Week in Media: time to make your own future
If Channel 4 can indeed be saved from privatisation, the time may also surely come when streaming platforms, particularly those funded by advertising, are held to a higher standard, writes the editor
Whisper it quietly, but the Government may be finally giving-up on its ill-advised plan to privatise Channel 4.
Some insiders at Horseferry Road are expressing relief that the Government seems to have lost interest since the ministerial reshuffle.
As one source close to the company put it yesterday: “Now Whittingdale’s gone there seems to be a change in tone.”
John Whittingdale is, of course, the former culture minister who has apparently been at the centre of each successive Conservative government plot to privatise Channel 4. He left in last month’s reshuffle, as did the buffoonish Oliver Dowden who was “promoted” to Tory chairman. Presumably Dowden is taking a crash course in Russian.
Channel 4’s CEO Alex Mahon, in a recent column published by Mediatel News, made a canny argument that the broadcaster requires much more than saving – it requires a fundamental plan for a future in which it must compete with huge US streaming giants.
But a counterargument of sorts emerged this week in the shape of Claire Enders, who gave a familiarly sanguine assessment of public-service broadcasting’s future in a lecture.
“Enders believes that the “Let Them Eat Netflix” phase of the Government’s broadcasting policy is over, ” our columnist Raymond Snoddy wrote. “The penny has dropped that national public service broadcasters and the wide range of services they offer cannot in any way be replicated by the likes of Netflix.”
Indeed. Despite all the attention that we give to the “streaming wars”, do we actually take Netflix et al as seriously as we should?
After all, Netflix is routinely able to get away with proclaiming self-reported and self-defined metrics. This week it boasted that Squid Game had garnered 111 million “fans” – its strongest ever original programme launch within its first 28 days.
Netflix counts a view as something watched for at least two minutes. I sat through a film last night that shoehorned six different movie studio credits into the first 90 seconds.
The time may surely come when streaming platforms, particularly those funded by advertising, are held to a higher standard and are routinely verified by third-parties like BARB.
But this isn’t inevitable. This future has to be made by people working in the media industry now.
Which brings me to a shameless plug for our upcoming Future of Media conference on the 27 and 28 October.
This is an event where I’ve been proud to have played a role in shaping the agenda for the key themes. In the coming days we will announce more speakers and details of individual sessions; I’m particularly looking forward to interviewing our industry’s media leaders, both on-stage and backstage.
I hope you can join me later this month, but if not, my email inbox is always open for ideas on what questions we should be asking about the future of media, not just at a conference but every day through our reporting.