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Could this be the 18 Doughty Street TV breakthrough?

I seem to recall someone, maybe even Iain Dale himself, saying to me some weeks back that what 18 Doughty Street TV needs is for someone important to say something newsworthily scandalous on it. The world, and in particular the Mainstream Media, would then start to pay attention to it.

So, could this be the breakthrough?

Iain Dale is surely hoping so:

In an interview on 18 Doughty Street’s One to One programme last night, Lance Price, former Downing Street spin doctor, has sensationally claimed that Tony Blair himself was the source of quotes describing Gordon Brown as having “psychological flaws”.

Price continues to say he was told by a figure very close to the Chancellor that Alastair Campbell “took the rap” to allow the Prime Minister to escape blame.

Judging by the email that I (and presumably the rest of the world) just got, in the small hours of this Wednesday morning, I get the feeling that Iain Dale reckons that this just might be the media ruckus he has been waiting for.

Now do not misunderstand me. I care very little for the fortunes of the Blair government, nor for the fortunes of whichever political gang – Brownies? Cameronics? – gets to replace these people for the next few years. 18 Doughty Street TV would like it be Mr Cameron and his friends, but I really do not care. I consider them all to be as psychologically flawed as each other. Whoever wins the next spasm of electioneering, we already pretty much know what will win, and it is unlikely to be nice.

What I am interested in, and do feel entitled to be optimistic about, is seeing the British broadcasting media go the way of the British print media and of the internet itself. I want British broadcasting – in particular British broadcasting about politics, and about what politics is and what politics should be – to lose its air of cosily unanimous religiosity, in which the only competition is in who can present the same centre-to-left news agenda and the same stale centre-to-left editorialising about it with the greatest earnestness and piety, and to become instead a bedlam of biases, biased in all imaginable directions, with no meta-contextual assumption left unchallenged. 18 Doughty Street TV has been a small step in that direction, not so much because of what has actually been said on it, but because of the example it has set to others concerning the viability of non-majoritarian broadcasting, and about the possibility that truly different things could start getting broadcast.

Although I do not know or care who Lance Price is, lots of others do, and I am accordingly still intrigued by the possibilities opened up by what he has said. Because of it, a whole lot more people are liable to hear, not just about 18 Doughty Street, but about “internet broadcasting” in general.

British print media people have always been quite diverse in their tone, so although the internet has been a technical and professional challenge to these people, it has not been that much of an ideological jolt for them. British broadcasters, on the other hand, have tended to understand the new ‘social’ media rather better, in the purely technical sense. The BBC web operation has had a huge impact. But ideologically, British mainstream broadcasting people are far more uniform in their ideological outlook, and potentially therefore face far more of an ideological upheaval at the hands of the new media.

So, I hope that neither Iain Dale nor I are making a fuss about nothing. I hope that this proves to be a fuss about something.

In conection with the above, this BBC report (credit where it is due) about Skype offering internet TV services, also makes interesting reading.

11 comments to Could this be the 18 Doughty Street TV breakthrough?

  • All politicians?

    Pots. Kettles. Black.

  • I believe a Tory front-bench spokesman made an arse of himself on the couch and then was relieved of his duties last year.

  • peter hitchens

    I would much rather have Blair confirm that story about Gordon, the nappy and the roocking horse, now that would be news.

  • Freeman

    Blair has now denied it, as one might expect.

  • Nick M

    Well, to be be honest, I’m underwhelmed by this tale. Isn’t it clear by now that they all have “psychological flaws”.

    I’m just pissed off with the fucking lot of them and the older I get the more I think nothing will change without direct action (unlikely though that is).

    I’ve been looking at property recently and was thinking it might be a bit of a scheme to get a flat-shop combo because commercial property tends to be cheaper than residential when my wife reminded me of things like uniform business rates and change of use rules. I’d forgotten about all of that for a little while. When I was brought back to reality I realised quite how screwed up priorities are.

    I think my modest flight of fantasy hitting the buffers of the way things are was a further milestone on a personal road to Damascus. I hate every last bastarding one of these pathetic bunch of control freaks.

    I would happily, no joyfully, beat Gordon Brown to death with the severed limbs of Dave Cameron.

  • Steve

    I can’t help thinking that the best solution for the truly just and equitable government of the United Kingdom would involve 646 stout tree limbs/lamp posts and 646 pieces of rope.

  • Ian Dale? Is that the chap who developed a list of the best political blogs and by sheer coincidence his own appeared at number 1 or 2, yet Samizdata never made the top 100?

  • Ian Dale? Is that the chap who developed a list of the best political blogs and by sheer coincidence his own appeared at number 1 or 2, yet Samizdata never made the top 100?

    An oversight I am sure. But then as we only get about 20,000 readers per day, perhaps he has not noticed us.

  • Nick M

    Perry,

    I’m curious but where does 20K land in the great scheme of things? I just compare the popularity of blogs on the basis of comments per thread but presumably with 20K/day most folks who visit Samizdata don’t comment.

    I’m not asking for any state secrets or trying to make a point, I’m just curious.

  • Comments are a funny thing. The number of them per day makes no rhyme or reason. I can get 40, 50, 60 or more comments on an article and the hit rate for that day is might go down, or up, or stay the same… I can get 10 comments spread over four articles in a day and we get a 5 to 10,000 person spike. Why does the comment rate have no direct correlation to the hit rate? I have no bloody idea and it is one of those bloggy things that has long puzzled me.

    Some blogs more or less exist for comments. Clearly LGF for example writes for his commenters, who are a wild lot, not unlike a Jerry Springer audience at times (no disrespect to Charles intended). Here I actually tell the Samizdatistas “write what you want to say, do not write for the commenters”… and I police the comments fairly closely to prevent things just degenerating into a hatefest or cycle of exchange of pointless insults or a platform for ‘race realists’ to turn discussions about motorcars into discussions about ‘racial intelligence’… and as a result I suspect we get far fewer comments-per-visitor than (say) LGF.

    I do like the fact we have a comment section (or we would not have one, obviously) and I think we usually get a higher quality of comment here than a great many quite worthy blogs, but how that explains the seeming lack of connection between number of comments and number of visitors…I just cannot explain it and it has baffled me for some time.

  • I think 18DS will come into its own during the general election campaign. It will be addictive to the politically engaged.

    Finally we’ll have broken out of the leftist consensus straight-jacket.