Search results matching tag 'Ben Bradshaw'

The Sun goes down on the Labour conference

2114008 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:41:00 GMT

Last night was a strange one, make no mistake. The Labour faithful were in high spirits after Gordon's speech which had something for both the left (abolishing hereditary peers) and the right (a ban on council houses for teen mums) of the party. But later on the news that The Sun had declared its hand for the Tories after 12 years of supporting Labour changed the mood somewhat.

As debates raged verbally in the Grand and Hilton bars, things also erupted in the blogosphere with furious debate taking place over Twitter among those using the #lab09 hashtag.

Twitter tsar Kerry McCarthy attracted howls, well tweets, of derision when she tweeted: 'Labour doesn't need the Sun, we've got Twitter!' For what it's worth I think this is slightly silly but I'd question whether The Sun is still this all-powerful entity that its pompous hacks and suits like to think it is. Yeah it might have contributed to Neil Kinnock's defeat in 1992 but think about the media landscape back then and where we are now. Anyway they simply want to back a winner and one glance at the polls tells you which way the wind is blowing.

But if The Sun's desertion of Labour bothered Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw he wasn't letting on. Not only did he attend last night's News International bash (this is what I'm told - I wanted to crash it but was way off the pace and didn't even know where it was being held!) but way into the early hours of the morning he could be seen belting out an assortment of Oasis, Beatles and Monkees tunes around the piano in the Grand bar.

As he seems a nice enough guy - I met him earlier this week - I'll resist the temptation to make a snide remark. But 'excruciating' and 'painful' were some of the words tweeted out by onlookers.

Like Water for Broadband

1319935 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:46:00 GMT

Today's the big day for Digital Britain. The consultations have produced a very long wish list. I expect Ben Bradshaw will read out his in Parliament this afternoon. In a ‘simultaneous broadcast’ (how quaint) Lord Carter will be presenting the outcomes of his investigations into the state of Britain as a digital nation at the RSA. So listen in to Parliament this afternoon.

Early reports indicate that a lot of people will be disappointed. In order of moan, the music industry will be upset that the government is unlikely to ‘criminalise’ filesharers. Fans of local news will have to put up with the fact that people don’t buy local papers any more. Court reporting from the Norwich assizes will be given over to Google. The Technology industry will think the government isn’t going far enough, especially in relation to developing a ‘next generation’ infrastructure.

The BBC will think it’s got off lightly, frankly. Ofcom will become busier. My mum won’t really care. Broadband is important to her, but not actually as important as water, or electricity, or chocolate, for that matter.

My wish list? 3 million more homes online. Phone boxes should become internet points (as opposed to condom dispensers). And creating a digital economy that supports British content production in a more intelligent way than previously, which actually comes from software rather than hardware, and from people rather than pipes.

I’d like to see a British Google, Digg or Microsoft. But somehow I don’t see that coming about as a result of policy thrash.

And the outcome? There'll be ideas for government policy that will either legislate for uncompetitiveness (Korea and Japan already have far more advanced internet infrastructures) and force media companies into accepting changing state for the future. There'll be liberal protectionism for the past (especially in salvaging lTN with BBC monies). It'll certainly be a long list of wishes. But as ancient Jinn will tell you, three's probably enough.

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Where now for Digital Britain?

2182355 — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:29:00 GMT

497 days is a long time in politics. An exceedingly long time based on Harold Wilson's time scale. But it is the length of time it has taken for the media industry to lose not one Secretary of State, but two.

James Purnell was parachuted out of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and in to the work and pensions brief to take over from the disgraced Peter Hain on 24 January, 2008.

As it happened, within the time it took Media Week to interview the then secretary of state and subsequently publish the article. Thank you Harold.

But while our timing issue was merely annoying, the current decision to flip Andy Burnham over to health and drop Ben Bradshaw into the media hot seat just ten days before the Digital Britain report is due to be published seems extraordinary. But then, we are living through extraordinary times.

Political pundits suggest if the Prime Minister survives the week, he will most likely survive until Spring next year, by which time a general election must be called. Sadly, many media companies looking to the Digital Britain report to provide a few crumbs of comfort may not be so fortunate in the survival stakes.

When Media Week interviewed communications minister Lord Stephen Carter, who is leading the Digital Britain consultation and will deliver the final report some time around 16 June, it garnered industry opinion on the interim results put out at the time.

Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey noted "the crushing lack of understanding of the urgency required for changes to merger regulations in the local and regional media sector".

Andrew Harrison, chief executive of RadioCentre emphasised the need for "legislative reform from government as an urgent priority".

And Carolyn McCall, chief executive of Guardian Media Group, stated she was pleased the pressures faced by regional media operations had "rightly moved up the Government's agenda".

But realistically, how high up the Government's agenda can Digital Britain now be?

Ben Bradshaw will no doubt be being briefed to within an inch of his life, and Carter, as an excellent operator and with his media background, is widely viewed as the right choice to deliver the plan - though how much more appealing the ITV job must look right now to him, one can only speculate.

But when your bosses are fighting for their own and the Government's future, while desperately putting together emergency legislative reform of Parliament itself, dealing with regulations surrounding media ownership and advertising would understandably take second place.

While Gordon Brown's future is looking as shaky as a number of media operations, the fact he has outlived many thousands of unfortunate commercial, creative and editorial staff who have already lost their jobs underlines the need to make good the early promise of the Digital Britain report.

In his speech at the release of the Digital Britain interim results, Brown described the event at the British Library as "what I believe is one of the most important conferences we will hold this year".

While one can only hope he meant what he said - and securing the future of the country's commercial and creative media industries is more important than who happens to be pushing through the paperwork - it is difficult to see how any reform will take place before a general election is fought and, likely, a new set of hands gets its chance to meddle.