Luke Alexander's blog

I don’t attend a great number of conferences, and I am always fascinated when I do by the struggle speakers have to say something genuinely visionary while at the same time accurately reflecting the realities to which the organisations they represent are acutely sensitive.

In this context, today’s Westminster eForum on VoD, IPTV and Webcasting managed a particularly good balancing act, with some excellent commentary from Richard Halton (Project Canvas), Tess Alps (Thinkbox), Asanga Gunatillaka (Virgin TV) and Pete Johnson (BBFC) amongst others. All managed to avoid being bogged down by gazing into crystal balls and demonstrated quite how exciting a combination high quality creative content and new distribution methods can be.

Much of the discussion focused on what on-demand channels need to offer consumers to attract mainstream viewers. For what it’s worth, I think many of the panelists underestimated the appetite for VoD services based on current behaviours which I feel require only a unified and accessible platform to be changed forever.

For this reason, it was great to hear John Keeling from Arqiva mention the power of the PS3′s iPlayer integration, and fascinating to find out more about Project Canvas, which will offer an open platform for public broadcasting, a new wave of semi-professional but high quality content providers and traditional broadcasters alike- think AppStore meets Freeview meets YouTube channels.

Much of the rest of the discussion concerned the difficulty of regulating on-demand (and particularly Internet-based services). On this I have very little to say other than gosh, that does sound difficult.

One theme not touched on quite as much as I’d like was the nature of the content itself, and how this affects both the role of traditional broadcasters and regulatory bodies.

Very interested to see the announcement, in the same week as thelondonpaper’s demise, of a web-to-print newspaper for london based on crowdsourced articles: theblogpaper.

The premise is that anyone can write an article, and then the community votes on which articles make it to the actual paper.

The main site seems a little light on detail, and while the FAQ offers a neat explanation of the mechanics, it doesn’t explain the history of the idea, who is running it, or how it could make money.

The latter of those concerns is particularly crucial: how will advertisers react to a newspaper whose editorial stance can’t be predicted until the paper goes to print?  If it is a truly democratic organ, the placement and choice of ads could cause a problem if they end up appearing next to a massive article attacking the brand.

I can see some young, local brands making use of the opportunity, and it could be a very cool option for advertising entertainment events / unusual sponsorships etc.  But I’d love to know more about their plans.

For my part, I’m torn over the idea.  A democratic free paper is a nice idea, and it makes sense to take advantage of the massive blogging community.  On the other hand, it may end up with none of the benefits of online media (flexibility, frequency of updates, open fora for discussion, freshness), and retain the downsides (variable quality, lack of consistency, superficial observation by unpaid writers)…

News that thelondonpaper is to disappear from our pavements and vacated tube seats was met with the bare minimum of surprise in my office today.  Not around long enough to morph into a proud British institution like other failing media of our age, it nonetheless attained the slightly muted accolade of being slightly better than its competitor, the London Lite.

I for one am sad to see it go, if only for the daily dose of vicarious romance offered by its missed connections column.

On a slightly less nostalgic note, however, it’s fascinating to take in the paper’s journey, from its initial launch at the top of the economy’s climb where it was a direct threat to the more established London papers, through to the relaunch of its struggling website, and to its eventual demise.  It’s strange to think that there was a time it looked like it would upturn the paid-for newspaper industry.

At the same time, more specialised local freesheets seem to be surviving and even thriving (as far as they can given the economic climate): Shortlist, Sport and City A.M. are all reasonable examples.

For my part I hope that this trend will continue, and that we might hope one day to see a variety of more focused, light, website-linked free local publications which can effectively act as digests of excellent content available online.  One newspaper I’d certainly love to see replicated in the UK is The Onion.  Anyone up for it?