So what can we expect of a Tory digital Britain?

'The Future of Digital Britain' started late, which seemed very appropriate. Though to be fair to last night's event of that name at the LSE, hosted by media think-tank Polis, it was just a few minutes late in kicking off, unlike the dawdling dawning of a fully-digital Britain, which I still hope to one day witness.

Speakers at the event included Culture Secretary-in-waiting Jeremy Hunt. And what did we learn from the man who will surely assume control of the UK media following the next general election?

Well, we learned Hunt appears not to fully understand the controversial implications of "net neutrality", though he gamely attempted to answer a question from the floor which he thought was about illegal file sharing, defending in the process the rights of content owners who may ultimately feel the pinch of a tiered internet themselves (check out the BBC iPlayer effect to understand what first brought the net neutrality debate to the UK - clue: it's nothing to do with file-sharing.)

Queen's speech

Furthermore, Hunt alluded to the fact a Digital Economy Bill will be part of the Queen's speech today, though he said, having been over the speech with the shadow cabinet we shouldn't hold our collective breath for anything which will effectively or meaningfully address what he believes are the three main roadblocks to digital success in the media world, namely: 

- Limited bandwidth
- Intellectual property theft
- The decline of regional news

Regarding the first point, Hunt said: "We have some of the cheapest broadband in the world, but it's not particularly fast in comparison and if we just sit back the market is not going to do this on its own because the likes of BT only service what consumers want now... trying to solve today's problems, not thinking about tomorrow's." 

(Remind me which government privatised BT and made it compete for profit on a quarter-by-quarter basis? ...but I digress.)

Universal Broadband

Controversially, Hunt added that the goal of universal broadband should also be forgone in favour of investing primarily in high-speed broadband in urban areas where content and the lion's share of the economy is based, effectively saying broadband in the regions should be considered a bonus, rather than a necessity for anybody who lives there.

It's a point Big Brother's adoptive father, Peter Bazalgette, agreed with. "The current government thinks more about universality than speed. Speed and an economic stimulus should be the priority."

And once we have this high speed broadband - up to 100Mbps should be our goal - what does that mean for the media? More local news, less regional apparently. Though I assume that means just those local areas that are allowed into the broadband promised land.

"Birmingham, Alabama has nine local television stations," said Hunt. "Birmingham, England has none."

There's much we could learn from the US he insisted, such as the roles of major network affiliate schemes which can help local stations fill their schedules and prop up local news coverage.

And what of the nationals? More video but continued tumbling sales in print was the prognosis.

Hunt sounded confident the quality press could turn a profit from subscription models and increased differentiation through video content.

"I suspect newspapers will adopt a subscription model and if you are a Telegraph subscriber you can get that content on your laptop, Kindle, mobile phone and they can market to you on those devices as a subscriber."

And Hunt said newspapers must remain subject to less strict regulation than television in order to establish their place in the new economy, even if that means them broadcasting online and taking the fight for ad revenue to the broadcasters and into our living rooms as "the chaos of the internet" makes the leap from home PC or laptop to main family television.

And, at the heart of this should be a plan to preserve "the best of what we have" at present, which Hunt said means protecting BBC News in particular. Further investment should also be made in new content by the BBC and Channel 4 he said; suggesting the Tories do still see the value in a licence fee.

But who knows... and that seemed the take-away of an evening big on ifs and buts, coulds and shoulds, but light on anything more meaningful. Perhaps the fact the event was chaired by an LSE professor whose field she professed is "old and new media" suggests the stakeholders in this debate are still undecided themselves about the best way to encourage the inevitable changes within the industry.

Comments

[charlie beckett]

Hi Will,
thanks for that excellent report.
My much shorter article is here:
http://is.gd/4XSLY
Come and say hello next time,
cheers
Charlie