Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Written Evidence


Memorandum submitted by Arts Council England

1.  INTRODUCTION

  Arts Council England welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee inquiry into public service media content.

  This submission outlines our policies relating to distribution and participation, and our strategic interventions and partnerships with broadcasters and new media organisations. It also identifies some of the particular challenges and opportunities for the arts sector raised by OFCOM's Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) Review. For your reference, we have also included additional supporting information in a specially commissioned essay, "From arts broadcasting to arts media" by media consultant Anthony Lilley (Appendix 1).

  We have been following the PSB review with great interest and support its conclusions relating to the `enduring' benefits of public service content in the digital age. We believe that artists and the wider arts sector can play a major role in shaping this debate and working with broadcasters and new media partners to deliver public service media content as we move into the digital age.

  New opportunities are emerging for the arts through the impact of digitisation and new technologies. The processes of distribution, creation, collaboration and co-production have been transformed by technology, making it possible for more people than ever to make and distribute arts work.

  Technological developments in distribution offer new and increased scope for consumers of arts and cultural material. Live attendance and participation in the arts will always have a special immediacy and value and can never be wholly replaced by the electronic experience. However, research shows that people want to engage with the arts in new ways, both as audiences and participants. Digital technologies are revolutionising how we learn about, experience, engage with and disseminate the arts. They are also providing ever-increasing opportunities to create art specifically envisioned for media environments themselves.

  Government broadcasting and communications policy and regulatory frameworks are of direct significance to the wider arts sector and changes will undoubtedly affect broader provision, opportunities and impact on audiences, communities and society.

  It is vital that the environment for the arts and arts media content is healthy and that individual creativity and publicly funded arts are supported by a robust public service media content framework. Such a framework could maximise wider public investment in culture and the arts, and the potential public benefits of media.

  We would also wish to draw attention to terminology. We refer to "the arts"—by which we mean music, literature, dance, drama and the visual arts. Film is also a genre within the wider arts but which we exclude from our submission given that the UK Film Council has responsibility for this area and is also making a submission to the inquiry.

  This submission is structured in five parts:

    —    an overview of the Arts Council's role, policies and work with broadcasters relating to the areas of the Inquiry;

    —    the importance of PSB in promoting public understanding, access and participation in arts and culture;

    —    the future of plurality and PSB—including a review of broadcasters and the changing media landscape;

    —    the Public Service Publisher (PSP) and the arts; and

    —    a summary of recommendations.

2.  OUR ROLE

  Arts Council England is the national development agency for the arts in England. Between 2005 and 2008 we are investing £1.7 billion of public funds in the arts from Government and the National Lottery.

  Arts Council England has set out six areas of our agenda for the arts: taking part in the arts, children and young people, the creative economy, vibrant communities, internationalism and celebrating diversity.

  Arts Council England believes that broadcasting and new technologies are critical to the promotion and development of the arts in England, supporting our vision to place the arts at the heart of national life. Partnerships with broadcasters and new media organisations can greatly aid the delivery of the Arts Council's new ambitions for the arts in the 21st century, including making the most of opportunities to distribute arts content as widely as possible and ensuring that as many people as possible can participate actively in the arts including through interactive media.

  Our forthcoming distribution policy will cover touring, broadcasting and digital distribution in order to make the widest range of arts activities available to people across the country.

  We particularly want to see the potential of digitisation and digital distribution technologies fully realised and a step-change in the use of digital technology to bring the work of our leading organisations to a wider public. We recognise that digital distribution brings challenges. As a result, we are engaged at government level and internationally in discussions that are central to solving some of these, ranging from technology developments, for example, and progress in media literacy to intellectual property issues and the implications of the new Licensing Act.

  It is also essential that a diverse range of people engage with and participate in arts activity of all kinds, and we want to ensure that people can engage with art in a wide range of ways and discover and explore their own creativity.

  We believe that creativity and the arts are crucial not only to individual fulfilment and civic renewal but to the UK's value added economy—the "creative economy"—and to wider skills development. The creative industries account for more than 8% of growth in the UK. [115]The arts are therefore a key driver in a large and growing sector of the economy. They help provide core skills development in schools and higher education, especially for the creative industries. Often the arts provide the career gateways—the first jobs—for creative entrepreneurs and workers across the creative industries including broadcasting and media.

  We are increasingly seeking partnerships with those working directly in the creative industries, including broadcast and new media, to maximise the value of our investment and to deliver our ambitions for the arts.

  We support creative risk and experiment in individuals and organisations, recognising the role of the subsidised sector as a seedbed for talent that may later move into the commercial sector. There is considerable movement of talent between the subsidised arts sector and the more commercial end of the creative industries such as West End theatre, visual art, music, publishing and broadcasting.

  We already support innovation through project funding and training across a variety of emerging platforms: the Internet, wireless environments, interactive broadcast and formats such as DVD, CD and digital photography, and we anticipate that this aspect of our work will only increase in significance over time.

  Our work in education is key to new generations of creative producers and audiences, and as a driver for the creative industries. Over the last decade we have been developing and supporting initiatives that explore the creative uses of digital and media technologies within different learning contexts. We are committed to continuing this work.

  One example of activity where we have encouraged artists and arts organisations to maximise the potential of new technologies to develop new work and create greater access to it is New Work Network, which uses the web as a locus of activity for peer-to-peer knowledge development. Others, such as SCAN, bring together partners from higher education, creative industries and the museum sector in innovative collaborations.

The Arts Council and broadcasting

  The Arts Council works with PSBs to increase access to work of high quality and to stimulate creativity and participation.

  In order to make this possible, we support the view of the DCMS and OFCOM that a healthy PSB ecology requires a plurality of providers. Such a plurality is essential in helping us to reach mass audiences and new markets, particularly among those who have not previously engaged with the arts. We recognise the need to engage with all broadcast providers—subsidised, private sector and community—and work in partnership where appropriate to deliver our shared ambitions.

  We have developed strategic channel partnerships with the BBC (Memorandum of Understanding 2005-08) and FIVE, and are shortly to announce a major partnership with Channel 4 to promote wider public participation and access to the arts. These partnerships provide a strong bedrock for ideas and content development and have resulted in major successes, such as Operatunity and Ballet Hoo! with Channel 4, Fivearts cities including the four part Singing Estate series with FIVE, and Big Dance, Power of Art and the seven year Roots initiative to promote diverse arts with the BBC.

  We currently invest close to £1 million each year in broadcasting through a flexible, responsive "creative venture capital" fund. This provides significant financial and development leverage with broadcasters and has already begun to increase access by addressing areas of perceived under-representation, for example increasing the profile of regional literature and visual arts with FIVE, screen based dance and animation artforms with Channel 4, and Black and minority ethnic artists with the BBC.

  We have sought to work with broadcasters on a range of "beyond the broadcast" initiatives which have harnessed the catalytic power of mass broadcasting in the service of wider public participation objectives, creating pathways to participation, particularly for people who may not have experienced the arts.

  These include our joint editorial Power of Art interactive and online content with BBC which also included opportunities for the public to engage with specially commissioned new artists' work inspired by the series' artists. Last summer, we co-produced 40 live dance events with BBC local radio which became the largest simultaneous biggest dance class in the UK linked to BBC network output and the wider arts festival Big Dance.

  Further examples of how we are able to support new action research, new formats and areas of arts programming to stimulate public participation and/or increase public access to arts work via broadcast media include:

    —    working with broadcasters to provide linked support events, activities or information around event television to stimulate public engagement;

    —    promoting production and distribution of areas of the arts which we believe are currently under-served and under-represented in broadcast media;

    —    sharing risk and investing in innovative new formats or pilots which could have educational and legacy benefits;

    —    stimulating new opportunities for artists to work on television through artists' films and documentaries and co-commissions;

    —    working with broadcasters with high C2DE audiences in order to reach non- traditional arts audiences, encouraging engagement with the publicly funded arts sector's work or stimulating personal creativity;

    —    investing in new models of arts media and broadcasting and new areas of broadcasting such as the third "tier" of community media;

    —    commissioning research and evaluation into impact beyond the broadcast; and

    —    forging strategic alliances with other creative industries which are also looking at new models of digital content co-production and distribution.

3.  PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING AND THE ARTS

  Public service broadcasting brings substantial economic, social and cultural benefits to the wider arts and cultural sector.

  The broadcasting sector contributes substantially to the UK's creative economy and cultural talent base. The BBC and Channel 4 in particular are significant investors in new talent, artists' development initiatives, commissions and substantial arts projects, often leading new developments and acting as catalysts within the wider culture. The independent sector is also supported by a market for arts programming including music, drama and arts programmes, including documentaries about the arts.

  Public service broadcasting also brings significant cultural benefits to the public in drawing attention to the diversity of arts practice and provision, maximising the impact of public spending on the arts through increasing access to publicly funded and high quality arts, and encouraging direct participation in the live and digital arts.

Increasing access to the arts

  In terms of access, reach and impact, mass audience broadcasting is currently the key medium for arts media content and for many, provides the only ways in which they choose or are able to access the arts. The current PSBs—BBC, Channel 4, ITV and FIVE—deliver a wide range of arts programming, with high production values including performances and relays of music, theatre, dance and spoken word and literature, together with programmes about the arts to mass audiences, including those who may not be traditional arts attenders. Programmes such as Picture of Britain (approximately nine million audience) and Rolf on Art (approximately five million) which take arts as their subject and, critically, are scheduled on BBC1 in peak time, can generate significant audiences reaching across the socio-economic spectrum.

  Programming which showcases the highest quality arts can also drive up attendance and participation in the live arts, with mass broadcasting being uniquely able to act as a "call to action". The Tate, now developing its own production arm, has worked with all the PSBs and has research which strongly links broadcast programming to exhibition attendance. For example, 12% of visitors to Turner Whistler Monet at Tate Britain in 2005 said that they had seen FIVE's "Tim Marlow on [...]" broadcast programme. There was also a 10% rise in the online sales two hours after the programme aired. ITV's South Bank Show was credited with encouraging 16% of visitors to Tate Modern's 2004 Robert Frank Storylines, broadcast just prior to the show opening.

  PSBs can provide important entry points to new worlds of arts learning and appreciation through their programmes, support services such as 4learning and BBC Learning, and partnerships with organisations such as the Open University. They can encourage people to explore their own creativity through signposting them to educational and recreational participatory arts opportunities and increasingly in providing space for online debate and creativity.

  There is an important and increasing role for subscription, niche and digital channels such as Artsworld and Performance, and channels which feature arts content as part of a broader offer, such as the Community Channel and Channel U. These can provide platforms for arts content, even though they generally do not have the commissioning resources of terrestrial PSB channels.

  There is also an emerging market for arts media content on DVD and via online distribution, together with the expansion in the digitisation of art works and self-distribution/syndication online.

  For example, The London Philharmonia Orchestra's Sound Exchange initiative, "a virtual presence of the orchestra online" sponsored by BT's Rich Media, centres upon an interactive website with a bank of 15,000 sound samples recorded by the orchestra, free to download, for use in composing. The site also features live video webcasts.

Encouraging participation in the arts

  A growing element in arts media is the direct stimulation of participation, involving audiences in the creation of television arts programming or encouraging interactivity and engagement in media arts work. Broadcasters have increasingly invested in participatory formats such as Operatunity, which show the process of learning, and in projects which link event television broadcasting to educational/participatory opportunities in learning, live or digital arts such as BBC's 2006 Big Dance in partnership with the Arts Council.

  Catalysing activity and leverage of additional investment via public and private routes is increasingly possible as broadcasters extend into arts development and production through their investment in long term transformational projects such as Channel 4's Ballet Hoo, Castleford, Margate Exodus and the forthcoming Big Art Project. These are all complex arts projects in their own right, drawing down funding from a range of cultural partners in order to realise their vision and involve individuals and communities in the creation of the art works.

  In addition, people no longer expect simply to be passive consumers of art. In some circumstances many take on the roles of commentators and creators in their own right. In an age of increasing choice and personalisation across many aspects of their lives, but especially in their media habits, people, wherever they live, should be able to choose the kind of arts activity that interests them and decide how they want to engage with it.

  Culture is changing from something that is simply delivered to us to something that can be made or remade and remixed. Art, particularly for the 16-24 generation, is not simply delivered in its final form. Younger generations are increasingly seeing creative works as building blocks out of which to create new culture, not as an end in itself but as an organic form of art. The technology now exists and is in widespread use to literally modify an original work by remixing it or "mashing", or to use a range of works to illustrate your personal identity—as in many MySpace profiles—or to originate media yourself.

  Participative online projects such as the Arts Council backed Noise project or Channel 4's 4 Docs, aim to stimulate and encourage direct participation and, in so doing, blur the boundary between amateur and professional. Social network sites such as www.flickr.com and www.youtube.com are showcasing user generated content and creativity to an unprecedented degree.

  Arts organisations are also exploring how digital partnerships can bring new audiences and participants to their work. The ICA has been collaborating with Sony PlayStation Portable on the creation of a fortnightly strand of cultural programming, available for free download at www.yourpsp.com. This innovative partnership uses a portable interactive gaming platform to establish greater audience participation.

  We also believe that there is great potential to further increase participation in the arts via community broadcasting—defined both geographically and by interest groups. This new licensed "tier" of community media is providing opportunities for people to learn more about and become involved in the arts. Last year we commissioned major research, in partnership with the Community Media Association and the DCMS, into the nature and impact of the arts on community radio, and this is due to be delivered next month. This will inform our wider distribution and participation policies.

4.  THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC SERVICE ARTS MEDIA CONTENT

  Arts Council England supports Ofcom's rationale for a continuing and evolving concept of public service broadcasting in the digital age. We commend Ofcom for identifying potential issues and strategies including the Public Service Publisher (PSP) by which we can collectively preserve and maintain quality, originality and plurality in public service content.

  It is vital in our view that content which supports citizenship and cultural objectives is promoted and supported vigorously. The balance must be kept between this and a purely commercial or consumer focused approach to content. In our view, a purely commercial perspective will not be able to reflect or stimulate the wider cultural and social benefits underpinning public service media. In our view, this balance needs to be foremost in the minds of PSBs, regulators and policy makers as we go forward.

The arts as a key area of public service broadcasting/media content

  The arts have, together with news, children's content and religion, historically been one of the key PSB genres, with particular broadcaster quota requirements. In recent years, Ofcom has identified a downward trend for identified arts genre programming in terms of hours of output, the scale of resources committed and in scheduling out of peak time. It has referred to a current "dilemma" for arts genre programming in its summary of phase 1 consultation but also noting the popularity of music and drama genres.

  In fact, there are a number of current PSB genres representing the wider arts—notably music, drama and arts. In addition, increasing blurring or hybridisation within genres, particularly between arts and entertainment, has precluded an easy identification and monitoring of broadcast arts content. As media technologies continue to diversify from the traditional broadcast model and public service requirements imposed on some commercial PSBs are likely to be reduced as we approach digital switchover, a traditional genre based approach based on monitoring hours will clearly become untenable.

  Our interest in the arts as a key area of public service content therefore extends beyond a narrow genre based approach simply measured by hours or volume of output. We believe that there continues to be a very strong case and necessity for public funding of cultural media output, currently including but not restricted to the genres drama, music and arts, as these provide wider cultural, social and economic benefits, delivering innovative, original arts content that benefit us all as citizens.

  We do however recognise some potential threats to the visibility of the arts within the wider PSB debate and the new regulatory environment in which genres are replaced with wider purposes and characteristics as described in Ofcom's third part of its PSB digital review.

  These new purposes reference the arts, particularly within a learning context, including stimulating "our interest in and knowledge of arts and other topics particularly those relevant to our locality, through content that is accessible and can encourage informal learning".

  We also believe that the arts and arts media content can and do address other purposes including to "reflect and strengthen our cultural identity, particularly that based on shared local identifies, through original programming at local level, and on occasion bring audiences together for shared experiences" and "to make us aware of different cultures and alternative viewpoints, through programmes that reflect the lives of other people and other communities".

  Last year, Ofcom indicated that its immediate focus would be on "the most valued programme genre news," together with new media forms of PSB programming (the PSP) and Channel 4 Review. Ofcom has indicated that the next phase of the PSB Review would "consider [...] the potential risks to arts and children's programming on commercial public service channels" and that these areas would "need to be part of the debate." This does not suggest that they will inevitably be conducting a review into other areas of content, comparable with news. There is now, in the context of intense media coverage, a review of children's content but at the present time, no indication that the arts will be reviewed. Our research through the Taking Part survey into general public attitudes and behaviours shows strong evidence that the public values and supports the arts. We would be concerned if arts genre programming, as part of a far broader portfolio of arts content were not considered a vital area of public service content in the digital age.

  We believe that a rigorous review of arts programming and content, comparable with news and children's content, needs to be undertaken as soon as possible. This review of public service arts media should be wide ranging, beyond the context of potential commercial PSB broadcast deficit and examining new media interventions and opportunities. This would also provide an important baseline of information and analysis which could inform the remit of media organizations with public service objectives and also provide information to help the wider arts and cultural sector develop partnerships.

Public service broadcasters and arts content

  We propose that PSBs should clearly state their strategy, objectives and work programmes in such a way as to ensure that output conforms to public service objectives. We do not believe that arts media is necessarily a non-commercial space, but we are convinced that the market alone will not provide sufficient quality, range and innovation. With this in mind, it is essential that PSBs play their full role in arts provision and that their contribution can be measured accordingly.

The BBC

  The BBC has been and remains the essential cornerstone of public service broadcasting and together with Arts Council England, the largest public patron of the arts in England. We do not however, believe that the future of public service content should be the sole responsibility of the BBC, or that the arts would be well served by a lack of creative competition.

  There are still challenges and issues for the BBC post licence fee settlement, particularly in relation to its current and future presentation of and commitment to the arts. Our response to the BBC's White Paper in November 2006 (Appendix 2) identified our wish to have a clearer articulation of its arts and cultural strategy. We continue to urge the BBC to produce this. We have suggested a strong scrutiny role by the BBC Trust and clarity within individual service licenses to preserve arts provision and aid the wider arts and cultural sector in partnership development. We look forward to extending our own partnership work with the BBC to maximise our shared interest and support of the Cultural Olympiad in 2012 and support them in developing wider arts partnerships.

Channel 4

  A strong Channel 4 with a continued PSB arts remit is critical to the wider culture and to achieving reach and impact in the digital age; especially in key demographics enabled by the Channel's reach. Channel 4 plays an invaluable role in arts programming and in its bold support for original and wide ranging output, supporting cultural diversity, artists and innovation within the wider independent production sector. Channel 4's support for and investment in new original content created specifically for television has resulted in major broadcast arts achievements which have introduced audiences to the arts: such as its dance portfolio including DV8's Cost of Living, 4 Dance, its screen operas, Death of Klinghoffer, and its commitment to innovative cutting edge arts such as Animate and The Slot.

  We are not, in advance of OFCOM's review of Channel 4, able to assess its existing funding model but we are aware of their argument for a projected shortfall which could jeopardise their key role in the UK's pluralistic creative culture and signal a retreat from the volume and range of high quality output including the arts, drama and music. We will be supportive of attempts to assess and address these issues, alongside any realignment of Channel 4's funding model or remit—providing that a strong commitment to the arts is built into any new approach.

FIVE and ITV

  Both the commercial PSBs FIVE and ITV's excellent arts programming contribute significantly to promoting wider public awareness of the arts. With digital switchover, they will no longer have enforced quotas (which currently include arts genre quotas) and will be able to withdraw from such programming. It will be impractical to continue to impose public service obligations on the commercial broadcasters given this altered regulatory environment.

  There are predictions that a more commercial environment coupled with a lack of regulatory leverage will mean that both FIVE and ITV inevitably withdraw or retreat substantially from their widely praised arts programming. This programming currently forms an important part of the totality of PSB arts coverage but more importantly, these mass platform channels, both with a high proportion of audiences in the C2DE demographic, are important distribution outlets for the arts, promoting far wider public access to the high quality publicly funded arts, encouraging informal learning, and covering distinct audience and content areas to the BBC and Channel 4.

  Clearly, this has to be a real possibility, but we believe that digital switchover and less regulation alone may not yet be the death knell for commercial arts programming, which has historically been part of the wider programming mix and can attract advertisers. Commercial pressures already exist, yet ITV has just announced a commitment to three more years of The South Bank Show until 2009 (announced 16 January 2007), placing arts within a rich and broad commercial programming offer. Ofcom's PSB Review Phase 1 commended FIVE's `voluntary' increased commitment to the arts demonstrated clearly by FIVE's striking commitment to original production, which was not explicitly required within Ofcom guidelines. This has resulted in FIVE's arts output accounting for more than double the quota requirement in 2005-06.

  Audience reach, public awareness and impact will surely remain important objectives and there are already examples of arts partnerships with the commercial broadcasters achieving mutually beneficial aims. An example of this is our successful three year partnership with FIVE, Fivearts cities, which combines arts documentaries with a wide ranging "off air" programme of arts activities and events, designed to attract new audiences to the arts.

  Arts Council England believes that the regulatory leverage which has been a feature of the PSB landscape of quotas could be replaced by new models of partnership working which could still be of significant value to the public and wider arts sector as well as to the broadcasters themselves.

  At the same time, we recognise that the traditional PSB model has to expand to include newer forms of arts production and distribution. Public arts media content is no longer the sole preserve of broadcasters, although broadcasters remain crucial to the wider media ecology not least in that they provide mass reach. In addition new, more equal, partnerships between broadcasters, new media organisations and the arts sector will be important in the future to maintain and strengthen the quality of PSB. This is part of a trend in which we believe that the arts and cultural sectors are becoming cultural media producers in their own right. We look forward to seeing this role develop further and to playing an active role in it.

Public service arts content on new media

  Even within the current portfolio of PSB broadcasting, there are areas of under-representation of England's wider arts and culture. We believe that PSBs should bring the best of the publicly funded arts to large audiences and use imaginative new ways to engage new audiences in arts programming. But we also believe that there are opportunities which could be addressed more fully through stimulating and encouraging new media models of creation and distribution. We also believe that support for major broadcasting partnerships could add value and increase access and public participation.

  Lower production costs and the advent of broadband sometimes offer arts programme makers and artists working in digital media the opportunity to bypass traditional terrestrial broadcasters completely. However, the sector lacks the funding necessary to sustain what are currently interesting pilots and isolated or small scale examples. Many arts organisations do not yet have sufficient resources to develop and implement an effective new media strategy. Due to their small scale and the cyclical nature of their funding they are often unable to meet the costs of gaining access to new delivery platforms to innovate and develop new services.

  As a group they often do not naturally engage with technology, partly as a result of skills gaps and partly as a result of limited resources resulting in the prioritisation of other areas of their work. In a recent audit of North West Regional Arts Council regularly funded organisations, 82% identified the creation of digital content as an ambition but 80% cited the main barrier to IT/digital development was funding/cost.

  We believe that there is a certainly a case for the provision of public service material on new media. While the broadcaster compact and business models are radically altering, areas of new media production and distribution are offering significant opportunities for the arts. The major modal shift in media markets as a whole towards choice and control coupled with increased demand for participation represents clear opportunities for the arts which have traditionally often struggled in the mass market broadcast arena.

  The arts already play a dynamic role within the new media landscape, engineering concepts and testing user relationships. Artists and arts organisations are robust and critical partners in industrial projects and research and development. For example Blast Theory and the Mixed Reality Lab at Nottingham University are key partners in the European IPREG project with Sony. We welcome the opportunities that new media and the creative industries offer for developing creativity, for developing artforms, and for developing greater access for more people to arts and culture.

  Some larger cultural organisations are already beginning to address these areas of broadcast `deficiency' and the opportunities they provide to further their own work though working in new media. This is often achieved by securing commercial partnerships such as Watershed's partnership with Hewlett Packard, Royal Opera House with Sony, Orchestras output with Universal Music and Tate's agreement with BT.

  We have commissioned a paper from media consultant Anthony Lilley to support us and identify issues to consider affecting consumption and creation of the arts, as we construct our Distribution Policy later this year. Within this, he notes:

    The landscape of "arts broadcasting" has the potential to open up and to connect with other fields and with communities themselves in a way which the technological and ensuing social structures of broadcasting have prevented. This could be a new age of potential for artists, producing organisations and funders alike—but there are challenges. [116]

5.    THE PUBLIC SERVICE PUBLISHER AND THE ARTS

  We welcome the public service publisher (PSP) concept as advanced by Ofcom, and see the potential of such a concept in maintaining a level and quality of public service content in the digital age. We would hope that the PSP would have a strong cultural and creative remit responsive to the dynamic arts ecology.

  We look forward to Ofcom's forthcoming review of the PSP and the findings of its Creative fora, charged in particular with examining culture, storytelling, narrative and drama, among other key areas. We also look forward to contributing to the process by which more clarity on the concept, its proposed structure, remit, and funding are developed.

  In particular, we support the current work of Ofcom in looking at the possible role of a body with its centre of gravity in the new media (the PSP) and the ways in which it might further public purposes. We expect and intend to play a full role in those discussions and consider our own role as a potential partner in any work which develops from them; as we will continue to do with PSBs and other players in the landscape.

  In principle, we support public funding to support plurality and the PSP. We believe that the third party agencies described in Ofcom's PSP review should include the arts and wider cultural sector and that innovative new partnerships between broadcasters, the arts and new media agencies could be encouraged through an injection of creativity that the PSP potentially offers.

  Current levels of public funding for the arts sector could not support the ambitions of the PSP in maintaining and improving the quality of PSB. However, Arts Council England would welcome a role as broker, working with Ofcom and the PSP to stimulate and develop a greater number of partnerships between artists, arts organisations, broadcasters and new media players.

  We believe that the PSP concept has great potential, particularly in relation to supporting local arts organisations and communities, extending regional provision, and stimulating user generated content and community engagement. There are interesting emerging pilots and projects such as Let's Go Global in Trafford, Manchester, or Tennantspin in Liverpool, which are situating the arts in local media arenas alongside local news, and are proactive in situating the arts, artists and creativity in the everyday. Both projects work from non city centre locations and within the Arts Council's priority C2DE target communities.

  In addition, a key factor in supporting Britain as the world's creative hub is to bridge the communication and R&D divide between the creative industries and the technology sectors, enabling the creative sector to drive, develop and exploit the potential of new technologies. A PSP could go some way to addressing this.

  We would wish to support the wider independent production sector, particularly the regional production sector, which is an important part of the creative economy. One way in which we will do this is by helping to broker partnerships with the arts sector to devise and produce new arts content for broadcast or broadband distribution. We will be supporting a strategic pilot into this area in 2007.

  We believe that the arts sector can bring skills, experience and strategic resources to help the PSP fulfil its vision in the future. We can envisage exciting new co-funding opportunities across the cultural and broadcasting sector. It is our ambition that we and the wider arts sector are "system ready" for the digital switchover and the wider spread of digitization which will certainly take place between now and 2012, and are able to partner in a dynamic and effective way. There are commercial and voluntary models in new media for arts content, which may be eligible for PSP engagement or a combination of Arts Council funding levering PSP resources.

  Even before a PSP-like organisation might emerge, we see opportunities to build bridges between arts organisations, promoters and producers, the commercial sector, national broadcasters, and education and training providers to create a more integrated and sustainable national framework for the arts and arts media.

  Arts Council England would wish to encourage networks, production companies, local and community media companies, and arts organisations to work together, to exchange ideas with the aim of stimulating a wider variety of creative content across various platforms. We also recognise these new opportunities bring new challenges in terms of the law and intellectual property rights. We believe that Arts Council England has a role to play in developing the opportunities and addressing these challenges.

6.  SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

  We believe that the digital age offers great opportunities for the arts and for new partnerships to deliver original high quality media arts content. We look forward to new partnerships between PSBs, the arts and cultural sector, individual artists and arts organisations.

  Arts Council England wants the diversity and the benefits of the arts to be fully represented and recognised within public service broadcasting.

  Within this paper we have outlined some of the key issues for maintaining and developing arts media content.

  Our summary of key points and main recommendations to the Committee are as follows:

6.1  Maintaining quality and diversity of the arts within PSB and new public service media content

  We want the arts, traditionally a key element of public service broadcasting, to continue to be recognised and supported as a vital and diverse area of public service media content. We believe that public funding and assessment of cultural media output is important to maintain the wider cultural social and economic benefits.

  We would want to see Ofcom conduct a rigorous and wide ranging inquiry into arts programming and content, comparable to its current reviews of news and children's content. Such an inquiry would provide baseline and important data to inform the development of a future public service media content framework. Arts Council England would welcome a partnership role in such a review and would welcome the committee's support for this proposal. .

6.2  Supporting principles of plurality

  We fully support a strong and plural public service broadcasting sector which has impact and reach. We would, therefore, welcome the committee's support for the following:

    —    Arts Council England is a strong supporter of the BBC and we want to see a confident post licence fee settlement BBC that continues to value, invest and expand its arts programming, particularly in relation to regional and diverse arts.

    —    We would also want the BBC to produce a detailed cultural strategy encompassing the arts as part of its Creative Futures planning which will increase public value and partnership potential.

    —    We would want a strong strategic arts remit to be part of Channel 4's future role.

    —    We would like the excellent arts programming by FIVE and ITV incorporated into their digital future and that they will develop new partnerships to increase mass audience access to the arts.

    —    We urge the establishment of clear, measurable commitments to the arts by PSBs.

6.3  Taking the PSP forward

  We believe that there is a certainly a case for the provision of public service material on new media. We would therefore want the committee to support the PSP concept and suggest that this concept is further developed with particular reference to our recommendations in section 4 of our response.

January 2007


Annex 1

INTRODUCTION

  This essay is partly about technological change. But it is mainly about the way in which the arts and their relationship with media may evolve in response to technological change and associated social developments over the next ten years or so. In writing it, I have aimed to raise some of the questions which arts and broadcasting institutions, both singly and together, will face over the next decade. What the essay isn't is a prediction of which technologies will win out in the end. Neither is it a list of current gadgets and the futuristic claims of their disciples. By looking that bit further ahead, I have sought to draw sharper lines around the really big changes which are going on today, and to point to some of the directions in which they may take us. To claim deeper knowledge of anything more specific would be both arrogant and naive; if almost fifteen years of being in so-called new media have taught me anything, they've taught me this. Overall, this essay will develop the theme that the landscape of arts broadcasting has the potential to open up and to connect with other fields and with communities themselves in a way which the technological and ensuing social structures of broadcasting have prevented. This could be a new age of potential for artists, producing organisations and funders alike—but there are challenges. We are seeing the beginnings of an evolution which adds participatory media, self-publishing and niche distribution to the ecology of broadcasting; potentially to very great effect.

  It's easy to assume that changes in the media landscape are entirely driven by technology. Of course, digitisation is the key technological force which is triggering change, but, I will argue, technology per se is not the only force acting on the arts broadcasting landscape. Technological developments may create catalytic moments in which change begins, but the absorption of those changes into the culture generally occurs over longer timescales and, often, with unforeseen and unanticipated consequences. The connection which can occur between technological potential and social change can be hugely powerful; even more so when change spreads across intellectual, disciplinary, commercial and even legal boundaries. To develop a fuller picture of the landscape, we need to keep technological, social, commercial and legal elements in view at all times.

The end of arts broadcasting?

  There is a long-standing tradition in which the proponents of new technologies prophesy the doom and decline of established media. A cursory glance at, for instance, the commentary surrounding the arrival of television as a mass market entity in the 1950s would have given you every reason to believe that no-one would ever go to the cinema again, much less that a film like Titanic could take almost one thousand million pounds at the box office in far off 1997.

  Such doom-laden prophecies are usually fuelled at least in part by a desire on the part of the people making them to shape the future in the image of the new technology. This tactic is essential if you need to convince people that they should buy (literally) into that vision. Such simplistic models of the transition between media technologies have little or no basis in historical fact, however. This is because they take too narrow and technical a point of view. While specific media delivery technologies do die out, the medium itself survives in modified form. The truth usually turns out to be more sophisticated than the predictions. The newer technology most often exerts a pressure on the more established which sharpens our understanding of the unique properties of a medium. Cinema combines watching films on big screens, which can be done in the home increasingly, with socialising with large numbers of people to provide a unique experience which is not the same as watching a film on TV, no matter how big your plasma screen. This is the essence of the cinema experience as opposed to the technology of film which underpins it.

  Applying this thinking to the future of arts broadcasting and the possibility of its death brings two questions to the fore. Firstly, what are the unique characteristics of broadcasting and how do they relate to the arts and secondly, how are roles which have previously been played by broadcasting in the arts likely to be affected by new technologies?

  In order to tackle these questions, we need to consider a couple of major technological trends which are likely to affect the way in which people use media over the next decade. In different ways, these trends are both aspects of one of the most widely used terms in media today; convergence.

  The first thing to consider is that there are two major variants of convergence and that they're not the same. The first, delivery convergence, is concerned with how media gets to and from the user. At a basic level, the digitisation of content delivery is well advanced. Switchover from analogue television is becoming more of a public policy problem than a technical one. The internet, of course, is digital by nature and mobile phones made a relatively seamless switch to digital some time ago. It is technically entirely possible to deliver any kind of digital data over internet protocol (IP) based networks and so, all over the world, telecommunications networks, including BT with its 21st century network, are combining together previously separate systems to take advantage of delivery convergence. That said, there are still numerous media delivery systems which stand apart; including digital television broadcasting and most mobile phone networks. While the pressure towards delivery convergence may be strong, the costs of switching can be huge—and the benefits of doing so not necessarily obvious. Nonetheless, more and more media will be delivered along converging networks as the next decade progresses and, to bring in the next aspect of convergence, much of it will be consumed via increasingly intelligent devices.

  Device convergence is the second type of convergence. If you view the world from the point of view which equates technology with progress, from a techno-utopian viewpoint if you like, then the ultimate aim of device convergence is to create a single device capable of solving all our media and communications needs. While I do not doubt that this is technically possible (although I'm personally not sure it's that necessary)—in fact you could say it is here already in the form of a powerful, broadband-connected PC—I'm not sure that artists and content creators need worry too much about whether or not device convergence will happen. Much more significant for them is the fact that the modes and contexts of media consumption vary according to more than technology. Whether you're in a group or alone, at home or at work, travelling or stationary, relaxed or alert, creating or consuming (and many more) have significant impacts on your relationship to creative work. Technologies are giving us more freedom to consume and create as media break free from single devices so that it's possible, for instance, to watch a TV show on a mobile phone, but it's the changing nature of social uses of media which ultimately will have the last word.

  The trends which are affecting the content market as a result of technological and social change are, thus, very deep-rooted. There is huge choice in media which is driving the success of businesses which can help with the task of finding what you want. Into this category fall search engines like Google, electronic programme guides and even television channels and video (or audio)-on-demand providers, including Apples iTunes Music Store. Coupled with this trend is the important idea that the number of contexts in which we potentially consume media is expanding all the time as media become increasingly portable and pervasive; from mobile phones to screens in taxi cabs.

  But more profound still are the changes in the kinds of media we increasingly seek to engage with. Media which are based on control and contribution, such as computer games and the web are very much in the ascendancy alongside more traditional media. This is especially true when they build on the interests of communities and understand that, increasingly, the people formerly known as "the audience" also use media such as photos, music and videos to communicate ideas and impressions about themselves as well as simply to consume.

  If we look at the notion of arts broadcasting in this context, we see two directions of travel. Firstly, where is traditional broadcasting headed? To understand this question, we need to go back to a point made earlier and identify the unique qualities of broadcasting in the context of the newer media. There seem to be several aspects of scheduled broadcasting which will sustain it in the future. Firstly, when it comes to transmitting live events which can gather millions of people around the world together, such as the World Cup or major news events, broadcasting remains the best available technology and will do so for some time to come, especially if HD television takes off. HD requires so much data to be transferred that it will introduce a timelag in many western countries into the ability of broadband networks to deliver the content at least for a few more years. Put simply, while the individual customer's connection may be adequate for the bandwidth needed for HDTV, the effects on the backbone of the internet of using current technologies to deliver such pictures would be profound. Clearly, new technologies will come on stream to solve this problem, but within the next decade they are unlikely to reach the penetration of existing television networks.

  A second key characteristic of scheduled television is its ability to provide beats in the rhythm of society. Soap operas provide a regularity to much social discourse, as do new programme or film launches and the regular talking points provided by long-running reality shows. It is the scheduled component of this content which is of overriding importance—and this could be delivered across other technologies such as the internet or mobile phones—but, for the next 10 years, television is likely to have a key role to play. Occasionally, these television events on mainstream, mass-market television channels concern or cover the arts; the Proms on the BBC is a strong example as is coverage of music festivals and events such as the awarding of the Turner Prize. But they are relatively few and, along with much else, are likely to be further marginalised on commercial television in future. One of the key components of successful public service broadcasting in future is likely to be how well it addresses these challenges and bridges the popular with the "good"' and the "good" with the popular. This will take place through the activities of dedicated TV channels such as BBC 4 but it will also take advantage of new media.

  There is plenty of room for optimism. One effect of the falling cost of setting up a TV channel—and certainly of the low cost of setting up internet distribution—has been the burgeoning of smaller, so-called niche channels devoted to particular types of content. This was seen first in television with the rise of dedicated music channels such as MTV. Today we have channels for cooking, shopping, cars, quizzes and, of course, the arts. This trend is part of a wider picture of increased choice in media which has already had a profound impact on the broadcasting of the arts with the establishment of TV channels such as Artsworld. There is, of course, potential for more of the same as it becomes technically possible to deliver more channels over television networks. However, the limiting factor is likely to be the ability of any one channel to generate sufficient audience at any one time to cover its costs. These costs are likely to remain significantly higher in the sphere of broadcasting technology than they are in newer media.

  This idea of increased choice—also called the "death of scarcity" by some—is a profound component of the future of all broadcasting and, in particular, arts broadcasting. We are moving from a world of scarcity to a world of choice—and one of the effects we are already seeing is the so-called "long tail" effect.

The "long tail" effect

  Chris Anderson coined the idea of the long tail in an article in Wired magazine, which he edits. [117]He's since extended it into a very readable and important book. [118]The idea has a long pedigree and it happens to be a combination of counter-intuitive, significant and, more importantly, true observations. Its effects are already being felt all around us.

  So what is it all about? It goes something like this. The main problem for most media folk in the pre-digital world was finding audiences. Whether you ran a cinema, a DVD rental store, or even a TV station, you carried only content which could earn its keep. If you had the scale of ITV you could range from soaps to documentaries to local news—but not all genres earned their keep equally well in the short term. Along came multichannel and if you'd got a low enough cost base you could earn your living by putting out barely literate SMS chat channels masquerading as gameshows.

  But that's just the start of it. An audience spread too thinly is no audience at all. But it all comes down to how thinly you spread. If you're one in a million, then 768 people just like you are out there somewhere on the internet. The internet's a big place.

    We equate mass market with quality and demand, when in fact it often just represents familiarity, savvy advertising and broad, if somewhat shallow, appeal. [119]

  Before digital, audiences watched more or less what they were given. This world of scarcity produced a hits-driven culture. The reason Morecambe and Wise, brilliant though it was, got 28 million viewers at Christmas 1977 was that there wasn't much else on. There are many reasons why hits are and will remain part of our cultures and I reckon Eric and Ernie fit that bill. But half the population thinking they were the only thing they wanted to watch? Come on.

  It turns out that most of us want more than a diet of hits and it seems that the more we get the opportunity to match content to our real tastes, the more we like it. This is the essence of the long tail effect. The hits-driven culture is a creature of scarcity; it is less important, although still significant, in the digital, on-demand world we are now entering.

  Businesses like iTunes, Amazon and Netflix, to mention just a few, are showing that there's serious demand for tracks, books or DVDs outside the mainstream and that there is profit there. More than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles; that is from outside the range stocked by the largest physical bookstore. Pretty much every music track made available on Rhapsody is bought by someone every month. They might only sell one of each but they make money on each one; and they don't have to worry about the shelf space needed for all this stuff or the rent for the shop. If you plot the effects of this on a graph you get what's known as a power curve—lots of sales at one end (the hits) and a very long line heading off to the right hand side of the chart. This is the long tail. And it's a very big deal. Its implications for TV could be really huge.

  Suddenly, although hits and broadcast brands remain hugely influential in the landscape, there's more to it.

  Three types of business thrive in the long tail environment. Firstly, there are the long tail aggregators, outfits like iTunes, which bring together the full range of content (hits as well as niche stuff) to provide broad and deep services. If you combine together enough failures (or past successes) you can rapidly have a market which is bigger than that for the hits. In many ways, they share characteristics with public service broadcasters (PSBs) carrying a range of content to meet the needs of most people some of the time.

  Secondly there are niche suppliers and producers who bring together communities of interest around their products and either remove the need for someone else, such as a broadcaster, to gather it all together or who also make their stuff available to all kinds of new aggregators. This is beginning to happen as independent television producers move towards self-distribution of programmes, especially via services such as Google Video or iTunes. It doesn't mark the end of the broadcaster, but it does add to what we've been used to in the market.

  Finally there are the new people who help you find things. These guys are different to TV broadcasters in form, but not all that different in function. Google is the obvious example but there are many others. Essentially, search engines and even blogs are providing the third business function of the long tail, that of filtering, searching and finding. They are trusted to do this. Many businesses which are native to the internet exploit the long tail effect in one way or another. Ebay matches buyers to sellers, Amazon provides unparalleled availability of books and DVDs, iTunes does the same with music, and Craigslist with classified ads. Sophisticated long tail businesses like www.last.fm and others are combining the three facets of the long tail and forging new relationships with audiences.

  People are consuming more media but it's not necessarily consumed in the same way as even five years ago and new creative forms are evolving. But the biggest impact is felt first in content distribution itself; in this case, broadcasting.

  Broadcasting is a hits business. Today's hits are often just as significant as they once were especially as they span across media into newspapers, online and mobile but now what they lack in range they make up for in depth of engagement. Twenty eight million hours spent watching Eric and Ernie is nothing compared to the total media exposure and usage time of some modern media brands. The new environment offers opportunities to hit content to build even more of a relationship with audiences by deepening their experience of and engagement with the show. This tendency towards hits, in the UK at least, is tempered by the concept of public service broadcasting into providing content which goes beyond short term, commercial fare.

  The long tail could take this idea further. It shows that there is demand for all kinds of stuff which would have been marginalised in the daily schedules of broadcasters trying to reach wide but shallow audiences. New aggregators are beginning understand this and to show their colours as platforms for and even funders of content. Advertisers have an insatiable demand to pay for this in order to meet possible customers. And that's before we consider subscription and pay per view business models.

  For broadcasters the battle is beginning. They need to become trusted brands in this new environment and not rest too much on their laurels. They will protect their current broadcasting businesses against conflict from other channels for as long as possible just like recording companies have done. They'll, rightly, work hard to do this and Ofcom will need to look carefully at the impact of their strategies not just on the narrow broadcasting market but on the media landscape as a whole. This will test the most converged of regulators. But this strategy won't save them; they can't hold back the tide; better to surf on it and become creatures of the new environment.

  For producers and creators, there is huge opportunity but the problems will be the same as ever. How to fund and make wonderful work will still top the list. The good news is that as the market matures, it's likely to get easier to find audiences. It's great news for those with archives and back catalogues and should turn out to be excellent for producers who can navigate the more complex landscape of aggregators and funders. If they can do this, with help from brands including broadcasters and search engines, they'll find global audiences out there for all kinds of stuff; it might hearten you to know that arts programmes are a popular DVD rental from Netflix.

Towards arts media

  If the long tail effect is showing us something profound about the choices people make when they consume media, we mustn't forget the other huge trend in media technologies and the new ways in which they are being used—the so-called democratisation of production. More and more, the technologies of media production are becoming available to anyone to use, albeit that the skills to produce great media content are more difficult than the skills needed to wrangle the kit. At the furthest extreme of this phenomenon is the private use of digital stills and video cameras to record personal moments—remember the days not so long ago when there was scepticism that anyone would want a camera on a phone? Now watch any major sporting event and count the people snapping away with their increasingly high quality cameraphones. But the more interesting stuff is happening in the burgeoning public sphere between the established media and private activity.

  One of the most profound effects of the internet is that it has the potential to make private things public. Consider the millions of photos which are shared on www.flickr.com, the tens of millions of pages on social networking sites such as www.myspace.com and www.bebo.com or the huge numbers who are participating in online dating. The scale of the internet is able to transform some forms of activity and, in some ways, empower people or groups. The phenomenon of blogging is another example of this; somewhere between the professional world of comment journalism and a diary, there is now a form which is asking serious questions about the boundaries between professional and amateur (assuming that you think that boundary necessarily matters). My own project, FourDocs, for Channel 4, sits at the nexus of television documentary and this so-called `user-generated content'; something fascinating is happening and the potential for the arts is huge.

  We are entering a period where the ability to make and publish media is becoming more widespread than ever—both for individuals and organisations. At the same time, due in part to the long tail effect as well as cheap distribution technologies, the potential to find an audience is becoming greater than ever whether this is on a global scale or by unearthing a community of interest in your neighbourhood.

Making the most of the moment

  The wider social trends which have been discussed in this essay have hopefully provided some background detail. This short section will now set out some more specific issues relating to actual activity by arts organisations and their media partners. There is still a strong case for the presentation of the arts on mainstream broadcast channels and for continuing innovation in production to make that possible (from Operatunity to interactive coverage of The Proms). That kind of activity is not, however, the primary preserve of this essay. Before moving onto some major systemic issues facing the arts sector, like many others, I'll concentrate here on three aspects of new media activity which I believe present major opportunities in arts media:

    —    Beyond websites towards channels and communities.

    —    Arts on demand and in the archives.

    —    Arts remixed and remade.

Beyond websites towards channels and communities

  There are now few arts organisations which do not have some presence on the web. These range from fully-fledged sites with rich media and ecommerce capabilities to MySpace pages for small or up-and-coming groups with many variations in between. It goes without saying that in the online world, assuming that someone can find your site in the first place, they're generally there because they made a decision to click on a link or type in an address. While that doesn't necessarily mean they'll stay very long, at least it means they have some interest in what you or your organisation is up to. It's a good start. However, many arts websites, excepting those which aspire to the condition of art themselves, are mainly marketing tools and/or aspects of the organisation's educational remit. The web is the area in which it is easy to see the potential of arts bodies to become much more than this. By exploiting the potential of the web to deliver rich media content, for instance, arts organisations can become niche channels in their own right. The technology to do this is increasingly widely available—especially as companies like Google launch video services which make the technology available effectively free of charge in some circumstances. There is no real technical excuse not to become a `narrowcaster' if you have the media material at your disposal.

  However, the reality is that, quite often, many arts bodies do not have this content at all—either because they do not have the skills or budget to fund it, because they cannot acquire the necessary rights or, more fundamentally, because their work is not suitable to exploitation in this way.

  While TV content about the arts (such as TV documentaries) will almost certainly be amenable to exploitation via online distribution, many art forms are not suitable for this treatment. The rule of thumb for effective use of interactive media is to exploit the aspects of the idea or content which fit the medium well and, in the process, aim to deepen and extend the relationship between the audience and the work or organisation concerned. Overall, good interactive media can be employed to develop and support a community of interest around the work at least as much as to present the work itself. In the world of the long tail, the potential of well-constructed rich media web channels to become something comparable to a niche broadcaster is significant. Furthermore, by using facilities such as search advertising (like Google's Adsense or the comparable products from Yahoo and eBay), it is actually possible to defray some of the cost of delivering this content or, where the site becomes very popular, even to make money!

Arts on demand and in the archives

  One of the most common complaints directed at broadcasters is that there's a treasure trove of programmes lying unused in their archives. Put simply, in the age of broadcasting scarcity, this was a natural and unavoidable state of affairs. There was a limited number of channels and putting out shows on them was expensive. As a result, audiences needed to be comparatively large to make transmission economic. Broadcasting, almost by definition, is more interested in the new, the current and the popular than anything else. To some extent the concept of public service broadcasting has helped to ameliorate this natural tendency of television, over the years providing many surprising successes which bucked the assumed trend of television towards the popular and away from the "good".

  The age of plenty and the coming of the long tail are beginning to change this landscape very significantly—while there will still be hits, we need to stop defining `non-hits' as `misses' and realise that large latent demand exists for all kinds of content. Arts organisations are very well placed to benefit from making available as much material as possible from formal television programming to recordings of performances to backstage extras. There is likely to be surprisingly large demand for this kind of content if we can overcome the measurement approach of television in which overnight ratings are all that count. Video on demand, which is what we're really talking about, is a retail phenomenon—you count up how many units have been shifted cumulatively over long periods not how many people tuned in to watch the show at 9pm last night. This change in mindset is obvious but it's actually surprisingly difficult to overcome the "barb ratings"[120] mentality of many who have grown up with a broadcasting mindset. This form of mass media derives its meaning from bringing together huge numbers of people to experience the same event or content simultaneously—we should challenge the assumption that this homogenisation of culture was either necessary or beneficial. Thankfully, we are moving beyond it towards a more variegated media landscape.

  Once again, the technology is, in some ways, the least difficult aspect of the equation. Arguably more difficult than providing a platform for making available content is the acquisition to the rights to do so in the first place (particularly where older, archive content is concerned where contracts are very likely to have been silent on such futuristic concepts as the internet). Many of the rights models which pertain to the mass media world are at least problematic and at worst antithetical to the networked environment. I have written elsewhere about the need to realign copyright practice so that it is fit for purpose in the new environment. The need is urgent and profound—although the legal and technical solutions are within our grasp should we choose to reach for them. The mindset change needed to understand the new landscape will take longer.

  The second major challenge lies in ensuring that content can be found among the mass of material which is "out there"'. This goes beyond traditional marketing—although a strong brand is a big advantage online as in the offline world. Increasingly, search engines and the burgeoning area of "electronic programme guides" are becoming the most powerful tools in the quest to ensure that audiences can discover content. Most search engines rely on metadata, descriptive tags, popularity ratings such as cross-links and a variety of other techniques to discover content. By using these tools effectively it is possible to increase the likelihood that your content will rise to the surface when someone comes looking—but paid ad words, working hard to make key opinion formers such as bloggers aware of your work and a good helping of patience will also be necessary.

Arts remixed and remade

  There's also a really exciting extra dimension to consider if you are in a position to make available media content via new media networks. There is a burgeoning movement of making available content in such a way as to make it possible for other people to incorporate it into their own work by remixing or `mashing' the original. This movement reflects back the activities of a large and varied section of society—ranging from teachers to VJs, schoolkids to genealogists—who have the skills to manipulate media to use it in presentations, films and elsewhere and, more importantly, the aptitude to do so. My project FourDocs for Channel 4 inhabits this space to some extent by making available rushes for filmmakers to use in the films they subsequently submit to the site. The Creative Archive Licence Group—whose members include BBC, British Film Institute, Channel 4, Open University and others are beginning to release content in this way—BBC recently won a BAFTA award for making rushes from the Planet Earth series available to be recombined into a user-generated trailer by visitors to their online site. This is the kind of project which is scratching the surface of this kind of activity. There will be many more.

  There are copyright licences available from organisations such as Creative Commons to facilitate this kind of non-commercial use of content. These licences are finding many applications including on the photo-sharing site www.flickr.com and on the music site www.ccMixter.org. Many arts organisations are considering the ways in which making content available in this way could help them achieve their objectives and even move into new areas. However, as always, there are practical issues to consider. These include ensuring that there is full ownership of the necessary rights in content to allow it to be made available in this way. You might also want to consider the implications for the moral rights of the author or contributors if you plan to make available their work in such a way that it might be incorporated in other works not in tune with the original author's intention.

  Approaches to media content such as these are a significant departure from the world of broadcasting. Done well, they can deepen relationships with audiences into two way dialogues and firmly rooted communities. As part of a balanced approach to arts media, they are important new parts of the toolkit. But they will continue to exist in the strategic context of broadcasting for some time to come as well as in the online space. It is to the strategic context I'll now turn.

A reality check

  Three main practical questions arise from the preceding discussion of the future nature and context of arts media. Firstly, how might relationships change between arts organisations and traditional funders and distributors such as broadcasters and arts subsidy bodies? Secondly, and linked to the first question, how will work be made and innovation funded in the future? Finally, how will the skills and infrastructure needed for arts media develop? These questions lie at the heart of practical planning and strategy development.

  Firstly, it's important to think clearly about the relationships which already exist between distributors (such as broadcasters) and arts organisations. There are clearly strong relationships in some areas between the creation of live art and some broadcasters, particularly those with more dominant public service broadcasting obligations such as the BBC and Channel 4. It is essential for the fulfilment of their remits that both organisations maintain the level of current activity; particularly the BBC's commitment to music through its orchestras and The Proms.

  This paper is focused on the way in which relationships between media organisations and the arts can be of the highest possible mutual benefit in the new media landscape. I would contend that as both the BBC and Channel 4 realign their strategies towards more multimedia futures, as outlined in speeches by both Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC and Andy Duncan, Chief Executive of Channel 4, they might well see benefits from addressing the arts more fully and with greater commitment. This is not an appeal for tokenism, but rather because such a strategy of contributing content and marketing clout to artistic endeavour is likely to have greater impact in the world of the long tail than it ever did previously and thus help them achieve their remits. Their strategy should go beyond `narrowcasting' arts content via audio-visual, on-demand media online. It needs to be more than a broadband version of BBC4—although there is likely to be an audience for archive and new content of this kind. In addition, edgy, expressive work designed for the networked environment and with a creative voice which can cut through the noise is surprisingly rare. Where it does exist, it is often taking place without traditional arts funding—or on the edges of the arts funding sphere around education projects or the outreach arms of major cultural institutions. Much of this work is ambitious in scale and high in quality but limited in reach, partly because it does not find the support of aggregators—of whom PSBs can be one category—and partly because it is too often captured by institutional politics in one form or another. A greater commitment to innovation in online content could well pay dividends—once again if measured correctly in terms of their impact rather than just in brute numbers—for both PSBs as they look to modernise their remits.

  One major change in the overall landscape of arts media could well arise as a result of evolving measures of success. I've argued above that traditional broadcasting industry measures of success—which mainly amount to viewing figures and occasional focus groups—are not suited to the online environment. Neither is the mindset which goes with them. The short-termist view which is prevalent in TV is likely to fall out of favour as it becomes increasingly necessary to measure usage figures over longer periods than ever before. Concepts such as `impact' will be needed to address the question of whether a work has been successful.

  Funding bodies that understand this approach will find it essential to develop long term partnerships with broadcasters and, for that matter, other aggregators such as portal providers and even search engines to help deliver content, financial support and, perhaps most importantly, access to audiences for artists and arts organisations. It will become impossible—and unnecessary—for broadcasters to commission all the work which they aggregate and link. They are increasingly likely to seek partnerships to ensure that they get preferential or exclusive early access to work which is funded by others to supplement their self-commissioning. In such circumstances, they may well not fund the costs of shooting a performance or making a documentary about an artist, but will be willing to show it or offer it for viewing. This is already the basic model for purely online aggregators such as Google and Yahoo. This model is likely to become more prevalent over time. This trend could leave a funding gap for public content in general and certainly for the arts. It is unlikely that traditional arts funding as it is currently configured would be able to go near matching this shortfall—although innovative concepts such as OFCOM's public service publisher (PSP), could be the beginnings of a response to such issues. This approach could well supplement the moves currently being made by our major PSBs to realign themselves, although an organisation built from the ground up for this new networked environment is likely to approach issues such as rights, to pick just one, from a different perspective to more mature PSBs.

  One thing is for sure, arts organisations waiting for old-fashioned commissioning funding from the big online players will have a long wait. It will be some time, if at all, before this starts to happen. In the meantime, while distribution opportunities abound—including via digital TV channels dedicated to the arts—there will need to be strategic changes at the PSBs and or in the funding system at quite a large scale (say around £50-100 million per annum) if the opportunities presented by new media for the arts are to be met by a flowering of new work and new approaches to existing work.

  Finally, it is worth a short note on technology infrastructure. Put bluntly, technology is no longer the issue and, in my view, shouldn't detain arts managers for very long. Early projects in the field of arts online, which sought to create portals and spent considerable sums of money on technology, were products of their time. Today's landscape is very different to that of even five years ago. Technology is increasingly available via partnering, intelligent use of existing tools such as blogging, photo-sharing, online video hosting and others, to meet the needs of many arts organisations. There is potential that strategic arts organisations could develop some of the necessary partnerships at a sector-wide level before making these available to organisations in their funding chain. This could be an efficient and timely way to meet the costs and technical challenges of getting many arts organisations into the arts media age—but it will require leadership and vision at the central level if it is to be achieved.

  The main barriers, increasingly, concern the availability or otherwise of skills to manage and maintain services; the business skills needed by all managers, including arts managers, when it comes to making decisions concerning online strategy, including costs and budgeting; and finally, board development programmes which help ensure that arts media and the development of meaningful online strategies is not relegated to "nice to have" status. The business world has to some extent moved beyond this viewpoint—but, from my experience, it is still more common in the public sector and arts worlds than in many others. This is usually the fault of those at the top—in all sectors, not just the arts—failing to have direct experience, either professionally or as users, of the new media technologies which are increasingly common among audiences.

  Strategic bodies such as the Film Council or Arts Council are in a unique position to look at these systemic issues which affect the sector and address them. These may fall into a number of categories, but foremost among them are:

    —    Early identification of upcoming issues.

    —    Identification of areas of friction—such as information asymmetries, capital investment needs or policy barriers.

    —    Provision of schemes or services to mitigate the above.

    —    Strategic investment in public service/arts content to remedy deficiencies in the market and/or meet public purposes.

  These roles will become increasingly significant over the coming decade as networked media becomes truly mainstream. There are urgent issues around funding priorities, rights management and skills development which need to be tackled today. Strategic activity is required to meet these issues head on.

What is the role of arts funding?

  It is essential that existing arts bodies such as the Arts Council are able to respond to the changing landscape and to make the most of opportunities by investing in and supporting strategically significant projects. Some examples might include:

    —    the digitisation of archives;

    —    the installation of digital media recording and editing infrastructure at performance venues;

    —    assistance with the establishment of relationships with talent unions such as the Musicians Union and Equity;

    —    the establishment of relationships with aggregators and technology providers to allow arts organisations themselves to best use their resources;

    —    the provision of up to date information about arts media online and what others are doing—the creation of a community of practice; and

    —    increased support for artists who are native to the online space.

  Many of these activities are already ongoing. However, it is unlikely that investment is being made at a level sufficient to meet likely future demand or to solve the skills challenges which lie ahead.

CONCLUSION

  The rise of arts media and the increasing maturity of the online medium itself present a major opportunity to extend the reach and impact of the arts as never before. Arts online, like all new media, should be more than ecommerce or ticketing and information websites. These are the basic requirements of an arts organisation's new media presence. As the online space becomes increasingly video-oriented it is beginning to approach a new plateau of technological maturity. But the changes we are seeing are not primarily about the technology. They're about the society we live in. At root, they're about talent, time and trust. The talent to make and share work, the time to do it properly and trust in the ideas we share and in the organisations and individuals who gather it together, find it or signpost it for us. In that the future is reassuringly like the past; just a little different.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Publications

Anderson, Chris, "The Long Tail", in Wired, San Francisco, October 2004.

Anderson, Chris, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Random House UK, 2006.

Websites

www.amazon.co.uk

www.barb.co.uk

www.bbc.co.uk

www.bebo.com

www.ccMixter.org

www.channel4.com

www.flickr.com

www.last.fm

www.myspace.com

January 2007





115   DCMS Creative Industries Fact File. Back

116   Lilley, Anthony, "From arts broadcasting towards arts media", Arts Council England, January 2007. Back

117   Anderson, Chris, "The Long Tail", in Wired, San Francisco, October 2004. Back

118   Anderson, Chris, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Random House UK, 2006. Back

119   Anderson, Chris, "The Long Tail", in Wired, San Francisco, October 2004. Back

120   Broadcasters' Audience Research Board Ltd www.barb.co.uk Back


 
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