Famous for Fifteen Minutes

“In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”

—Andy Warhol

The future is coming. The media is fragmenting. As long as there is free access to the internet there is no longer any possibility of being brainwashed against your will by a monopoly media provider. However there is plenty of danger of coming across extremely biased sources and poor quality material. Is this a fair trade off? I think so.

Of course I am biased. I like to think of myself as a producer of content. I like to think I have influence. But perhaps I am flattering myself. I regularly have more than 5,000 people (unique users) visit my site in a month. That is of course more than Jesus preached to. But how does that compare to the influence of a newspaper editor in a small town? My audience is scattered across the whole world and many are in and out of the site in seconds, I can't really say that I have influenced them all that much. Five thousand visitors is not five thousand converts or five thousand appreciative fans. At least not yet. I live in hope.

Have you got a website? A blog? Some kind of web presence? What is stopping you? There are plenty of ways you can publish to the world on a zero or pocket money budget. You can publish to the world wide web without your own computer. By using computers in public libraries, free email accounts and free blogging tools you can publish to the world without your own computer, a home or a penny to your name. There should only be one obstacle that you allow to get in your way: having nothing worth contributing.

If you have something to express then express it, if you have the talent. If not then please don't try. There are more than enough very poor websites out there already. Not everybody can write an interesting blog just as not everybody can sing to the satisfaction of listeners or write poetry worth reading. Just because you can't write poetry it doesn't follow that you can't feel emotion and just because your blog wouldn't entertain your own stalker it doesn't follow that your views are worthless. There are people whose writings should be confined to comments on other people's blogs just as their singing should be confined to the shower and their poetry consigned to the bonfire. They are not lesser people for it. The world needs consumers as well as producers. Where would David Beckham be if everybody interested in football was actually playing it?

I was 18 before I did my first bit of publishing, my first efforts in the cause of propaganda. To young people today the words cut and paste may seem to be rather quaint and meaningless terms. Not to me. I did analogue desktop publishing. I used dry transfer lettering, gum and a craft knife with break-off blades. I found line drawings and cartoons and stuff. I photocopied the cartoons and enlarged and reduced them to give me plenty of options, I blanked out the speech bubbles so I could add my own text. Everybody steals material, don't worry about it. As long as you don't steal it all from the same place nobody bothers you was the advice I was given. Off the record.

I can see that my son is likely to be publishing to the internet before he reaches the age of 13, the semi-official age of reason for the World Wide Web. At the age when I was writing stories, in pencil, he is making videos with what is literally a toy camera and he is posting them for the world to see. And they're not bad at all. When he grows up he wants to make Doctor Who programs for real. I suppose he stands a reasonable chance, as long as there is still a BBC when he's older.

There is an uneasy relationship between new and old media. Print journalists and columnists are cursing the internet while writing their own blogs. A wider range of producers will provide competition for eyeball time, we can't expect to have the same habits we had when television had two channels and only broadcast for a few hours per day. Television is now firmly multi-channel, with the most important parts of the target market having access to many channels and also view-on-demand services. The days when a single television channel could expect to get the attention of the majority of the people have gone, except for very special events.

In this multi-channel world the need for well-financed public service broadcasting is stronger than ever before. The universities are pumping out huge numbers of graduates in media studies and the like. The desire to make and star in television and radio is stronger than ever before. The market is fragmenting meaning advertising revenues will be smaller than in the past. It is a recipe for dumbing down and reducing production values. That is why public service broadcasting is essential. It can set the bar for the competition. When competing against a channel without adverts and offering high quality broadcasts giving the people what they deserve to stay in the broadcasting business you will have to be competitive and give the people what they want. And when they can see what the public service provider can provide they will not be satisfied with cheap tat.

The BBC has helped British broadcasting be the best in the world by keeping everything competitive and by providing what the people deserve and need, not just what advertisers are prepared to fund for them to see. And not what the people ask for either, until they are shown it how do they know whether they'll like it? Giving people what they ask for is a recipe for stagnation, public service broadcasters should anticipate the public's taste, not follow it slavishly.

The web should surprise people. Every day should be a new adventure. A lot of the time people don't know what they will do when they open up their browser. The world wide web is a great adventure, the excitement of stumbling upon the unexpected is part of the charm of surfing.

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