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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1999 Think creatively about content IT has always seemed to me that the broadcast industry finds it difficult to differentiate quantity and quality, the important and the trivial. In America a whole nation is retreating from the irrelevant Clinton-Lewinski deluge to discover conversation and games. In Britain the industry is plunging ever deeper into the trough of mediocrity with more soaps, game and chat shows, repeated films, and all manner of sex-related programmes. More channels means more choice is the axiom of an industry fighting for our eyes, ears and time. The prospect that more is less does not feature on the radar screens of those involved in this sector. For the customer, however, the future is all too clear, and bleak. We can expect a continued diet of declining content driven by the lowest common denominator - audience ratings at the lowest possible expenditure. Cheapest is now best. In fact, cheapest is the only option as the jam is spread ever thinner across more channels. The amount we as individuals and the advertisers are prepared to spend is unlikely to create the levels of income necessary to fund good-quality programming for the vast number of channels becoming available. Unfortunately, going digital and wide screen does nothing to improve the content. But the likelihood is that new and novel channels and market opportunity will become manifest with the deployment of digital radio and TV over the next decade. The fact that these devices will have integral hard drives will see people recording digital music and video direct off air. Many advertising tracks now achieve mass popularity as they are incessantly drummed into our brains. Just click on the icon associated with some travel advert and we could download a classical duet, for example. Or surfers in Australia could be isolated from a travel programme to be used later in a home video. Such technology presents a sizeable opportunity for creative people. The cost of producing good-quality music, videos and multimedia content is falling rapidly with the advance of personal computer technology. It is now possible to set up an acceptable-standard recording and animation studio in a bedroom, and make the output available globally online. While I have all the audio and video editing facilities necessary on my laptop to create professional-standard material, I do not have the wide range of instruments and equipment, or indeed the talent, to be truly creative. A key feature of technology is the ability to stand on the shoulders of previous generations, with creativity stacked layer on layer. In art, by contrast, material, processes and presentation are continually reworked, represented and reinterpreted. But technology will change this and overcome the limitations imposed by existing markets, interests and copyright. Here, the simple answer is to make every bit available for sale at a very low price: abandon Copyright for Accessright. If we do, we will see a global economy of creative material generating huge wealth filling hundreds of channels. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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