Category: Media Trends
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The promise by Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust, to speed up the Corporation’s internal inquiry into how far the BBC needs to be reshaped to meet the digital age is a welcome dose of reality. More is the pity that the management left it so late -- until the combined forces of James Murdoch and the Conservative Party were on the war path, breathing down the BBC’s neck.
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A review which has just been announced by the Office of Fair Trading into the rules affecting the ownership of regional and local media might well end up as a nothing more than a smokescreen for a far more significant re-alignment which is already taking place nationally without any sign of government interference.
National newspapers which have invested heavily in their websites – like the Sun, News of the World, Guardian and Daily Telegraph – are carving out their share of the expanding online television market without having to pay any heed to the old rules on cross ownership or monopolies. The likes of Sun tv and News of the World tv are outside the reach of Ofcom. It says they are not television-like services; the regulators and the government are happy to look the other way.
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Retaliation by means of television attack advertisements is at the front-line of political campaigning in the USA. In the Presidential election between John McCain and Barak Obama, a rapid response on the networks is critical. In the UK by contrast, it is the highly-politicised British press which more often than not provides an immediate platform. A tip off from a political spin doctor, a leaked document or a signed article play a similar role in influencing the news agenda and reinforcing the campaign message. In a lecture to visiting students from Boston University(29.9.2008), Nicholas Jones described the two techniques and he predicted that the lack of controls on political advertising on the internet, meant that the British advertising industry would soon be competing with the ad industry in America to produce the most hard-hitting attack advertisements.