The lesson that eBay can teach the TV companiesAnthony LilleyMonday March 12, 2007The Guardian
I dread it when Arlene Phillips has a go at someone on Strictly Come Dancing - especially when they're not my favourite celeb. Arlene only has to criticise the line of their leg - admittedly sometimes rather tartly - and, next thing you know, the public vote their hearts out to keep the hoofer under attack in the show. This upsets my frail sense of natural justice because I have a quaint, old-fashioned and ridiculous view that such shows should be won by the person with the most talent.
Obviously, it's different with pure-bred reality shows like Big Brother where the contestants' whole aim is not to lose the game of popularity. That's fair enough so long as we, the voting public, know up front what's going on. Hence the fuss last year when previous evictees were reinstated in the house.
But recent problems with phone voting, quizzes and participation TV point to something more troubling than this. Last Friday's Daily Mirror ran a splash arguing that the trust in television which many people traditionally show has been broken by these tales of sloppy administration, poor compliance and, possibly, downright dodginess.
For me, this crisis is a function of two things. The first is TV's sometimes simplistic - maybe even rather arrogant and greedy - approach to how to engage with audiences. The second is the rise of television as a way to create direct revenues through mechanisms from TV shopping to voting and premium rate quizzes. The truth is that many in the business have known about and been uncomfortable with this area for a while now. There's been a worry that some people might have been going just a little too far in pursuit of the readies - although I don't mean to imply that anyone has done anything deliberately wrong.
If you want to see this facet of participation TV in the wild, take a trip to the nether regions of the listings - down amongst the channels with 8 and 9 prefixes. There you will find participation TV in its barest form - sometimes , in the case of so-called "babe stations", literally naked. You'll find text chat channels, quiz channels, shopping channels and even psychic channels. A number of these have run into problems with Ofcom - some on more than one occasion - as they tread the thin line between showing content and being thinly-veiled adverts for premium rate phone lines.
In a much less egregious way, we've seen mainstream TV walking the same line. It's a logical but rather short-term commercial approach, especially if you've got a brand worth protecting. Research shows that many people trust the TV and television brands a great deal. When the TV channel Auctionworld had its licence revoked a couple of years ago there was more than one anguished letter about how TV itself had let people down. Squandering trust in pursuit of short-term bucks is very dangerous. Once lost, it's hard to recapture.
The participation TV debacle should have the positive effect of making legitimate operators consider the editorial and commercial standards which they need to apply to protect and extend their brands and make sure they retain this trust. The idea that some broadcasters didn't know what was going on is almost as alarming as the fact that some of these mistakes and allegedly sharp practices were going on in the first place.
This problem of trust is already a more common issue on the internet - where, as the saying goes, no one knows you're a dog. On the face of it, without trust - expressed as seller and buyer ratings - eBay just wouldn't work at all. The fact that it does illustrates that people will trust strangers if they are given ways in which to work out roughly how trustworthy the other person is. They will also be happy to get involved in ejecting the inevitable imposters and fraudsters alongside the official action taken by eBay itself. It's far from perfect, but the fact that it works at all is encouraging.
That said, it can go too far. Recent research suggesting that 70% of teenagers trust everything they read online points to an urgent need to do something about the sophistication of media literacy in our society. It's becomes increasingly impossible to regulate all media centrally. As a result, people need to be able to look after themselves more than ever, subject to basic legal standards, and content providers of whatever size need to behave decently. And the lessons for TV? Don't wait for or quibble over the fine detail of regulation, keep a close eye on what's going on in your name, and treat the audience in a way which means you deserve their trust - or you'll squander one of the most important brand values TV as a medium has left.
Summary: This news story is about the reality tv shows that are broadcast. It argues that today's audince are beginning to trust everything that they read online, resulting in the views they have towards certain people that are represented in these tv shows. This also has an impact on the voting and polls when it is left up to the public.
My view.... I think that this news story is arguing fairly as the internet today has created consumers to rely sepcifically on what they read. As the internet is becoming worldwide and increasing dramatically it is very hard to represent certain issues and deabtes on television without the genaral public raising a certain issue or arguement.
I dread it when Arlene Phillips has a go at someone on Strictly Come Dancing - especially when they're not my favourite celeb. Arlene only has to criticise the line of their leg - admittedly sometimes rather tartly - and, next thing you know, the public vote their hearts out to keep the hoofer under attack in the show. This upsets my frail sense of natural justice because I have a quaint, old-fashioned and ridiculous view that such shows should be won by the person with the most talent.
Obviously, it's different with pure-bred reality shows like Big Brother where the contestants' whole aim is not to lose the game of popularity. That's fair enough so long as we, the voting public, know up front what's going on. Hence the fuss last year when previous evictees were reinstated in the house.
But recent problems with phone voting, quizzes and participation TV point to something more troubling than this. Last Friday's Daily Mirror ran a splash arguing that the trust in television which many people traditionally show has been broken by these tales of sloppy administration, poor compliance and, possibly, downright dodginess.
For me, this crisis is a function of two things. The first is TV's sometimes simplistic - maybe even rather arrogant and greedy - approach to how to engage with audiences. The second is the rise of television as a way to create direct revenues through mechanisms from TV shopping to voting and premium rate quizzes. The truth is that many in the business have known about and been uncomfortable with this area for a while now. There's been a worry that some people might have been going just a little too far in pursuit of the readies - although I don't mean to imply that anyone has done anything deliberately wrong.
If you want to see this facet of participation TV in the wild, take a trip to the nether regions of the listings - down amongst the channels with 8 and 9 prefixes. There you will find participation TV in its barest form - sometimes , in the case of so-called "babe stations", literally naked. You'll find text chat channels, quiz channels, shopping channels and even psychic channels. A number of these have run into problems with Ofcom - some on more than one occasion - as they tread the thin line between showing content and being thinly-veiled adverts for premium rate phone lines.
In a much less egregious way, we've seen mainstream TV walking the same line. It's a logical but rather short-term commercial approach, especially if you've got a brand worth protecting. Research shows that many people trust the TV and television brands a great deal. When the TV channel Auctionworld had its licence revoked a couple of years ago there was more than one anguished letter about how TV itself had let people down. Squandering trust in pursuit of short-term bucks is very dangerous. Once lost, it's hard to recapture.
The participation TV debacle should have the positive effect of making legitimate operators consider the editorial and commercial standards which they need to apply to protect and extend their brands and make sure they retain this trust. The idea that some broadcasters didn't know what was going on is almost as alarming as the fact that some of these mistakes and allegedly sharp practices were going on in the first place.
This problem of trust is already a more common issue on the internet - where, as the saying goes, no one knows you're a dog. On the face of it, without trust - expressed as seller and buyer ratings - eBay just wouldn't work at all. The fact that it does illustrates that people will trust strangers if they are given ways in which to work out roughly how trustworthy the other person is. They will also be happy to get involved in ejecting the inevitable imposters and fraudsters alongside the official action taken by eBay itself. It's far from perfect, but the fact that it works at all is encouraging.
That said, it can go too far. Recent research suggesting that 70% of teenagers trust everything they read online points to an urgent need to do something about the sophistication of media literacy in our society. It's becomes increasingly impossible to regulate all media centrally. As a result, people need to be able to look after themselves more than ever, subject to basic legal standards, and content providers of whatever size need to behave decently. And the lessons for TV? Don't wait for or quibble over the fine detail of regulation, keep a close eye on what's going on in your name, and treat the audience in a way which means you deserve their trust - or you'll squander one of the most important brand values TV as a medium has left.
Summary: This news story is about the reality tv shows that are broadcast. It argues that today's audince are beginning to trust everything that they read online, resulting in the views they have towards certain people that are represented in these tv shows. This also has an impact on the voting and polls when it is left up to the public.
My view.... I think that this news story is arguing fairly as the internet today has created consumers to rely sepcifically on what they read. As the internet is becoming worldwide and increasing dramatically it is very hard to represent certain issues and deabtes on television without the genaral public raising a certain issue or arguement.
posted by Balinder's Blog at 5:45 AM
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