Interactivity, the catchall catchphrase for new technologies, means nothing more than two-way communication between the broadcaster of a service and the recipient or user. Interactive TV (iTV) is broadcast television that offers the ability to interact with favourite shows, adverts and Internet services. Most often, these are unsophisticated versions of the kind of services available to the average games console or Minitel user in the 1980s.
iTV is available to over 35% of the UK population and it is estimated this figure will reach over 90% within a decade despite the collapse of ITVDigital. This makes the UK the largest and most advanced iTV market in the world.
From the consumer perspective what iTV means is:
- more choice (of channels and programmes);
- more control (electronic programme guides and digital video recorders);
- better quality (the digital signal via satellite, cable or free-to-air terrestrial);
- new forms of entertainment (reality TV, games, interactive sport and programming on demand).
But fundamentally iTV is still television. The vast majority of consumer activity in relation to the new digital communications platform is still about watching the box. iTV consumers are a closer match to the middle-market demographic profile of the average home than the Internet. But iTV has not turned these people into a nation of screen surfers, primarily for simple ergonomic and privacy reasons. Operating a web page by remote control or reading your personal email in the family living room is not a compelling consumer experience.
Anyone who cites iTV as the bold new dawn of Web TV for the masses, connecting the unwired and educating the downtrodden via the miracle of a familiar medium is perhaps forgetting that by far the most successful interactive features so far have been voting on Big Brother and gambling.
Free speech or commercial fairy tales?
If this rather downbeat assessment of the medium from the standpoint of the majority of consumers is accurate, what is the political relevance of iTV? The answer, as I hope to demonstrate, lies in the need to increase the pressure for reform of the UKs archaic approach to political advertising.
This is important. BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board Ltd) data tells us that 70% of UK citizens regard the television as the primary source of their news as opposed to 18% for national newspapers. Yet television remains a protected industry where access to free speech is restricted both by the state and the goodwill of the broadcaster. As an individual, I cannot dispute government policy other than buying into less effective communications media than those available to the government.
US Senate candidate William Benton used the first television political advertisement in 1950. He was a maverick who amongst other things crusaded against Joe McCarthy and whose trust, the Benton Foundation, now campaigns with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) for programmes to span the digital divide. Television political advertising was at its conception a tool to challenge orthodox thinking.
In the 2000 US Presidential race, there were 1.2 million political adverts run at an estimated average broadcast cost of $642.5 each. Much less than the cost of the average full-page newspaper ad, even at this, the height of the dot.com driven advertising boom. More than 50% were by independent political action committees or interest groups.
The UK is at the opposite extreme to the US in relation to television as a vehicle of free speech. All political advertising is banned from UK screens, whether network or digital.
This puts politics in the same category as dangerous drugs, pornography and tobacco. It infantilises the British public and in essence suggests that while we are perfectly capable of reasoning our way through sales promotions for face cream and personal loans dangerous ideas such as voting Conservative, being nice to whales, or supporting victims of torture should be heavily regulated or in the control of programme makers.
A 2002 stakeholder consultation on paid-for political advertising by the Electoral Commission found no enthusiasm for changing the status quo. As Malcolm Earnshaw, the Director General of the ISBA (the voice of British advertisers) puts it:
The vast majority of advertisers oppose paid-for political advertising on television. Such a move would harden the airtime market, present considerable problems in relation to the regulation and self-regulation of advertising and, given the undoubted controversy which would surround political advertising campaigns, could lead to advertising being brought into disrepute, with the subsequent negative publicity rubbing off on to brands and advertisers.
In other words, free speech on British television is less important that ensuring the brand integrity of toothpaste and keeping down promotional costs for nappies. And as far as the political establishment is concerned, who wants to be the politician remembered for bringing commercials of the far-right British National Party to our screens?
We lecture, you listen
However, this reactionary conservatism disguises the extreme unfairness of the current position. The key point is that there already is a large amount of political advertising on television already and even more on other media streams. But while the Americans agonise on how to limit spending and provide free slots to ensure some equality of access, the British enforce a system that puts control on freedom of speech firmly in the hands of government quangos such as the Independent Television Commission (ITC) (soon to be OFCOM (Office of Communications)).
The BBC, the worlds favourite state broadcaster, has been running a non-stop political advert for the persistence of the BBC for the last twenty years. The licence fee, a £109 regressive poll tax on a piece of furniture, is apparently the only fair way to fund the Beeb and anyone who dissents is some form of criminal delinquent who steals from the rest of us. Or at least this is the clear message of two decades of primetime taxpayer-funded campaigning by the BBC, safe in the knowledge that no individual or organisation that disagrees can legally challenge this view in the same compelling way the BBC propagates it.
Additionally the nations top-spending television advertiser is not Procter & Gamble or Unilever. Its Her Majestys Government or the Central Office of Information. While political-advertising worrywarts agonise over the possibility that car and tobacco corporations might use their vast profits to campaign against further control of their products, they are silent over the endless promotion of government policy using the money of the 75% of people who didnt vote for the government.
Where there is equality of access, it is only in the form of the utterly awful Party Political Broadcast (PPB) a mini-film whose average length has drifted down from ten minutes in the 1970s to around three minutes today, and will inevitably end up nearer a regular 30-second slot the more the voters turn off in droves. The PPB is only available during election time and then only to national political parties. While Unison can run a national billboard campaign against Tory tax cuts in the 2001 election only the Tories can respond on television.
Pop-star George Michael has recently exposed the starkest indication of the absurdity of this Soviet-style system. His video, Shoot the Dog, is a three- minute political commercial against British support for a US war in Iraq, which appears frequently on MTV and other channels. If any left-wing politician was a multi-millionaire who could write a good song, he or she also might also have this privileged access to free speech.
From digital convergence to open democracy
The prohibition on political advertising is not based on the compelling and dangerous power of celluloid. After all, no such restrictions apply to cinema advertising (where the notorious anti-Euro advert featuring a Hitler character was shown). And in the 2002 local elections, the Green Party used viral video streaming to send a commercial straight into peoples inboxes.
It is precisely in the realm of interactivity, online, onscreen and inbox that politics is entering peoples lives regardless of state prohibition. While it is illegal for a political party or pressure group to buy a cable TV channel, they can still pay for a website within an iTV walled garden. They can also pay for microsites and hyperlinks from other digital providers.
Consequently, come the next general election in 200506 the average PPB will contain red button interactivity that will allow voters to sign up for more information, join the party, donate or access more information.
During political programming such as Question Time on the BBC, voters wanting more information will click into the BBCi microsite and will be able to connect directly to party and issue group websites. At the same time, jog dial technology in representative sample homes will allow viewers to see direct on screen how other viewers are responding second-by-second to a particular politicians message (an innovation already tried in Russia).
Digital technology contains within it the power to allow voters to respond directly to their elected representatives. We already know from early trials that the exceptionally limited interactivity behind commercial I-ads has engaged consumers more deeply and directly with the products being promoted. On the Internet itself, although the medium has generated a mixed response you can advertise anything from advocacy for assassination to lowering the age of homosexual consent.
At a time of falling turnouts and declining party membership, it is time to exploit this technology for the good of free speech and democracy. It simply cannot be that only OFCOM, the BBC, Rupert Murdoch and the Electoral Commission are fit to decide for us what ideas we can and cannot be exposed to and in what format.
The nonsense of the British political advertising regime was absurd even before the rise of interactivity. Lets hope digital convergence will finally help force this issue. That truly would be an open democracy.
