifully and is clearly packaged in to different subject areas. For me any online news site has to have video like this alongside it’s text services. If we read about a plane crash at Heathrow we immediately want to see it. I have no problem with the limited production values, because I don’t expect sumptious television when I am watching on my PC.

But I am less convinced by the attempt to offer something different to mainstream telly. In the case of Telegraph TV this is the political stuff, called Right On (geddit?) with people like Simon Heffer, Anne Widdecome, Iain Dale and others doing little video diaries, mini-debates, and polemics. It’s all perfectly nice stuff, but these are exactly the same folk I see all over mainstream TV all the time and they seem to be saying the same old stuff.

It’s not good enough just to dump Old Media stuff online, you’ve got to offer something fresh that takes advantage of the technology and the space it opens up for innovation. I’ll watch Telegraph TV again but I hope it is going to get a bit more adventurous.Š

About the author

Charlie Beckett

Posted In: Media | Politics