Category Archives: Industry

Beyond Rhetoric – IWA Media Policy for Wales

Blog, Industry, Media, PortfolioTelevision

 

“as slow to be set on fire as a stomach”

I wondered, while listening to Rhodri Talfan Davies speak this week on two occasions at the National Eisteddfod, if some version of that sentiment ever entered his mind. It certainly entered mine. It’s a striking phrase coined by George Eliot to express her frustration at her contemporaries’ failure to grasp the spirit of the times. How slow we are – those of us not touched by genius such as hers   ̶   to see the writing on the cultural wall in front of us. A new dispensation is coming and we need the ideas to meet it.

National Eisteddfod - Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru Llanelli 2014

Continue reading Beyond Rhetoric – IWA Media Policy for Wales →

Scampi and the Meaning of Life – TV and Culture in Wales

Blog, Industry, Television

I don’t know if anyone ever addresses Lord Hall of Birkenhead, Director General of the BBC, as ‘butt’. I suppose I’m unlikely to find out as he probably has more pressing questions to answer in these days of Charter Renewal debate. Nonetheless the question came to me as I reflected on a blog I wrote yesterday attempting to unpack what Tony Hall meant when he used the word ‘culture’ in a speech in Cardiff in 2014.

there are some aspects of national life in Wales that are not sufficiently captured by the BBC’s own television services in Wales, and I would include comedy, entertainment and culture in those categories

Tony Hall

I don’t want to treat that speech as some gospel to be mined for esoteric meanings and yet light did dawn, and the clue was an in example of one of the genres whose erosion he lamented in that text. He named comedy, entertainment and culture as genres whose production has been eroded, in the last decade, on English language television in Wales. I found myself thinking about a comedy series which, in my view, is one of the best BBC Wales has ever made. Continue reading Scampi and the Meaning of Life – TV and Culture in Wales →

Hungry Wales in an Age of TV Plenty

Blog, Industry, Media, Portfolio, Television, Uncategorized

If a thing is repeated often enough it begins to be as persuasive as though it were true.

We’ve never had it so good, apparently. We live in a televisual Age of Plenty with digital wares piled high in the marketplace and so it’s time for the BBC to withdraw from universality and to stop disadvantaging the commercial sector by its scale and success; the level of public funding gives the BBC an unfair advantage over its competitors and the BBC should become more ‘distinctive’, confining itself to things the market can’t or won’t provide.

cymru_wales

Continue reading Hungry Wales in an Age of TV Plenty →

Regulating the Regulators – the Press Recognition Panel and Wales

Industry, Media, Portfolio, PortfolioPrint, Print, Uncategorized

We all remember Leveson. And we still hear late rumblings from that consideration of corruption in the UK press as well as continuing debate as to how best to deal with it. A need for regulation was generally acknowledged but what system should be used? The compromise reached was the creation of self-regulators overseen by a Recognition Panel established by Royal Charter and the Panel came to Cardiff on 14th July.

PRP_Logo_rgb

The Press Recognition Panel  held a consultative session in the School of Journalism, Cardiff on the criteria to be used when assessing applicants for recognition. This consultation process ends on 31st July. Continue reading Regulating the Regulators – the Press Recognition Panel and Wales →

BBC licence fee raid ̶̶ The consequences for Wales

Commentator, Industry, Media, Television

cymru_wales 

This blog appeared on 10th July 2015 on the IWA’s clickonwales blog site.

For the second time in five years Government Ministers have backed the BBC into a corner, issued a ‘money or your life’ threat, walked away with a big chunk of the licence fee and left a Director General making as good a public fist of defending ‘the deal’ as he can. Has this been a fair trade between a willing buyer and a willing seller? Continue reading BBC licence fee raid ̶̶ The consequences for Wales →

Crabb Deal on Broadcasting in Wales is not secure yet

Blog, Commentator, Industry, Television

See IWA Click on Wales blog page 9th March

Crabb Deal on Broadcasting in Wales is not secure yet

When Stephen Crabb, the Secretary of State for Wales, stood up on 27 February to proclaim a (fragile) cross-party consensus on further powers for Wales, he did so only hours after Ofcom, the media regulator, had closed its consultation on the future of public service broadcasting. Ofcom’s review and the Crabb ‘consensus’ represent potentially important milestones for broadcasting in Wales.

What the premature St. David’s Day agreement (a Sunday announcement was never on the cards) had to say about broadcasting, unsurprisingly, made no headlines, but it laid down an important marker for the coming debate on the BBC’s Charter and for the need to deepen Welsh involvement in media policy. There is a huge amount at stake both for viewers and for our television production industry.

Apparently, all four parties are now agreed on proposals that the IWA has supported and promoted for some years past in various publications, and in the evidence that it submitted to the Silk Commission by the UK’s Changing Union project in which it has been an active partner. It did so again last week in its response to Ofcom’s consultation document.

Mr. Crabb’s Command Paper says there was consensus around the following Silk Commission proposals: Continue reading Crabb Deal on Broadcasting in Wales is not secure yet →

Industry Practitioners in Higher Education

Industry, Reviewer, Teaching

Chapter 8 in ‘Cultural Work and Higher Education’

Edited by Daniel Ashton and Catriona Noonan (Palgrave Macmillan 2013)

I read this chapter on ‘cultural industries practitioners working within higher education’ with interest since I fit that category and have seen little written about this experience. The sample is rather small, drawing on interviews with 12 practitioners in three industry sectors at  five HE institutions, five of whom are Games Designers. However, there are references to various academic works on the topic. The key thing is that the role of industry practitioners is receiving some consideration. There are many nuggets of insight here. Continue reading Industry Practitioners in Higher Education →

Cardiff Media Summit

Commentator, Industry, Uncategorized

media summitRuth McElroy

Angela Graham

Glyn Mathias

Rhodri Talfan Davies

The Cardiff Media Summit 3rd December 2014

Panel on the Democratic Deficit in Welsh Media

Ken Skates’s Keynote Speech ‘Finding Wales’s Voice in the Broadcasting Debate’

Rhodri Talfan Davies ‘The Challenge of Reaching Wales’s Citizens’

‘Is the Production of BBC Drama in Cardiff Under Threat?’

At the conclusion of the summit an invitation was issued to anyone keen to contribute to the debate on broadcasting in Wales to attend a meeting at the offices of Ofcom, 2 Caspian Point, Cardiff at 9.30am on 15th January.

The Writers’ Guild

Commentator, Industry, Uncategorized, Writing

 


Executive Committee Member, Wales
Organiser, The Media and Devolution – what do we need to know?
18th September 2013 Chapter Arts Centre
The Pros and Cons of Devolving Control of the Media to Wales – Speaker: Aled Eirug.
A  Guild Members Only event.
Facilitator of the submission from the Guild in Wales to the Commission on Devolution in Wales (Silk) September 2013
Union Learning Adviser for The Writers’ Guild 2009 – 2014
Identifying and responding to members’ training and development needs. ULA information

Expertise Exchange

Industry, PortfolioTelevision, Television

Initiator and Organiser:   24th October 2013

                                                                 a joint RTS / Cardiff University School of Journalism (JOMEC) event 
                                                                                                                                                                                   
Contributors:
  • Professor Justin Lewis and Llion Iwan, Content Commissioner, Factual and Sport, S4C
    Consumerism, the hidden driver behind all TV production?
  • Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Ashok Ahir, of Communications Agency, mela; former Head of Politics, BBC Cymru Wales
    Impartiality and representation of opinion on TV news
  • Dr Cindy Carter and Huw Foulkes, Broadcast Journalist, Ffeil & Newyddion 9, BBC Cymru
    What TV news provision does the younger teen audience want?
  • Dr Ross Garner and Mike Talbot, Series Editor, Wales This Week, ITV Wales
    Producing the ‘Mainstream’ in Wales
  • Professor Jenny Kitzinger and Erika Hossington, Series Producer, Casualty, BBC Cymru Wales
    How can TV drama represent family experiences of long term ‘coma’?

 

Dr Cindy Carter, Llion Iwan, Dr Ross Garner, Erika Hossington, Prof Jenny Kitzinger,
Ashok Ahir
Prof Justin Lewis, Mike Talbot, Angela Graham, Huw Foulkes
An enjoyable and thought-provoking event resulting in 3 on-going partnerships:
Prof Jenny Kitzinger and Erika Hossington: a potential new storyline involving coma next year for ‘Casualty’.
Dr Ross Garner and Mike Talbot: collaboration on producing tv in Wales for the mainstream.
Dr Cindy Carter and Huw Foulkes: collaboration on News for young teenagers.

“There are now plans to reflect adverts off the moon,” said Professor Justin Lewis as he argued that all television is ultimately driven by a  hidden consumerism. That was just one of the many insights gained as the Wales Centre paired academics with television professionals for one-to-one dialogue and debate at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen reported that the BBC is still trapped in a two major party world when it comes to political reporting, while Jenny Kitzinger told us that the portrayal of people in a coma in hospital drama is not only wrong but actually misleads the public. Other subjects discussed included news provision for the younger teen audience and an attempt to define what the ‘mainstream’ means within commercial British television.

Mike Talbot from ITV Wales said that cage fighting and cuts to council services were both current and mainstream, but that only one was really popular with audiences. So which programme offered true public service broadcasting? As the academics would say – discuss!   Tim Hartley

  Ashok Ahir during the discussion