Au Revoir

Like my colleagues, I feel we’ve covered certain valid aspects of Public Service Broadcasting but like many of the opinions on here indicate, it’s a vast area to look in to. Add the factor of impartiality in the digital age (which was our main focus) there are more guesses involved than factual evidence of which way we’re headed.

Social media has indeed taken precedence over our lives when it comes to information, which makes it absolutely imperative for the BBC to maintain their strong filtration channels and use them ever more than previously.

With regards to the importance of Twitter and it’s influence over the younger generation, I was divided untill I saw the example used below by my colleague, featuring tweets from Channel 4′s Jon Snow. Having read some of them, the spelling errors and grammatical errors as a result of trying to cram everything in to 140 characters worries me.

Not just because I personally cannot stand cryptic writing and “txtng lng” but common sense tells you that there will be many of the younger members of Jon Snow’s following, whose spelling and grammatical abilities would be subconsciously affected by reading what one of British journalism’s stalwarts writes on his feed.

I don’t doubt his abilities for a second but the point is, whatever the reasons are for the misspellings and confusing grammar, they still went on the feed because there isn’t a filter to correct them. That is where the filtering of the BBC is not just imperative but a necessity as well.

Not just for impartiality but to maintain the high standards and high regard for public service broadcasting in the public’s eyes.

Having criticised Jon Snow to some extent, I feel it’s only fair I open the doors of my tweets to you in case you find any errors in my work. Do drop me a line if you do. It’s only fair and impartial.

Thanks for joining us here on the blog, it’s been a privilege. Been an absolute pleasure working with my colleagues Jessica Dowse, Lucy Bickerton, and James Horrell. Hope to see you soon.

The future of PSB in Europe

Unfortunately, I feel as if we have slightly neglected looking at public service broadcasting in other countries around Europe and the world. Some details may have been mentioned in passing, but we have not gone into too much detail about other countries that use PSB.

Here is an article from 2005 that gives an outline of the future of PSB in European countries:

The Future of Public Service Broadcasting in Europe and the Commonwealth

It may be slightly dated in terms of its publication, but nevertheless provides an important overview of what was planned for PSB in Europe over the last 6 years.

Preserving Impartiality

The argument was really about whether impartiality as a virtue could survive the huge influx of technology which has constantly been paving open the way for a double ended conversation.

Doubts have been raised over whether this raises the chances of biased views and opinions and appearing on news websites, which have always worked towards maintaining a balanced view. But surely that itself preserves impartiality in the bigger picture doesn’t it?

It’s about not presenting just one view which is straight down the middle but also housing the various ones existing on either sides of the equilibrium – from extreme ends to the more liberal centre.

Whether it’s television, online, radio, it still ends up representing everyone’s views equally.

Without Bias. Surely if it houses every kind of opinion under the sun. Obviously there are comment filters but they are generally there to prevent abusive and intentionally offensive points of view. People can still have extreme views without malice. Then surely, that is only going to contribute to further preserving impartiality in the digital age.

User generated content: love it, or hate it?

In the world of journalism and the media there seems to be an increasing fear – at least amongst trainee journalists like me and my colleagues – that user generated content (UGC) is going to begin to weigh in more and more on the industry and take away part of the difficult trade that we are trying to perfect.

Personally, I originally only saw the bad side of this – news organisations able to get pictures and stories without the use of a journalist. Now, this seems a slightly far-fetched assumption. Having talked to Tim Hubbard from BBC Radio Cornwall and from looking deeper into the prospect and the future of user-generated content it seems an increasingly promising aspect of the media industry. The BBC , for example, have a very select filtration process in which they use only the best pictures they receive, as well as double or even triple checking stories before they are published.

UGC is unlikely to ever take away a journalist’s job, more likely it will only serve to aid them. This content can provide pictures and stories which might not otherwise have been found. In my eyes UGC is more a source or contact for news that is occasionally used if the pictures are amazing or unavailable otherwise.

Take a look at these videos from BBC employees to see what they think and then make up your mind:

Video shot on a camera phone by Rory Cellan-Jones and an interview with Matthew Eltringham, Head of User Generated Content at the BBC:

Matthew Eltringham, discusses UGC and social media in news:

Radio 4: too old, too white, too southern?

Radio 4 has been criticised for not appealing sufficiently to young people, northerners and ‘those from ethnic and minority backgrounds.’

The BBC Trust has said that BBC Radio 4 needs to appeal to younger audiences.

In response to this, Victoria Coren recently wrote in The Observer saying, “Hurray! Radio 4 is to get younger, cooler, more regional, more ‘ethnic’ and totally different in way.”

This quote has angered a part of me which believes in not pandering to EVERYONES needs.

In my opinion, why should the BBC create radio stations where everybody is made ‘welcome’. So what if Radio 4 seems a little too middle-aged and middle-class for the average Radio 1 listener. That is precisely why the BBC have more than one station – to have something unique for everyone. This is the way it should stay.

In response to the BBC Trust report, Rod Little in The Sunday Times wrote: “Isn’t it about time Radio 1′s bangin’ DJs Fabio and Grooverider attempted to broaden their listenership and reach out to an older, whiter and more middle-class audience?”

Don’t get me wrong, I am your average Radio 1 listener and that is the exact reason why I feel as though I have the right to comment on the quote by Victoria Coren.

I think her view can be classified as ‘diversity’ gone mad. This is a true example where the BBC will be prepared to lower the quality of their output to please the masses.

Radio in the Digital Age

There are mixed opinions on Radio in the digital age despite the technological prowess making it more accessible to people at different points in the day.

You can listen to radio on the web now. That alone enhances the potential listenership, reaching those who haven’t got access to a radio set at the time, or the wider audiences across the globe who wouldn’t be able to get the frequency on the radio.

RAJAR released figures in 2009 about radio listenership expanding steadily and so did BBC Radio. Alexis Forsyth from Cardiff University has compared the positives and negatives of radio going on the technology platform.

Keeping quality in mind, a personal experience may help illustrate a point. As assistant producer of Cardiff City Phone In (CCPI), we were constantly contacted by listeners before, during, and after the show – giving us their feedback on different aspects of the show we produced.

While this may not be different from the time when technology hadn’t made as much headway, the difference here is it didn’t stop at direct phone calls. There was an online communal forum set up to discuss each CCPI show as it was broadcast.

When I personally had to step in once to present the show on a last-minute notice, we feared a negative backlash from the listeners. While none came over the phone, we had to watch out for the comments on the forum as well.

That’s added a realm of consumer control. There’s more scope now to criticise a bad broadcast or praise a good one. It isn’t just restricted to letters to the editor anymore.