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Comment by Peter H Thomson on December 1, 2010 at 13:31

Hi Richard. The merits of your viewpoint is worthy of discussion and you certainly 'raise the bar' in forward thinking and exploration of monies best used to achieve a more useful platform in promoting Scottish Arts and Culture. The advantages of developing a Web 2.0 digital platform with proper funding, ( some of that 75 million ) mentioned, would be handy ! and if the locally produced content was of a high standard then with the integration you suggest, exponentially the word would reach perhaps a wider audience resulting in far greater benefits down the line. Your points of audience participation and potential social engagement seem far more beneficial to our society and Arts than perhaps another TV station gathering 'couch potatoes' ! As TV markets fragment even more, the ease of the Web with total integration built into Home Entertainment systems, I'm sure you're right, long term.

Comment by Mark MacLachlan on November 22, 2010 at 12:26

Interesting debate apologies for arriving fashionably late.

Re Funding of SDN.

Devolve broadcasting to Scottish government.

Divert Scottish BBC license fee to this pot. - How much do we pay into that particularly uneven pot every year?

Create 24 hour SDN covering TV, radio and online. (Where else in the world does a national broadcaster have an 18 hour transmission period before opting out through the wee hours to a neighbouring countries rival station?)

Buy in BBC addictive TV programming Strictly-Enders-Attenborough where craved.

Create and co-produce quality indigenous programming (we know we're capable of it we just get very few opportunities) in addition do what every other normal broadcaster does and buy in quality programming from elsewhere HBO-et al.

Let's have a fresh approach to news gathering and distribution. Scottish Six...with regional opt outs, imagine it opt outs for Aberdeen, Dumfries, Lerwick, Stornoway and Galashiels!

Spare a thought for the 250,000 of us who live in the 'Borders' and have the joy that is Border TV as our local news provider. Previously 'Lookaround You' came from Carlisle and provided approximately 4 minutes of opt out local news, unless there was of course a disaster then 'our region' was given more coverage. Now we receive our local news from Tyne Tees in Newcastle, and have a three minute opt out to tell us what's happening with our roads, weather and oh yeah news...which is condensed into a few moments of speed-read soundbites...then we're back to the joys of what's happening in Whitby... Think Newsnicht on FFW.

I favour SDN, simply because broadcasting in Scotland offers little of a Scottish identity I can identify with. There are programmes I enjoy and some I simply cringe at...carpet bowls ffs!

I don't think SDN should be paraded as an opportunity for Scottish producers to fill their boots and finally get a commission for that three hour documentary about the influence Sorley MacLean had on NWA that they've been flogging unsuccessfully for the past decade. I do think a cross platform approach which incorporates Richard's WEB 2.0 (or are we up to WEB 3.0 yet?) approach is definitely required.

We know that watershed is now a thing of the past, that on-demand is right up there with VUZE. If through the mysteries of the babbage time machine I had a mere 18 minutes left to down load what's left of the 15.2 gb that comprises the entire series of 'The Pacific', I would be one of ahem 4.6 m other global users, who prefer their entertainment available at a time of their choosing across a wide range of devices, from PC, to TV to iPhone...Therefore the imperative to repeat the scheduling mistakes of the past is no longer there...

Comment by Richard Saville-Smith on November 19, 2010 at 19:57

Hi Nicola, I talk to some of the right people, but my concern is the need to convert the talk into action. Being intellecually persuaded of the merits of the idea doesn't create the conditions required for action.

Methinks I'd like to avoid any kind of dualistic, either/or, oppositional thinking. I was rather trying not to get bogged down in class analysis (even though I brought it up) or being for or against screens - as obviously what I'm proposing involves more rather than less time on screens. Nevertheless these are all issues that are relevant to this discussion. Absolutely I'm not against TV - but I have concerns about pumping more than £75 million into a whole new broadcast channel when we've already got a lot of TV.

What I'm on about is a meta-argument about the arts and what digital technology can do. Let's put it this way. Everyone who blogs could have their own blog on Wordpress or whatever and be part of a 100 million community. Instead, 38minutes provides a certain critcal mass of 2,600 people who share a communality simply by signing up to the project - even if they cross post onto other platforms like Facebook as I do. The point is that as a person who comes to 38minutes I enter into a shared space with people, many of whom are strangers but all of whom I share 38minutes with.

The many organisations which are already harnessing the power of the web are like individuals with Wordpress blogs - sure there's a benefit - but there could be so much more. If both organisations and audiences shared a platform it would be like a great big 38minutes - the network effect is not an abstract concept - except better because the transactional nature of arts performance provides an active driver of interaction.

I don't believe that anyone can contemplate the scale of the impact - what I do know is that when Ebay, Myspace, Facebook, Google, Yahoo (and on and on) started no-one could possibly have anticipate the impact. And, as it turned out, the digital future belonged to those who took the digital risks.

The way I look at this, Nicola, is that you're not thinking about this on the scale I am, it is not for me to launch the platform. It's not "my" platform. It's for the government/CreativeScotland - all I do is point the way because it seems blindingly obvious to me. I've touched on the reasoning about this in previous posts - and maybe I'll write a single post setting out the logic in a wee bit. I just don't believe that a private company could ever have the necessary leverage - it would end up applying for Creative Scotland audience development grants and having to pilot its way. And, here I disagree with Arvind - it is all about critical mass. I haven't heard anyone suggesting that the Scottish Digital Network should have a pilot. If you're going to have a broadcast channel, if you're going to have a nationwide digital arts platform you have to make the deicison and then make it happen - and that's always going to be a political with a small p decision diverting funding from subsidy to radical audience development. Throwing in a wee private sector bottom up company is NEVER GOING TO HAVE A BIG ENOUGH IMPACT - your words. On the other hand, if we took some of the SDN millions (and I think you've skirted round some of my criticism) and invested in a digital future - well - who knows what could be achieved with Good Technology, Massive Marketing and the Persuasive Power of active participation of arts companies and the National arts companies being set as a precondition of the receipt of any future arts funding from the State! Now that would have an impact. Really.

Comment by Nicola Sinclair on November 19, 2010 at 15:58

Haha, loving this get-up-and-get-on-with-it attitude! Sure you're already in dialogue with the right people Richard.

And now to continue the debate, because I love a good debate. You said my argument is based on the assumption that £100m a year be spent subsidising middle class pursuits. I'm not sure what gave you that idea. I'm a lefty liberal and not at all inclined to favour the middle class!

What I was suggesting is that I want to see more funding for the production of arts - and by arts I mean everything from theatre, to Gormley figures in the Waters of Leith, to arcade machines on Portobello beach, to talented freelance illustrators like Johanna Basford and Carlene Edwards, to fashion design, to game design, to short film and literally everything in between. If that's middle class elitism, guilty as charged!

My point about TV is that I think there can be a snobbishness against it. For example, you're talking about "getting people off screens", because culture is a social process. Well, reading great novels is a solitary pursuit and yet few people would claim they're not part of culture. By contrast, TV is often watched by whole families together and it's an accessible and democratic medium, just like the web.

Many organisations are already harnessing the power of the web to boost audience figures. I'm just not entirely convinced that the platform you propose would have a big enough impact on turnout to justify the investment. As you say, it would be good to get some figures. And I hope you launch the platform and I eat my words!

Comment by Richard Saville-Smith on November 19, 2010 at 14:38

One of these days, Arvind? How about a day next week? I'm free on Tuesday.

Comment by Arvind Salwan on November 19, 2010 at 14:14

Richard, you crack me up in the best possible way, you know you do. So, where the hell does one start as some great, common sense gems in here? A pilot approach might even attract some funding to get the wider community involved. This needs some fuller discussion, further articulation and dialogue with the right people in the right places. One of these days...

Comment by Richard Saville-Smith on November 17, 2010 at 16:53

Hi Nicola,

Well at least we agree on one point re the SDN - so that's good.

You partially anticipate my point but not the logic re funding. Your anticipation is in respect of the increased audience. But I'll come back to that in a sec. The difficulty in your argument is that it seems to assumes that the status quo is ok re arts funding when it is not. Why should the best part of £100 million be spent every year subsidising what are often middle class pursuits which often do not manage to fill their available seats? - this is a harsh line, but I believe it to be the kind of question that we need to ask in these austerity times. So given that something has to change, do we just cut the Arts budget or do we try to do something a bit more imaginative.

The increased audience issue is one that no one has any data on - and it would be good to get some. I think your view is that there would be no new content. This is not my understanding. If the website was just a notice board of events, there might not be new content, but the interaction between users would be new and the ease of functionality would be new (listings and tickets from one screen). And - if everyone in an audience brought a friend to the next show, the audience would double - the power of personal recommendation is what provides the driver for increasing audiences and therefore less need for subsidy. It is also the case that small, local events would have free access which would allow more of them to reach their potential as advertising, fliers, posters are out of the reach of many so that would be new. In my opinion there is no point funding arts that don't have an audience. In some ideologically pure "art for arts sake" that may be the case but public money has no part in such projects. The audience for theatre is significantly undertapped. If people who go to the theatre twice a year went four times a year the audience would double. As a single person you have to have a certain attitude to go to the theatre on your own, but if the socialisation of theatre through web 2.0 occurred - as it does at things like the Edinburgh Coffee Morning then audiences would increase and Scotland would be better.

I'd like to opt out of the group of people who see the web as an alternative to everything. Wasn't my argument. Indeed the whole purpose of my argument is to get people off screens and out to live social events as opposed to sitting in front of screen. Don't get me wrong I watch my 4.2 hours of Channel 4 every day - this is not a dualism - but I believe that culture is a social process and experiencing art in a communal context matters.

Love, R.

ps. Take your point about dumping second rate TV onto a lovely new arts platform!

Comment by Nicola Sinclair on November 17, 2010 at 11:57

Wow, lots of food for thought there Richard. I'm going to have a go at providing my reactions to all this. Here goes:

Like you, I have many reservations about creating a Scottish digital channel - cost and quality being the two biggies.

I think the idea you're proposing is a really strong one, and would certainly be a great forum for promoting arts and events.

However, first of all, I think it also falls on the cost question. If the digital network is deemed too expensive at a time when arts funding is under serious threat, why shouldn't a massive ambitious website? Useful as it would be, it would not be delivering new content. I think public money would be better spent on supporting the development of the art itself, not on creating a marketing portal. You might argue that the portal would deliver new audiences, thus boosting revenues, but I suspect that people who don't go to theatre don't go because they're not interested in it, not because the information isn't available.

Secondly, I never understand why people insist on presenting the web as an alternative to everything else that's out there. You can read stuff online? My god it must be the end of print publishing. No-one will ever pick up a book again! You can watch things online? That must be the end of TV. It's a false dichotomy: there's room for both, because consumers want both.

If the content that would have sat on SDN would sit on the arts platform instead, the issue of quality that you rightly raised is still not solved. The case still remains that the best programmes will go to the big broadcasters. Everything else - plus some UGC of probably dubious quality - would get dumped onto the lovely new arts network.

So I guess what I'm saying is I think your idea is great and I'd love to see it happen. But I don't think it's an alternative place for Scottish TV content. Sadly, neither is SDN.