Is it just me who is utterly perplexed by the deafening silence that followed the much-publicised letter to Jeremy Hunt, from prospective Local TV licence bidders opposing the government’s Muxco proposal? Why is so much emphasis being placed on the delivery mechanism when local TV should be about deriving revenue from the distribution of engaging, relevant content, not the technology or the platform?
Maybe we need an analogue solution to this digital conundrum. In 1950, 23 European broadcasters got together in a Torquay hotel and laid the foundations of what must be one of the first ever content sharing agreements. Thus the European Broadcasting Union was born – a self-regulating alliance with each member agreeing to provide minimum levels of “free” content and services to the collective – and nothing whatsoever to do with the EU. Using the “virtual” currency of Gold Francs to trade between themselves, membership costs and dividends were subject to a complex but irrefutably fair algorithm that was primarily based on the number of TV sets within each region – in modern day parlance, reach. Read more on Is Co-operation the Secret to Local TV Success?…
