Neatly put by the bloggers today – why don’t we just call it the Carter Report as opposed to the Digital Britain report? I get that it’s a status report on Government not of Government, but it’s a pretty big deal altogether and needs a lot of thought. Unpicking the innumerable strands that make up what Digital Britain is by no means a simple task, but then neither is creating a digital economy out of nothing. Critics of the report have suggested that there is a little too much ‘old media’ in it rather than new media. Peter Bazalgette today at the NESTA debate likened this to propping up the shipbuilding industry in the 70s. Given the news stories around LDV (that great engineering firm once known as Leyland Daf Vans) seeking a relatively paltry sum to stay alive yesterday, it seems an apposite analogy.
I also think there is rather more to content than TV shows and music clips, and the media publishers need to step into the fray a little more with points of view about their economic models of the future. There’s also a relatively new and ever fragile economy creating start up businesses, but this vital and future focussed segment has been ignored by the Digital Britain report, so far anyhow. One could argue that the fragility of the whole economy is more pressing, but encouraging innovation around the edges of the content industry, and commercial advertising industry, has to be an outcome of any discussion around Digital Britain.
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Alastair Duncan
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 17 Nov 2009
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