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Charlie Beckett

October 14th, 2008

Be Live Or Be..er..Dead

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Charlie Beckett

October 14th, 2008

Be Live Or Be..er..Dead

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

One of Emily Bell’s other insights from her Polis speech (see more doom below) was linking Robert Peston and Glastonbury.

Her point was that people put a premium on what is live and, therefore, more authentic.

The gold standard of TV news authority used to be the filmed package with carefully crafted soundbites, graphics and edited commentaries. Now when people want to know directly what is going on with the economic meltdown, they turn to a live two-way with Robert Peston. If they miss that they go to his blog.

It is an example of how the news media is coming to terms with turning into a service. We don’t hold a monopoly on the data, so the interpretation – and most importantly – the live, dramatic, instant interpetration – is everything. This is like the music biz.

Record executives used to have control over the packaged content which they released in a top down process that they controlled. Hence we got George Michael. Napster stopped all that.  Now we get the Artic Monkeys. Now there is more live music than ever before and probably more music available than in the past.

This has hurt the record executives and the share prices of music labels. But the customer is laughing. And so what if there are fewer rock stars snorting the profits? There are just as many good musicians and just as much good music.

Here’s another analogy. Perhaps the media business is like banking and derivative finance. As Adam Westbrook suggests:

“Once the economy’s been flushed out, tidied up, and cleaned up, maybe the same will become of UK media, leaving us with a slicker, cleaner, leaner-and hopefully more diverse and creative industry…?”

We made too much money out of repetition and duplication and artificial news models. Now we are being stripped of our surplus earnings as the public, economists and the politicians seek to determine our real value.

About the author

Charlie Beckett

Posted In: Media | Research