Two of the UK's leading conservative bloggers - Tim Montgomerie and Iain Dale - are planning to launch a political TV channel on the internet next month. 18 Doughty St TV will launch on October 10th and broadcast for four hours a night. They are giving a hundred camcorders away to people with strong views to provide content. Tim Montgomerie says:
"In twelve months political blogs have broken the monopoly enjoyed by the Westminster commentators but blogging is only the beginning of the new media revolution. Over the next few years internet entrepreneurs are set to storm the decaying fortresses of the mainstream media. They will offer a radical alternative to the BBC’s pretence of impartiality, its obsession with personalities and its unwillingness to commit serious amounts of time to the concerns of ordinary voters. Big businesses, self-important NGOs and timid political elites should also start preparing their defences.”
Their YouTube trailer:
This is all very funny. It proves once and for all the the so-called blog experts have no more idea than MSM of what the public want. If this is a success I'll eat my hat, and the hats of the entire UK blogosphere.
Posted by: Pat | September 22, 2006 at 11:24 PM
Richard,
Thanks for linking to the media upstart challenger "18 Doughty St TV". More importantly, your blogging about it actually actually shows that BBC are paying attention. I personally wondered out loud in my blog enry "Changing world politics with 100 camcorders?" that if the senior executives at my beloved CBC are as attune to these new media challengers as you've shown here.
For one thing, I have yet seen a personal blog from any CBC senior executives. May be I am asking for too much.
As a Canadian, many of my favourite shows are strangely from the BBC. So I wish BBC good luck and all the best in facing challenges from the upstarts. Knowing and paying attention to these upstart challengers are the first step to improving BBC.
Cheers,
Kempton
A big BBC fan from Canada
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P.S. My current favourite show "BBC's Dragons' Den" is finally coming to Canada on Oct 4th. Here is something even the BBC is not doing in UK, an info/promo/cool blog of the show before it gets shown,
http://www.insidethedragonsden.com/
Posted by: Kempton | September 24, 2006 at 03:11 PM
Kempton, but as you imply it requires "upstarts" i.e. competition for the BBC to change, so don't knock it too much.
Posted by: Samuel Coates | September 26, 2006 at 06:39 PM