Unexpected Media

Crossover C4

It’s been a bit quiet here in the last couple of months partly because it’s been a very busy period.  Mostly because I’ve been neglectful. I’ll try to catch up with reports and observations from some of the work we’ve done with Channel 4,  the BBC, Nesta and Crossover over the next few days.

At the beginning of June we delivered the first of three Crossover Labs for Channel 4 at Buxted Park Hotel in Sussex. The primary purpose of this sequence of four-day workshops is to persuade the channel’s tv commissioners to engage with the challenge and opportunity of new media. Channel 4 has not until recently seen its online activity as part of its public service remit and, as a consequence, its websites are not paid for or creatively owned by  the people who commission the shows they are intended to support. Television commissioning editors are only interested in the audiences attracted by television shows: the only metric of success is ratings.  On the first day of the C4 Crossover, as we talked about why we were there, one of them said: “Frankly, I’d hoped to retire before I had to worry about any of this new media stuff”.  Another said: “I know we’ve got a website. I hear it’s quite good but actually I’ve never looked at it”.

It was the most challenging lab I’ve ever directed. On every other one people are present because they’ve applied and been selected: they may feel apprehensive but they’ve chosen to be there. On this one there were some who had had their arms twisted and they were reluctant participants.

The lab lasted four days and by the end, all had gone through at least a partial process of conversion. The commissioner who had never looked at her show’s website had her damascene moment when developing a persona, an outline of a typical audience member – a 19 year old female student.. She said: “You know, I absolutely believe in this character we’re developing: she’s at the heart of our target demographic. And we’ve just decided she hardly ever watches TV.”

The lab culminated with a discussion about ways forward for the Channel which is now trying to move rapidly to adapt to the changing media ecology. I first pitched the idea of a new ‘workshop’ programme for interactive media to them 10 years ago, modelled on the project C4 had set up in the early 1980s to discover and develop new talent in independent tv production. In retrospect, it would have been too early because there would have been no market for the output. It’s possible, if they get it right, that the Channel has timed it’s move well. The infrastructure is there to build an audience and there is a base of talent, companies and individuals, capable of making stuff.

It’s still going to be a major challenge, though. The Channel is starting this process almost a decade after the BBC started trying to adjust its structures. The Beeb still isn’t properly integrated and it’s still difficult to find people at White City with real production and commissioning credits in TV who have any real interest in new media. It’s very hard for a media organisation structured on a 20th Century model of what media are to adapt to the digital landscape.