Of the BBC, snails and polar ice caps
There’s a really fun game being played on the web right now. It’s called “let’s see how much we can agree with Tom Coates but still find a little something to take exception to, so that we can join in the debate without looking like yes-men.” And it’s my turn now.
Here are the rules. First, you read Tom Coates’s article about how Mark Thompson et al have justified Creative Future as due to the rapid pace of change, and how Tom thinks it’s not fast, it’s just that the Cassandras haven’t bothered to look around them. Next, realise that he’s talking a whole lot of sense, and very entertainingly, too. Third, quote the following bit on your blog:
My sense of these media organisations that use this argument of incredibly rapid technology change is that they’re screaming that they’re being pursued by a snail and yet they cannot get away! ‘The snail! The snail!’, they cry. ‘How can we possibly escape!?. The problem being that the snail’s been moving closer for the last twenty years one way or another and they just weren’t paying attention. Because if we’re honest, if you don’t want or need to be first and you don’t need to own the platform, it can’t be hard to see roughly where this environment is going.
Fourth, say it’s really insightful, but there’s one bit you take exception to. And then it’s the next person’s go.
Neil’s already had a turn, in which he says that “A degree of showbiz doubtless matters if you’re trying to shake up a place of the Beeb’s size”. And Lloyd’s played, saying that it’s much easier to say this if you’ve got a wallet the size of the BBC’s.
Here’s my go…
What Tom says is really insightful, but there’s one bit that I take exception to. It’s the portrayal of the people in “these media organisations” as some how blinkered or foolish. Sure, he says “one way or another [...] they just weren’t paying attention” but he also says “it can’t be hard to see”.
It’s not hard to see if you were looking in that direction. But 99% of folks don’t work in new media and have genuinely more important and relevant directions to look in — making programmes, looking for their next commission, trying to hit their increasingly tight delivery date, and so on. They’ve not got time to take a calm look at the gradual shift of content distribution across new platforms. Hell, until a couple of years ago they probably never thought of what they produced as “content”, and only ever used “platform” to mean the things trains turn up at.
Still think that’s no excuse for ignorance? Well, I’d suggest 95% of us are guilty of the same thing. Let’s talk about polar ice caps. I remember a few years back a Nancy Banks-Smith review of The Beiderbecke Affair. She told how Barbara Flynn’s character was so detached from reality that she didn’t buy coloured toilet paper because it wasn’t biogradable! What a loon! How we laughed! And today most of us worry about the ozone layer, the melting ice caps and global warming. We buy ten times more organic food today than we did five years ago[*]. We recycle 23 times more than we did in 1998[**]. Dammit, I don’t buy coloured toilet paper because I’ve heard it isn’t biodegradable. (It was on The Beiderbecke Affair, I think.) Yet the polar ice caps have been melting for decades. People have been telling us this for almost as long. Why didn’t we see it coming? It can’t be hard to see. Were we stupid? Were we foolish? No, we just had an awful lot of other stuff going on at the time.
So, yes, Tom’s piece is excellent, and insightful, and entertaining. And it says a few things we could do with realising. But it’s not quite the whole story.
Okay, I’m done. Who’s next…?
[*] Made up statistic.
[**] Also made up.
