Umair Haque / Bubblegeneration

Friday, January 06, 2006

Media 2.0 at the Edge, Or Why I <3 the Beeb

Now that I'm in the States, when I make the mistake of trying to watch some news, I get, instead, a dose of catastrophically stupid anchorbots yelling at each other (or better yet, at me). You know the score - O'Reilly, Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, etc...

This is a mini case study in why Media 1.0 is dying such an agonizing, painful, awful death. I mean, here in SF I get about 10 news channels - and I still can't get any news. All I can get is screaming, shouting, honeymoon murders, infotainment, blah, blah. Not to mention about 30 mins/hr of ads.

Forget strategy for a second. We don't need any economics to tell us why media's dying anymore: (how can I put this nicely) it sucks. Beyond sucks. It absolutely blows. There are no words to express the suckage anymore.

Especially when the Beeb is busy not just giving people real news, but actually broadcasting from inside SecondLife.

Now that's a mini case study in Media 2.0 - going all the way to the edge.

I have gotta say, dammit, I really miss the Beeb (the real thing, not the cheezy BBC America). Nice one, guys - great idea.

-- umair // 1:58 PM // 17 comments

Comments:

The BBC consistently impresses me with its intelligent use of new technology and the net specifically.

I was at d.construct (billed as "the UK's first grassroots Web 2.0 conference") a couple of month's ago and Ben Metcalfe, the BBC's Project Lead for their "backstage" developer network, was one of the speakers and gave a very enlightening talk about the BBC's approach to the net/web2.0/media2.0 (his talk is freely available as an mp3 from the d.construct site).

Ben spoke about how TPTB within the Beeb were slowly opening up to new ideas, and how they were giving him and his team quite a bit of room for trying out new models.

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Paul Watson // 4:04 PM

We work with the BBC on a variety of R&D projects along the lines of exploding media, social media, etc. They really are quite open to new ideas these days and terrifically active behind the scenes.

Having a non-commercial model obviously helps, but there is also the distant but very real threat to the license fee in the future. If they fail to innovate sufficiently and give people the media they want, where they want it and allow the people that paid for it (us) to do things with it.

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paulpod // 4:19 PM

this is really interesting: how a public entity is better able than a private entity to give the market both what it wants and needs.

Of course the story here in the US is that such a notion is ridiculous, impossible, and damn-it un-american.

But the difference in quality between CNN (forget Fox) and the BBC (or even the CBC) is obvious. Does this show the limits of what free markets can offer? That perhaps market forces do not always result in the best solutions? Or perhaps there are just different market forces at work here?

I don't know, but I would like to.

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niblettes // 6:16 PM

Umair - welcome to the "side-stream" - your post is written like a true immigrant ... (man can I relate) ... Remember, you're a long way from London (but thankfully not in Kansas) ... your frustration with the US-MSM stems purely from the fact that you are no longer an interesting demographic to the MSM - as painful as it may seem, the nice folk that now surround you daily love this stuff; they have access to the beeb on cable, but none watch it - It's a lot like the tabloid press in London - the yanks love to mock the poms for reading that crap so I guess your post is just fair tit-for-tat. Trust me, this is one of the lesser culture shocks - wait until you read an "at-will" employment contract or get first-hand insight into how undemocratic the electoral vote is ... you too may end up "warming up" to AC-360 ...

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David Gibbons // 7:30 PM

Of course none of your comments address the fact that the BEEB can't make a cup of tea without deploying fifteen assistants, all paid for by compulsory license fees. The BBC operates in a different universe, where consumers are forced to pay the officially determined rate for what they may, or in many instances don't, want.

Plus, every time I go to England and switch on the news I get yet another on-the-spot report about how three people have been killed in a train crash in Kashmir, or Borneo, or somewhere (actually the last one I saw the train didn't even crash, they were sitting on the roof), and I'm thinking 'why in the world do they think I might want to know this?' It's not news, multicultural pap.

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Meme chose // 1:24 AM

DNFTT :-)

re : memechoose.

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phil jones // 5:58 PM

all lovely, but no one at the BBC seems to have had the wit to include a link to the actual (video) interview. or am i missing something?

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Anonymous // 5:20 PM

Hey Umair

check out www.vingo.tv

record and watch you fav programmes from BBC1,2, ITV and C4.

Quality isn't the best, the service is still in Beta (free), it is the only way to get some decent TV in the US for those who grew up on British TV.

Cheers
G

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