A personal view of Socialnomics by Erik Qualman

Following on from by previous post about a social media and connectedness case study from the Socialnomics web site, here are my thoughts having read this book...

Listen or connect? - Following blogs is likely to form connections, it is largely a "listen" form of communication closer on Marshall McCullan's 'broadcast' culture that the 'digital' culture that we are moving into now, especially with social media. Social network platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Linked In are much more likely to create conversations and connections. From a business perspective these are much more likely to generate interest and new leads. 

Its all very well for Qualman to show how large companies like Starbucks can tweet about a free coffee and afford to give loads of small value items away, but smaller companies and charities have finite resources, especially time which is expensive to give away.

Qualman says on page 133 "Middlemen are becoming less important than they have been in the past, and the rise in power is shifting rapidly to the social graph". With peer review and recommendation together with the trust of people in your network there will be less need of middlemen. Or to putting it subtly, not, bypass the middleman and go to the horses mouth?

On page 130 he says "Often our customers will market the product better than we can". In a social media world this can be really powerful". We have always had personal recommendation but it has always been a one to one word of mouth. How we have what Qualman describes as a 'world of mouth', or a 'many to many' digital culture to use McCullan speak, our clients can tell the world how good we are and it will have much more respect than saying it ourselves. So we need to encourage our clients to share their experiences of our services. But we have to make sure that we maintain the correct balance in our conversations so that the marketing doesn't stand out as 'selling'.

Qualman dedicates chapter 6 "Death of Social Schizophrenia" to the need for everyone to have one persona or identity in this connected world. Where as before we could have a work, social, and family peronas and maintain them because we could keep each segment of our lives separate. Now in a connected world we can't get away with it. Our work colleagues see what we are doing at home, our friends see what we do at work and so on. 

Play to your strengths, on page 135 Qualman says "Being well rounded as a company, or an individual is less beneficial. Its more productive to play to your core strength. This differentiates you from the competition. You need to stand out in order to be outstanding" He then goes onto to refer to a book called Strengths Finder which I have read and been through the programme to identify my strengths a while a go. If you haven't done it, I can strongly recommend this programme above other similar ones. A number of times I have considered some possible diversification routes, like becoming a video editor and rejected them. I am an audio editor and producer, sound is what I do, so I am much better to play to my strengths than invest a lot of time and money trying to improve weak spots, only to end up making them less weak. 

Embed the sponspor - Qualman does an in depth study of an American series called Football Fantasy and how the presenters decided to set up a podcast in their own time. One of the reasons they did this is there were TV presenters one day a week as it was a weekly show, where as they have made the podcast a daily show and so are able to react to changing stories and audience responses so much quicker. Also because it was a podcast they didn't stick to a standard programme slot. They made the podcast as long as it needed to be to cover the content that day, rather than make the content fit the slot. They also developed techniques for embedding the sponsor and the sponsors content into the programme. They didn't use standard ad format straps and spots. Rather they worked the sponsors message into the programme content which provided variety so they weren't using the same spot every time. Qualman says on page 142 "Consumers today in particular Millennial's and Generation Zer's don't want adverts to shout; they'd rather have conversations and ongoing relationships with companies". If the ads top and tail a podcast they can easily be stripped off when the content is spread virally. However if the sponsorship references are embedded in the programme and become an integral part of it, then they travel virally too!

On page 148, Qualman talks about CNN anchor Rick Sanchez who started tweeting and realised that it was more important to talk less about himself and more about the interviewees. I need to balance my posts and tweets about my work with other material so I don't just end up shouting about myself.

On page 175 Qualman outlines how social media gives you so much more data about your audience and their habits. We need to use that data to determine our marketing decisions, 'The audience has spoken'. Remember if we create conversations, that will lead to a trusting relationship which is so much more valuable. So shouldn't PR folk be asking what we can do to create these conversations.

With our experience surely we can help clients develop these conversations, also look at the complete web presence. On page 221 Qualman outlines the Skittles experiment with their web site in 2009.

They turned their static web site into a simple landing page with some links took you off their site to social media.

"Connect = Skittles Facebook page

Video = Skittles YouTube channel

Photos = Skittles Flickr account

Info = Skittles Wikipedia entry

News = Skittles blog.

Skittles were acting as an integration point or hub to great authentic content that existed elsewhere about them".

This shows that we need to be prepared to experiment and that will mean we fail sometimes but Qualman has a phrase he repeats through the book about failing - Fail forward, fail fast, fail better.

Business to Business – a case study of how to use social media

This example of what using social media in a B2B content has been posted on the Socialnomics blog...

Some  B2B marketers are slow to invest in social media because they believe that the ROI should be based on an increase in sales. Wrong. The focus should be on engaging conversation with influencers who matter. It’s the first step toward social business.

A year ago at Cisco, we launched the  The Connected Life Exchange blog and invited industry experts to be the authors, along with only a few company employees. We do not blog about our company or products, but discuss the industry issues that are relevant to our customers: the telecom service provider. It has proven to be a powerful approach in engaging analysts, bloggers and customers in a welcomed way — through storytelling.

We just finished production of a web documentary series, “The Network Effect,” again with no mention of our company, but focusing on entertaining stories about the inventors who built the network and the impact it has on economic growth, particularly in developing counties.  Here’s  the first episode of six:

If you haven't heard of Socialnomics I would throughly recommend reading the book.

Following blogs is likely to form connections, it is largely a "listen" form of communication closer on Marshall McCullan's 'broadcast' culture that the 'digital' culture that we are moving into now, especially with social media. Social network platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Linked In are much more likely to create conversations and connections. From a business perspective these are much more likely to generate interest and new leads.



I will be posting a more detailed view having read the book, look out for it.

BBC cuts, local radio and World Service

Today's stories about MPs asking the BBC Trust to reconsider proposals that will see local radio programmes during off peak times broadcast on a regional, rather than local, basis. Headcount in some instances is expected to be reduced by a disproportionately large number, with some stations facing job cuts of 20% of current staff. 

With the cuts already announced for the World Service it seems to me that the BBC is choosing to cut the soft targets, the ones that are less likely to answer back.  The cuts in the World Service will undoubtably affect our standing and the BBCs respect across the world for providing impartial news to areas of the world that wouldn't otherwise get any reliable news.

The cuts in local radio will go along way to taking the BBC out of the community at a local level with a combination of regional link up and the possible rebroadcasting of 5 Live. 

I appreciate that saving need to be made, that isn't at issue here but for my money I would do something with BBC3 and/or BBC4 to make the savings and like local radio and the World Service to do what only a public service broadcaster can do. 

At the local level there was a time in the 80s when commercial radio was deeply routed in the community, I spent nearly 10 years at Piccadilly Radio and Key 103 so I have first hand experience of this and the way commercial radio has migrated to a jukebox radio format over the last decade or s to remain economically viable. 

So the only way of having viable local radio is to provide it through the public service remit.  Equally no one else is going to provide a world wide impartial news service that the BBC World Service supplies so again this should be protected. Surely the areas that commercial services can't offer should be protected like they have done with Radio 4.

Monetising Digital Platforms & Rights

I went to an excellent 1/2 day session on Monetising Digital Platforms & Rights on Wednesday at Vision & Media. The day was led by two top flight guys in this sector, Justin Judd - director of i-Rights Ltd and formerly ran Granada TV's digital division and Peter Cowley from Spirit Digital Media, who I heard at the Nations & Regions Media conference earlier this year.

These are some notes of things discussed that appealed to me. But it is by no means an accurate record of everything that was discussed!

I Pay, You Pay, Some else Pays
We looked at these 3 business models.
The I Pay obviously isn't a viable long term business model as putting your own money into a business for ever will end up in certain failure, but it may be necessary to get a business going.
You Pay - is where the consumer pays you for a product or service, in this context subscription models are a good example.
Someone else Pays - this is usually some form of sponsorship or advertising funded model which usually means the product or servie is free at the point of use.

The best model is probably the I Pay turning into You Pay. The problem with the Someone else Pays is that to get advertising funding you need proven scale before advertisers will support your product and as a new start up proven scale is hard to come by!

Scarcity is important
You can't make money from anything that is easily available. The music industry has learnt this the hard way and now puts the product out  but makes money from the live experience where they can control the scarcity factor. The news industry is in the process of learning this. A number of newspapers have put most of their content behind a pay wall. The FT may be able to make it stick because they have a niche market in financial related news, but The Times is going to find it harder. The Guardian is producing excellent free content but it still isn't clear how they will make money. The Daily Mail is making a go of the Someone else Pays model by producing news people want,  like celebrity news and gossip, which drives traffic to their site and they get a income form the advertising they can sell on their site because they have 'proven scale'. So simply put don't try and monetise a product which isn't scarce.

You need to understand the digital world.
This includes the scarcity issue because it is largely the digital world that has made things like music and news freely available but also the digital world has produced new routes to the market place. We were given the example of John Locke who was able to publish his book direct to the market without a conventional publisher by producing a digital version of his book using Amazon's Kindle platform and Amazon's site. He sold 1 million copies in 5 months priced at 99 cents, even based on the Amazon business model he still cleared just over 1/3 million dollars, he now has many more titles and has even written a book on how he did it, but remember no publisher, no marketing, but he will have got a major free publicity push from being an early adopter which is another thing you need to understand about the digital world. Being an early adopter brings you scarcity.


So if you can bypass the big guys and get your product or service direct to market and avoid the middle men you can make a good return. Now harness some key middle guys like Amazon or Apple and you can really make some money but you still need a good product!

Strictly Sexual was another example. It was a movie made for $100,000 and distributed through Hulu in the US, so no DVD or broadcast release, direct on line and then have cleared $200,000 already. But again it had to be a good product, with a good story, clever plot and title angle etc and despite the title isn't a porn movie. I haven't seen it because unfortunately Hulu is only available in the US . It is geo-blocked elsewhere just as our iPlayer service is blocked outside the UK.

Facebook Games
Games on Facebook is another example of making money in the digital world and often use the Freemium model. The game is free to download and use, but the free version runs slowly. So you can buy add ons that make the game run  faster and also buy add ons that help you play it. A typical example was one of the more popular games which has been downloaded 7.5 million time. If only 1% buy anything, a typical pickup ratio fror the freemium model, then then 750,000 people pay $5 brings you in a lot of money, to carry on supporting that 99% of your market doesn't pay for. Again it is much easier for the early adopters to make money.

Apps
We were shown some examples of the iTunes App chart and it was interesting to note that there were a number of audio related Apps doing very well in the chart, like Keith Lemon's Mouthboard and also an app called Fonejacker which is an app based on the radio spoof prank phone call model, but people are paying good money to listen to prank phone calls.

The ABCD of media revenue options
A for Advertising - a 'some else pays' model
B for Broadcasting revenues - the traditional broadcaster conmmisions and pays for you to produce a product but you probably won't retain all the rights to. Again 'some one else pays' either through the license fee or advertising revenue.
C for Consumer - this is the 'you pay' model, and includes services that are funded using the subscription model like Sky. One interesting fact is that in the TV world the value of Subscription TV worldwide far out values the value of advert funded TV. So the 'you pay' model is the way to go.
D for Data - this is becoming a fourth business model where you can provide a product free at the point of use but the data you collect has value which you can monetise. The new buzz phrase is 'Data is the new Oil'. This can include data like email addresses, Facebook likes and Twitter followers.

It was interesting that in the discussion of projects people were looking at, Justin & Peter were strongly recommending that a Mountain Sports Film Festival didn't set up and expensive web site to promote and sell the films that were presented at the festival. They were suggesting they use the data to make money.

Thoughts after attending Media & Digital Futures workshop at Salford University

I have just taken part in a very interesting, simulating and thought provoking workshop where as industry representatives we were asked to work through and comment on two scenarios as to how the Manchester city region might look in 2017. One had a positive slant and the other a more negative one. I was in one of two groups looking at the more negative scenario which was called the 'noise' scenario.

In a nutshell this scenario says that the UK will still be in recession, technology has advanced but businesses are struggling to make good use of it. The lack of variety of industries and decline of manufacturing has made the region unsustainable with the emphasis being on service and knowledge based.  It is difficult to generate revenue on line as consumers expect it to be free and although there are a large number of digital startups the business models are generally unsustainable.  There is a skills gap with the education system not geared up to produce students with the skills needed and so young people are not making the transition from education to employment. Digital technologies have disrupted rather than helped our everyday lives and people have become overwhelmed by the amount of information, communication and 'noise' coming at them. On top of that the city's digital infrastructure cannot handle the demand with rural areas only having limited access. Finally the region is over regulated, public transport is unreliable and expensive and although everyone is talking about the problems there are no radical strategies being put forward.

I have to say this scenario is not to far from where I feel we are now.

So to start with we were asked as a group to come up with 5 key points from the scenario to start the discussion. I came up with 4 which were..

1. There is no space for the little guy.
2. Education is not delivering equipped young people.
3. 'Free' is stifling innovation as it hard to produce a return on investment. Which is why we no longer make anything.
4. Both the transport and digital infrastructure are failing.

Others thoughts included a negative impact on families and society. We discussed how the use of computers smart phones and other devices has continued the impact on family cohesion, that eating in front of the TV, had started. Family members occupying the same space but back to back looking at screens rather than face to face round the dinner table. Another point was the lack of a 'ladder' structure where larger companies support and provide small businesses with work and then we started to explore more sustainable business models. The current funding cuts are already causing the social businesses to revisit their mix of commissions to social work proving free or subsidised services, with the need to make  a profit to replace the grant funding to support the social work.

Next we looked at placing these issues, as well as a number from a previous group, onto a matrix made up of more or less likely to happen against being harder or easier to resolve. These other issues generated some debate including one about people not able to understand the technology they were using which got us into 'digital natives' versus 'analogue grans'.

Then we looked at how some of the 'easier' & 'likely' issues might be resolved with the suggestion that the tech one would get resolved without too much intervention because more and more of the population will be digital natives. I made the point that although more and more people have access to the technology they don't necessarily have the skills to use them creatively.  However it was interesting to note that most of the points we placed in the 'likely' and 'hard' quadrant of the matrix and we didn't really have an opportunity to discuss how some of those could be resolved other than a consensus that education is key. One comment was our education system is still based on victorian principles and when you consider Carole Vorderman's report on Maths recently and the need for two different maths qualifications,  if you extend that out to all the other subjects we have a major issue with not preparing our young people for a life in a 'post modern' society, our education system at best is still turning out 'moderns'. With my apprenticeship assessors hat on I am only too aware that most of the graduates from the mountain of 'medja' degrees aren't ready to work in our industry, their degrees haven't given them the skills to work as new entrants but has generated the expectation that they can come straight in as directors or producers. So the industry has set up an apprenticeship scheme to take on 16 to 22 year old and give the training and experience to become valuable team players in the industry.

I then brought up the whole collaboration issue and coined the phrase 'collaborate or die". One of the repeating threads in all my research into how our industry is changing is the mantra of 'you must collaborate'. Unfortunately although we encourage our children to collaborate at an early age, once they hit primary school the concept of collaboration is pushed out and so we now have several generations that just aren't interested in collaborating on creative or business projects which is a real shame.

Then we were given the opportunity to identify 5 issues for our own business, again I came up with 4...

1. 'Free' on the internet makes developing viable business models more challenging!
2. How do I get above the 'noise'?
3. I need to create links with other businesses and collaborate.
4. The challenge is to persuade potential clients to buy my skills, as they feel more and more that they can do it themselves or they just don't value them. Just look at most corporate videos, the sound is rubbish!

Finally we all came back together and we shared the findings of all 4 groups and although we had been looking at two different scenarios the findings were remarkably similar.  One comment that struck me was we live in a 'greed economy' where the aim is to make as much money as possible so I can have the latest this that or the other, instead of the motivation being, doing what is best for the community whilst making enough money to be OK with my lot, going from a 'me based culture to an 'us' based one. In the light of the recent riots etc this really hit home with me.

I found the whole morning a very enlightening experience and I look forward to the outcomes of this research and hope that Salford University can take it further.

Thoughts on Socialnomics by Erik Qualman

Having finished reading Socialnomics an excellent updated book on the economics of social media, here are some thoughts that have been simulated by my reading this book.

Listen or connect?
Following blogs is likely to form connections, it is largely a "listen" form of communication closer on Marshall McCullan's 'broadcast' culture that the 'digital' culture that we are moving into now, especially with social media. Social network platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Linked In are much more likely to create conversations and connections. From a business perspective these are much more likely to generate interest and new leads.

Marketing myself
When it comes to marketing myself how should I use social media? Its all very well for Qualman to show how large companies like Starbucks can tweet about a free coffee and afford to give loads of small value items away, but I have finite resources, especially time which is expensive to give away. I am already doing this with my Pro Tools for Media blog and my Twitter profile @MikeProTools and these benefit other Pro Tools users and help to keep my profile up in the Pro Tools world but how much new business will come from this work? On page 130 Qualman says...

Often our customers will market the product better than we can". In a social media world this can be really powerful. 

We have always had personal recommendation but it has always been a one to one word of mouth. How we have what Qualman describes as a 'world of mouth', or a 'many to many' digital culture to use McCullan speak, our clients can tell the world how good we are and it will have much more respect than saying it ourselves. So we need to encourage our clients to share their experiences of our services. But we have to make sure that we maintain the correct balance in our conversations so that the marketing doesn't stand out as 'selling'.

Only one of me
Qualman dedicates chapter 6 "Death of Social Schizophrenia" to the need for everyone to have one persona or identity in this connected world. Where as before we could have a work, social, and family peronas and maintain them because we could keep each segment of our lives separate. Now in a connected world we can't get away with it. Our work colleagues see what we are doing at home, our friends see what we do at work and so on. Currently I have two blogs, a personal one here and my Pro Tools blog and similarly I have two Twitter accounts. Should they be one? In this case I believe not as the Pro Tools blog and @MikeProTools Twitter account are very niche. I am sure most of the folk following my @Sound_Mike twitter feed and my personal blog wouldn't want to hear about the inner workings of how to use Avid Pro Tools in a media context. However I was posting more personal stuff as well as details of programmes I have been involved in on my @MikeProTools twitter account and Pro Tools for Media blog, but as a result of reading Socialnomics I have stopped that now and will keep these for purely Pro Tools matters.

Play to your strengths
On page 135 Qualman says...

Being well rounded as a company, or an individual is less beneficial. Its more productive to play to your core strength. This differentiates you from the competition. You need to stand out in order to be outstanding.

He then goes onto to refer to a book called Strengths Finder Now, Discover Your Strengths: How to Develop Your Talents and Those of the People You Manage which I have read and been through the programme to identify my strengths a while a go. If you haven't done it, I can strongly recommend this programme above other similar ones. A number of times I have considered some possible diversification routes, like becoming a video editor and rejected them. I am an audio editor and producer, sound is what I do, so I am much better to play to my strengths than invest a lot of time and money trying to improve weak spots, only to end up making them less weak.

Embed the sponspor
Qualman does an in depth study of an American series called Football Fantasy and how the presenters decided to set up a podcast in their own time. One of the reasons they did this is there were TV presenters one day a week as it was a weekly show, where as they have made the podcast a daily show and so are able to react to changing stories and audience responses so much quicker. Also because it was a podcast they didn't stick to a standard programme slot. They made the podcast as long as it needed to be to cover the content that day, rather than make the content fit the slot. They also developed techniques for embedding the sponsor and the sponsors content into the programme. They didn't use standard ad format straps and spots. Rather they worked the sponsors message into the programme content which provided variety so they weren't using the same spot every time. Qualman says on page 142...

Consumers today in particular Millennial's and Generation Zer's don't want adverts to shout; they'd rather have conversations and ongoing relationships with companies. 

If the ads top and tail a podcast they can easily be stripped off when the content is spread virally. However if the sponsorship references are embedded in the programme and become an integral part of it, then they travel virally too!

On page 148, Qualman talks about CNN anchor Rick Sanchez who started tweeting and realised that it was more important to talk less about himself and more about the interviewees. On page 175 Qualman outlines how social media gives you so much more data about your audience and their habits. We need to use that data to determine our marketing decisions, 'The audience has spoken'. Remember if we create conversations, that will lead to a trusting relationship which is so much more valuable. So shouldn't PR folk be asking what we can do to create these conversations.

With our experience surely we can help clients develop these conversations, also look at the complete web presence. On page 221 Qualman outlines the Skittles experiment with their web site in 2009. They turned their static web site into a simple landing page with some links took you off their site to social media.

Connect = Skittles Facebook page
Video = Skittles YouTube channel
Photos = Skittles Flickr account
Info = Skittles Wikipedia entry
News = Skittles blog.

Skittles were acting as an integration point or hub to great authentic content that existed elsewhere about them.

This shows that we need to be prepared to experiment and that will mean we fail sometimes but Qualman has a phrase he repeats through the book about failing - Fail forward, fail fast, fail better.

What next?
These are some random thoughts from things that caught my attention as I read through this book. It certainly has made me think about social media and its growing power. One of the conclusions Qualman also makes at the end of chapter 8 is that

The younger generation's interpersonal communications skills are starting to suffer as a result of over-dependence on non-verbal and non face to face interactions. 

So the next book I want to look at, which has just been Radio 4's book of the Week, follows on from this observation and is called "The Winter of Our Disconnect" by Susan Maushart. She writes...

The Winter Of Our Disconnect started out as a kind of purge. It ended up as so much more. Long story short: our digital detox messed with our heads, our hearts and our homework. It changed the way we ate and the way we slept, the way we "friended", fought, planned and played. It altered the very taste and texture of our family life. Hell, it even altered the mouth-feel.

In the end, our family's self-imposed exile from the Information Age changed our lives indelibly - and infinitely for the better.

At the simplest level, The Winter Of Our Disconnect is the story of how one highly idiosyncratic family survived six months of wandering through the desert, digitally speaking, and the lessons we learned about ourselves and our technology along the way. At the same time, our story is a channel to a wider view into the impact of new media on the lives of families, into the very heart of the meaning of home.

With two daughters as well as my wife and myself, very much 'connected' I look forward to reading this book.

When is the best time to post on social media?

Erik Qualman at the Socialnomics blog has posted this video from @equalman about the best times to post content on social media and the graveyard slots to avoid.

General guidelines:

• Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are your best days
• Saturday is the worst day
• Holidays are slow traffic days (except commerce sites)
• 10 am – 11:30 am and 1 – 3:30 pm are great times to post
• Stagger posts based on time zones

A recent study by Virtue specific to Facebook also shows that Social Media may follow similar patterns to the rest of the traditional Web.

• The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.
• The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.
• Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period.

Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week; most sites slowest traffic day is Saturday, followed by Sunday. This is interesting since so many schools and companies block Facebook from 9 – 5 pm.  Tough to block mobile devices though.

There are exceptions to the above rules, depending on what you are posting, but these are good general guides for most sites, social media activity and blogs. Erik has been fortunate to have access to statistics to hundreds of different sites/blogs during my sixteen year career and roughly 90% of the time the above holds true.
When he was the Head of Marketing at Travelzoo his production team always sent out the Top 20 e-mail list to the 21 million subscribers on Wednesday at roughly 11 am.  Why?  This gave it the best chance to be read.  If you have an incredible Tweet you need to get out, but it’s 2 a.m. on a Saturday, use a tool like hootsuite to schedule for the tweet to go out when more potential readers might read it.
Ironically, this post may not be picked up as much as it could since I’m posting it in the afternoon on a Monday following a holiday.
Ric suggests these as other good posts on this topic: YouTube Traffic Patters, Best Time to Send E-Mail, When are Facebook Users Most Active?, Conversion Volume by Day

BBC cuts in licence fee deal 'brutal but realistic', say corporation executives

John Plunkett and Maggie Brown have covered the BBC response in an article in The Guardian.

Senior BBC executives admitted today that staff would be stunned and baffled by the scale of the cuts in the licence fee settlement, which they described as "clearly very challenging". Peter Salmon, the director of BBC North, said it was "tough, but it is tough all round". "These are pretty difficult times. This is an exceptional settlement and it's going to be difficult for the BBC but it's difficult for everyone in the whole UK economy," he added.  "On the positive side the stuff that we are taking on board are a collection of related responsibilities, a lot of which make sense given what the BBC does and what the BBC cares about – programme-making, content-making, news," said Salmon. "The most important thing for the BBC is the fact that it maintains the BBC's independence. We are very keen on multi-year settlements, on having the kind of financial security we need over a period of time so that we can plan, and also stay at arm's length from the government and government politics. It's really important to us, it's important to licence payers, it's what's kept the BBC brave and independent all these years. It's a tough day. The staff are going to be stunned and probably quite baffled by the news. You get a sense on lots of fronts you are not immune from all the big and difficult things happening in the world. The pension gap was another difficult part of the story. These are tough times."

The BBC Radio 5 Live controller, Adrian van Klaveren, also speaking in Salford today, said the corporation had been surprised at the speed of the licence fee settlement and described the cuts as "clearly very challenging". But Van Klaveren added that there was a positive side to the deal, which guarantees the future of the licence fee for the next six years. "Clearly these numbers are very challenging and will need a lot of work," There's a process that is going to take time. It's complicated and there are a lot of options. Changes need to be made over a period of years. I think all of us have been surprised at the pace of things over the last week. Numbers have moved around and each number clearly has different consequences. It will be felt more and more as years go by. We are not talking about something that has to be achieved by April 2011. There is time to work it through sensibly."

 Go to the Guardian web site to read the rest of the story.

Union describes the BBC cuts as "appalling"

BECTU have said...


BBC staff will be left reeling at the announcement that senior management have accepted a freeze in the licence fee until 2017 at the same time as agreeing to fund BBC World Service and Welsh language channel, S4C, from these reduced resources, says BECTU. The changes, apparently agreed just today, are said to amount to a 16 per cent cut in the BBC's income, equivalent to some £550m. Only yesterday (18 October) there was speculation that the BBC was to be instructed by government to fund free licences for the over-75s. Commenting on today's announcement, BECTU general secretary, Gerry Morrissey said:

"BBC staff will be in a state of shock at the scale of today's announcements. We'll be seeking an urgent meeting with senior management to discuss the implications of this appalling news. From where we are standing, senior executives appear to have entered into negotiations on the hoof and the result will be largescale damage to the BBC's services with the Corporation taking the flak for badly judged government decisions."

Morrissey also told the Press Association: “It seems as if the BBC is now doing the government’s dirty work. They have thrown in the towel, so they will now have to justify the cuts to staff. How can you cut 16% off your costs without affecting jobs or services? Morale at the BBC is already at rock bottom, but now there is little or no confidence in the management.”

Bectu has also comdemned the decision to include responsibility for Welsh broadcaster S4C into the BBC's pot, saying it shows an “ignorance of Wales, and its people, and most importantly, of the importance of democracy and plurality in Wales”. Bectu national official, David Donovan, said: “[Culture minister Jeremy Hunt’s] statements and actions serve as a clear warning that Wales is set to be controlled once more by a political elite with no interest in its people, its culture or its language. At a fundamental level, the statements show scant regard for the democratic process. It is clear that everyone who is committed to public service broadcasting and to the language and culture of Wales has to prepare to defend these interests against this government’s actions.”

Independent radio producers say BBC Trust has not gone far enough

John Plunkett in The Guardian has reported the initial responses from the radio independent producers to the publication of the report into the BBC's treatment and quotas for indies in the radio sector.

Independent radio producers have criticised the BBC Trust's review of BBC radio commissioning, saying it was "short-sighted, complacent and contradictory". While giving a cautious welcome to the tone of the trust's report yesterday and its decision to extend the amount of BBC programming available to independent producers with a 10% window of creative competition, the Radio Independents Group said it was "very disappointed" by the scale of the change. The group had asked for a 25% minimum independent quota and a 25% window of creative competition. The trust said the minimum independent quota should remain at 10%.

The Radio Independents Group's (RIG) statement continues...

We welcome the introduction of a WOCC (Window Of Creative Competition) of 10% across all networks and are confident that, provided the appropriate commissioning structures are in place and monitored effectively, RIG members will compete effectively and win the majority of open tenders.
We are however very disappointed by the scale of change. We had proposed an increase in the quota (currently around 8.4% in real terms) to a statutory 25% and the introduction of a 25% WOCC. This would have been consistent with TV commissioning which works well for the benefit of license fee payers. The trust states that radio audiences register high levels of appreciation and increasing the indie quota risks adversely affecting this. We believe this is short sighted, complacent and contradictory to some of the trust's own recent network reviews. We believe that maintaining the status quo offers a greater risk. Any organisation wishing to equip itself for future challenges would seek to move forward, rather than protect it's current position – the licence fee payer would expect no less.

I am completely with RIG on this. It is OK for TV to have a 25% quota and a further 25% WoCC but The Trust saying

a reduction in the BBC's in-house operations to a guaranteed minimum of 50% of output "would cause great instability"

is crazy. Why will it cause instability for the radio sector and not the TV sector. Surely the issues were very similar when these quotas were introduced into the TV sector, and it is still here!  Also it wouldn't be a guaranteed minimum of 50% of output, the guarantee is only for 25% with the opportunity to pitch for up to another 25% but that is by no means guaranteed.

"We believe that maintaining the status quo offers a greater risk. Any organisation wishing to equip itself for future challenges would seek to move forward, rather than protect it's current position – the licence fee payer would expect no less."

Absolutely if the independent sector isn't given the oportunity to grow it will never get out of the 'cottage industry' status that it is currently. It is very hard to make a viable business out of independent radio programme making. The BBC is the only client in town and David Liddiment, chair of the trust's audiences and performance committee, said

the BBC's radio services were both popular and distinctive [and] make a vital contribution to the public purposes. However, this review has shown that the BBC's approach to commissioning from the sector does not always work as well as it should. Putting more of the programmes up for grabs will help promote competition for the best ideas, wherever they come from. That will be good for licence-fee payers, whose interests the trust is here to serve. And we are particularly keen to see a much more open and fair approach to commissioning from the independent sector."

If you want to increase the diversity and make it open and fair you need a large pool of smaller independent producers. In order to have a sustainable business they need a reasonable number of commissions to get some form of economy of scale. This level of quotas won't do it.

Television ads more effective than online according to new research by Deloitte

How Do have just posted some analysis of a report by Deloitte on the television sector is based on one-to-one interviews with industry executives and a survey of the UK public designed by Deloitte and conducted by YouGov between 9th and 12th July 2010.

When it came down to remembering adverts, television was again top, with more than half of those surveyed recalling a TV ad as the most memorable campaign of 2010. 10% chose a newspaper campaign, while 1% said a banner ad and the same for an iPhone/iPad advert. 2% went for online video ads.

The respondents were also asked about pre-rolls on online video clips, compared to ad breaks. 36% stated that they were more likely to pay attention to the traditional 30 second advert, with just 1% opting for a video pre-roll or online video.

“Online advertising’s poor showing relative to television may surprise given that the former has often been portrayed as television’s nemesis,” said media partner, James Bates.

 “However, despite the positive perception of television advertising, its bed of roses is not free of mildew. Among television advertising’s greatest preoccupations is measurability. While television generates billions of commercial impacts every day, it is hard to measure precisely how many of these are viewed.”

Another problem for television advertising is keeping people sitting there watching it. It appears just 13% always or “almost always” watch the entire ad break, 11% never watched it and 2% claim they never watch any television which has advertisements.

When it comes to using catch-up and on demand services a massive 86% said they always fast-forwarded through the ads.

So an interesting view that people remember ads better when they are on TV even when the mute button is on or they are spooling through them!

The UK's media consumption habits from an OFFCOM report

We are social have posted an interesting summary on media consumption habits...

Ofcom released its seventh annual communications market report last week. Its a goldmine of information about media consumption habits in the UK and is worth reading in full, the internet section in particular. In terms of social media usage, it reveals interesting data such as:

• Social networking (in blue) is an all day long activity, filling the gaps between traditional media:

• The data above illustrates the popularity of television in the evening, when over half (52%) of all media activities undertaken involves watching television on a TV set. In the morning, radio is more popular, but declines by the evening when TV is at its peak. Text communications (including social media usage) and voice communications both make up a fair proportion of media activity during the daytime and after the end of television peak time

It is interesting to see how the text based communications in blue stay fairly constant throughout the full 24 hour cycle. There is alot more interesting analysis on the we are social post including...

• Proportion of media use through device by age group radio usage is holding up except in the 16 to 24 age band.
• Proportion of computer use by activity - interesting to see the percentage of phone and video calls at around 30%
• Internet and PC take up - which is levelling off  although the move to mobile internet is growing.

Do take a little time to look at these results. If you have more time then you could look at the original report.

Television viewing increases despite rise of internet and social media

John Plunkett in The Guardian has written an interesting article about the apparent lack of drop in TV viewing despite the internet etc.

Predictions that the internet would kill the television star appear to be premature. Just as the cinema survived the advent of home video, TV is booming despite the growth of digital media and popularity of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Viewers watched an average of three hours and 45 minutes of television a day in 2009, 3% more than in 2004, according to research published today by the media regulator Ofcom. TV continues to take centre stage in people's evenings, boosted by the popularity of shows such as The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and Doctor Who.

He quotes Richard Broughton, a senior analyst at the audiovisual research company Screen Digest.

"Various people have predicted that the internet would kill off television but we have always said that TV would be here for a long time to come. It's much harder for broadcasters and production companies to monetise content online, and there are all sorts of things that broadcast can do that online can't, such as high definition."

John concludes his article...

Ofcom said the growth in audience to video-sharing sites such as YouTube had begun to slow over the past two years. Like television, the popularity of radio continues to surge ahead, with a new high of 90.6% of the population – 46.8 million adults – tuning in at least once a week in the second quarter of 2010. However, the amount of time we spend listening to the radio has fallen, down 5.3% in the five years to 2009.

John has certainly triggered a huge amount of comments on this issue which are well worth a read too

Simple thoughts on the Sabbath

Liz Hunter on the MediaNet site has posted a simple and thought provoking article on the importance of taking a break. She says....

Being frazzled is a badge of honour.  Most of the freelancers I know avoid booking holidays because they fear having to turn down a brilliant job, and they don't rest in the periods in between work because they are out touting for more!

As a freelancer I learnt the hard way that not having a holiday, in case a dream job came up, was a big mistake.

Now I book my summer holiday dates early in January and book and pay for a proper holiday which is a digital fast as well for 2 weeks. I tried one week so as not to take me out for too long but it isn't long enough. I find that I am only just winding down by the end of one week and if there is any significant travel too it really isn't long enough to do what a holiday should do.

My only concession is I check my answer phone every 48 hours and deal with any important calls but then the phone goes off again. My clients know this is what I do, they regularly ask earlier in the year when I am going to be on holiday so they can plan accordingly, and I send a global email out about a week before reminding everyone I will be away and my responses will be limited to checking my answer phone, but no emails, blogs tweets for two weeks.

Liz continues.....

As usual, the Bible has some pretty good advice on how to avoid burnout, and it's very straightforward.Take one day off a week. Really off. Complete downtime, family time, God time. I'm not sure it matters when we take it, just that we do. It should not be something we feel guilty about, as it was made for our good, not the other way around (Mark 2:27), but we can't go too long avoiding something God designed us to need.

As to a sabbath, that is more of a challenge. As a family we take a Jewish sabbath, from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday, as being involved in church as both Sally & I are, means that Sunday is rarely a day of rest! However maintaining a digital fast is more of a challenge, although it does remain an aim. I do love Rob Bell's description of the Sabbath and as we often see on school reports "must try harder!"

More on social media trends - is blogging the future for publishing?

Jeff Bullas has posted this question on his blog. He writes....

Blogging is publishing, it is content, and that can be a video, images, text or all of these. Blogging is about niches and  allows those that are passionate about their interests to start publishing and sharing online and through promotion drive traffic, eyeballs and then revenue.

Sure, the big blogs he refers to are going to be succesful like  The Huffington Post with 37.6 Million hits for the month of March, 2010. Other big sites are

• Mashable – 5.16 Million views (Technology Blog)
• Nymag.com -  3.4 million views (Entertainment Blog)
• BoingBoing.com – 3.1 Million views (Cultural curiosities and interesting technologies Blog)
• Businessinsider.com – 2.8 Million views (Business Blog)
• Inhabitat.com – 656,000 views (Environmental Blog)

 for the same period. But it is some of the comments that are almost more interesting than the post itself like this from Jean Sarauer...

I definitely think blogging is the future of publishing. As a writer, I’m seeing print markets shrink and fold all the time now, and some excellent writers are skipping that whole route and going straight into blogging. And why not? No editor to cramp your style, immediate publication, direct interaction with readers, and the ability to create your own products. I don’t see this going away anytime soon.

and then this from Crosbie Fitch

Yup, blogging is the future. It’s journalists publishing their intellectual work directly to their readers – missing out the publisher, no longer needing to charge the reader for printing, distribution, retail.

But my question is in all this freeing up how does the writer get paid? How are they going to monetise their blogs to get a reasonable income?

What does it all mean

I am watching the #medialit tag on Twitter following the Media Literacy course run by Codec in Durham with Pete Philips, Andrew Graystone and Bex Lewis amongst others. Pete Philips has used this excellent video in his presentation on Communication Conviction. There are some scary numbers in this video.

How do we as Christians relate to our communities?

I went to an excellent day of seminars led by Rev Dr Phil Meadows from Cliff College on Shaping Up for Mission. Phil is part of a new project called Inspire and they are re-imagining John Wesley's spirituality in a 21st Century context. It is amazing to see how much of Wesley's strategies still apply today.

To learn more about Inspire go to the web site. There is a national conference on July 3rd that I will be going to.

Jonny Baker has also blogged about a 'gathering' he attended with other folk from various emerging churches and communities this weekend, and in his post he shared some of the prayers they used as part of one of worship times and is based on a well known prayer but with some added explanations....

For God so loved the world - may we naturally follow suit,
That he gave his only son - may we learn the wonder of sacrifice,
That all who believe - may our love for one another be the crucial evidence,
May not perish - may we work to halt the collapse of lives, of communities and of creation,
But have eternal life - may we point to the hope you bring now and for the future.

Jonny also links Mark Berry's site which has more of the prayers they used - all very thought provoking stuff.

Post CMC conference mussings

 #CMN10 #cmn11 Having read @digitalfprint very good notes from the conference and adding to the discussion from folk commenting on the need to stop whingeing and to start engaging like @georgeluke and re-tweeted by @drbexl @gavindrake and @annamdrew and also mine and others suggestions to have digital literacy workshops at the next CMN conference, it has started to strike me that in the light of the comment that everything is moving very quickly except the Christian response should we not starting to would out what we can do to start to engage now rather than wait till next year?

There is of course the excellent MediaLit course but I suppose what I thinking of is starting to experiment and strategise a valid response to bring the Christian response up to speed.

I have just listened to the most recent edition of the Guardian's Tech Weekly podcast that was talking about government IT development in the climate of a 'new government' and saying that no IT company would be expected to roll out a fully developed system that everyone can use reliably from day one. It should be try out a small scale test, iterate, iterate and then scale up. So can we start the process?

If these conversations are already taking place lets link them up, if not lets get them going. Surely an excellent role for the Network?

Discuss.....