The main event

Hard to believe given everything that is said about low engagement in elections and politics in general but CBS is gearing up for High-Definition (HD) not for a big reality final or sporting event but the conventions, as Frank Governale, vice president of operations for CBS News says

“The [political] conventions will be our first big event in HD and our new [HD] control room should be online by early June, then we’ll start doing some news in HD... Editing will be a challenge because of all the SD [4:3] source footage intercut with HD. Our Avids [Adrenaline Newscutters] output only one channel at a time, either HD or SD. For the HD newscast, all the SD footage will be upconverted and standards converted on the timeline. Our router outputs will all have upconvertors so that we can output everything in HD. The existing infrastructure for SD is huge, so we’ll start upgrading where and when it makes sense, but it’s going to take time for a complete HD roll out.”

Clearly they expect a lot of viewers who demand a perfect image of everything as it happens, is this due to interest in the campaign (perhaps an Obama effect) or that there is typically high interest in conventions

Marketing Analogies and the Political Consumer

Nick Robinson creates some interesting analogies in his post of 8.30 this morning. Entitled the political marketplace he firstly links popularity with share value, so arguing that if Gordon Brown was a plc we would now be selling his shares and his value in the marketplace would be in free fall. He then moves on to suggest that the voters are buyers and sellers, and elections are a little like trading stock; is this an accurate reflection of the way the electors view democracy or is it a disservice to civic duty in Britain?

There are perhaps two issues here, one is the treatment of citizens as consumers by the parties and the media. While interesting and not for the consumption by the news audiences, Nick's metaphors seem to reflect observations that voters/citizens are passive, reactive and contributing to politics only through polling data and the ballot box. This can reinforce this behaviour and maintain audiences and reactors rather than participants. More importantly perhaps is the nature of democracy in Britain. While we can all say that participation is facilitated more than it ever was it reaches a small minority, few seem to be part of the new Web 2.0 democracy in reality. So the only chance to participate is a vote that may have little effect on the outcome and is unlikely to because at the local elections seats remain uncontested or so safe there is little point in making the effort.

But that does not make us consumers as consumers have choice. Perhaps what we are witnessing is not the rules of the marketplace filtering into politics but some of the attitudes, when there is no choice but two or three tarnished brands the product sector is ignored and alternative purchases are made: hence the shift from party politics to issue and cause based activism or transferring political ideologies to the consumer marketplace where we are seen to have power. When there is no perceiving benefit from participating, or from government actions, the voice of the dissatisfied consumer emerges: especially when high taxes do not equate to value for money. But there are citizens out there, it is not the case that we have a consumer society that wants individual benefits from market-oriented parties, they want that as well as the best politics for society (this is based on research findings); but they do not find that so become spectators of the political marketplace, where support goes up and down, but unsure who is setting the prices.

Making audiences think

I say part one of The Last Enemy, the most powerful way of gaining support for a political message is to plant it within a 'science fiction thriller'. As producer Gub Neal says: "The Last Enemy is... a cautionary tale about technology, with identity cards, biometric tests and armed police becoming an everyday presence in our lives". While many may not wish to listen to the complex arguments for and against identity cards etc, and do not consider how much data already exists on us via loyalty, credit and bank cards and through data collected by internet service providers, this gets the message home in a powerful but subtle way. If anyone was to call a referendum on ID cards while this drama is fresh in the memory I predict it would fail, such is the power of the dramatic narrative - they can make the audiences think far more than highbrow political debate and reach far more people.

Who reads the papers?

Is this still true, very funny but also an excellent bit of social comment on the 1980s; but do the same people read the papers now as did then?