Oxford Media Convention – another view

Luke has already posted one report on yesterday’s Oxford Media Convention. Here are my impressions:

• The opening keynote speech was given by Andy Duncan, Chief Executive of Channel Four. The man who spent 17 years at Unilever has done a very good job in his year and a half at Channel 4 and gave a confident and impressive performance. He opened by showing a short video which reminded us of some of the best programmes currently on the channel. At a personal level, he then made my day by announcing that the popularity of “Lost” has been such that the second series will start in May instead of August. His headline announcement was that Channel 4 plans to bid for the national digital radio licence due to be advertised by Ofcom this year which would give it enough capacity for up to eight new stations plus interactive services such as mobile phones. His main message was that the BBC is “a necessary but not sufficient” guarantee of public service broadcasting and that Channel will only thrive in the medium term if it can resolve the content rights issue and it can obtain “a lifeline” from Ofcom and Government in the form of non-cash assistance such as free spectrum.

• There were three parallel sessions in the morning and I attended the one entitled “Consumer behaviour and media platforms: The technology is there but will they use it?” Hugh Williams gave a pitch for Home Choice, currently only with 34,000 subscribers but about to take its video on demand offer nationwide in the course of 2006; Andrew Canter, MD of contentworx, talked about the BBC’s integrated Media Player experiment (on show in the reception area) and raised the intriguing possibility of an iPod unit with integrated mobile in 2006; Mike Short of O2 gave some encouraging results from the mobile broadcasting trial in Oxford and told us that Korea already has 300,000 mobile TV customers; Andrew Curry of the Henley Centre brought a sense of realism by reminding us that Internet take-up in the UK has slowed down and this is essentially a class issue.

• The next keynote speaker was Simon Sutton, President of HBO International. In spite of being British he has adopted an American accent and style. He explained that HBO has 39M subscription customers and is rapidly expanding its channel portfolio and outlets.

• There were three parallel sessions in the afternoon and I attended the one entitled “Digital switchover: the local, national and global picture?” This was not about timing and process, as I had expected, but totally dominated by a discussion of the scope for local content following switchover. Tim Suter of Ofcom summarized the content of a discussion document published the regulator that morning. It was pointed out that, in international terms, the UK has the highest take-up of digital television but the lowest amount of local programming. Barry Cox, Chair of Digital UK, wondered if there was a real demand and, if there is, whether broadband might be the better delivery mechanism. Much of the discussion focused around local news but, from the floor, Mike Short of O2 insisted that health and education information would be popular forms of local content.

• The final keynote speaker was the Secretary of State Tessa Jowell who has spoken at each of these conventions. Apparently she came close to using her speech to warn Ofcom about the consequences of introducing product placement in television programmes, but changed her mind in a late redraft of her address. However, she was surprisngly critical of the European Commission proposals for a revised Television Without Frontiers Directive. She decribed the current text as “unacceptable”, “highly bureaucratic”, and contrary to the Lisbon Agenda on de-regulation. She insisted that the E-Commerce Directive already covers the Internet and that the best solutions are self-regulatory. However, even when asked from the floor, she would not be more specific about exactly what is so onerous and offensive about the Directive. She concluded her address by talking about media literacy – “a particular personal passion”. At several points, she mentioned Ofcom’s media literacy audit but, since publication of this was postponed, there was little specific in her speech.

• The final session of the convention was a plenary one on “Production, New Media And The Role Of Regulation”. This was chaired by Emily Bell of the “Guardian” who rightly said: “It’s all about rights”. There were five panel speakers, the main one being Ed Richards of Ofcom. Although rights was a theme of the convention and the focus of this session, nobody was going to do more than explain the issues (Ofcom) or set out their basic position (Channel 4 and PACT). Real negotiation and compromise cannot happen in a public forum like this convention. And it will all be over by the next convention – either through a negotiated solution or (if that fails in the next two months) one imposed by Ofcom.