FryingPanFire

The problem with filling out so many application forms for funding, placements, new livers… are the questions you have to answer. How does one eke out money for old rope – or worse, how do you feign insightful replies in approximately 200 words?

Here are a couple questions I’ve had to answer recently…along with the answers.

Which TV programme has been the most innovative over the last year and why? * (Max 200 words)
Newswipe. Through the laconic sarcasm of Charlie Brooker, BBC4 have tapped into the sort of demographic that reads Private Eye, claims to have read Shakespeare and secretly dances to Baccara.
Brilliant in its use of news archive, it jump cuts its way through the haze. Most Britons have no clue that a good number of the reporters giving them their news gleaned their information from press releases, newswires, the BBC News website and Wikipedia. Ten minutes before broadcast. Fewer still know that some news presenters are little more than bedtime story readers who ply their trade with autocue – the clever questions they ask are bellowed down their ear by an anonymous gallery producer.
Newswipe unashamedly bares these truths. It’s Private Eye for telly.
Brooker’s editorial combs through the news and uses facts and deeds to trip The Man up. Televisual aikido.
Brooker takes us on a journey. On his sweaty sofa we see a man who is as baffled with how the world works as we are. The sort of chap you’d have on your pub quiz team.
It’s infuriatingly perceptive. Newswipe cuts through bullshit in a way that makes you think “I wish I said that.”

In your view, what should be the top priority in media policy for the new Culture Secretary? Why is it such a top priority? (Max 300 words)
Jeremy Hunt’s priority ought to be encouraging quality local content – not just formats that can be replicated and readily sold on to television markets around the world [talent show TV, I'm talking to you]. He’s stated in his keynote speech that he not only intends to push superfast broadband across the UK, but to accept Ofcom’s recommendation on reforming local media ownership rules. He will “significantly relax” rules to allow local newspapers to own local commercial radio stations and establish local TV stations.
A important idea that aims to strengthen “local communities”. He’s even hired an asset management firm to publish a report in the autumn. But Hunt forgets that the internet has remapped the idea of the local. It’s no longer a geographic measure, but an interest-based one.
“New York has six local TV stations, London has none,” Hunt says. But what can a local television station achieve that neighbourhood-centric blogs given more bandwidth or a newspaper tie-in can’t? The push to digital has already killed appointment to view television. Neighbourhood-centric and interest-based new media is where extra revenue should go because the content structure is already established. Blogs like Brockley Central already have a following. Trying to manufacture a local feel by allowing local newspapers to run mini media fiefdoms can only lead to the sort of contrived quality last seen on Ghanian talk shows shot on VHS.
The DCMS should press on with pushing for more local media, local TV stations, local radio, local everything. But if this government wants to “repair broken Britain” and encourage local communities to communicate, they should look beyond the box.

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