Introducing the Public Service Platform
In an age where the barriers of entry towards creating new media entitites (at least from a technological point-of-view) are becoming smaller and smaller, one could sit down and ask the question, what the role of public service media institutions should going forward, when we talk about new media?
In Denmark we have the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR). In the UK they have the BBC, and here Jeff Jarvis has come up with a suggestion, I think it’s rather interesting to look at in some more detail.
Basically, Jarvis is suggesting a brand new place for the BBC in the media value chain:
What if the BBC became an open network? What if you could build upon it the way many have built businesses atop Google?
The general idea is for BBC to build the platform and the tools for others to use to publish their content. There are a couple of arguments supporting this idea:
It would make a lot of sense, since the BBC’s and the DR’s are owned by tax payers, that we - media companies and content creators in general - got something other than programming back. A great platform for media distribution without any discrimination towards the content providers would be a very valuable asset.
It would eliminita the discussions around unfair competion that some content creators are tossing about every once in a while, when the DR’s and the BBC’s move into niches that compete with private enterprise.
It would provide a much richer experience for the end users to be able to find really deep quality content within one uniform platform. It wouldn’t be a portal as such, but it would potentially drastically reduce the complexity of having to master very different user experiences across websites.
You could argue that a model such as this could make a lot of DR’s own content producing people redundant. But I don’t think so. Instead they would be spending their time, passion and energy chasing all the real interesting stuff and content that no-one but the ones with the ressources of a government owned media institution would be able to digg into anyway. So in the end I think it could be a winner for them as well.
I wonder who dare make the formal suggestion?
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2 comments
as a former DR employe, I used to advocate exactly the same point for several years…..actually conceptwise since 1998!
The only thing coming close to it, is the blog-universe at blog.dr.dk - and the concept of MY DR.
Currently, I dont believe in the idea for DR, since it has become a top-down organisation, thinking in professional TV-broadcast-terms only.
But keep up the pressure….it the only way forward for a public service station, and a lot more interesting than the current marked-driven way of thinking.
Thanks for the comment, Anders.
I think we agree. The funny thing that strikes me about the notion of ‘Public Service’ is that DR people (and to some extend TV 2 as well) seem to think of it as simply related to content. By why not to services? Why not make it just as important to provide a platform for independent content creators (feel free to throw in an editor to keep the worst crap out) to get their content out there? Kind of like the way a library functions. It could have huge potential, and it would differentiate DR from the rest - and thus eliminate the constant discussion around the funding of the work they do (because people - and the competition would see it as inherently ‘doing good’).
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