Today’s television consumers expect to be able to watch what
they want, when they want and how they want. You can pause live
programmes, watch shows on your mobile phone and catch up on
anything you have missed via various on-demand services. The media
industry has changed – and is still changing. So what does the
future hold for the next generation of media students preparing to
take flight into what has always been a hugely competitive and
demanding business?
Dorothy Hobson is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural
Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, and faces the task of
preparing students for the challenge. Her advice to budding
journalists, producers, presenters and public relations officers is
to know your stuff – and eat, sleep and breathe it.
“We encourage students to be aspirational – we tell them they
can do anything they want, but they have to work hard to get there.
I know lots of people in the media industry and you have to be
almost obsessive about it – think it and live it. I tell students
that the industry is competitive and networking is important – not
everything we do is part of an assessment but it is part of their
future.”
Like most industries, broadcasting and journalism is
experiencing the effects of the economic downturn. Major
broadcasters like ITV have announced significant job cuts and
scaled back their regional news presence in a bid to save money.
But the increase in the number of ways people can watch and read
their news and other content had already taken its toll before the
credit crunch hit.
“There is a massive threat from the internet and other ways of
spending leisure time, such as gaming and watching DVDs,” Dorothy
explains. “The industry is going through a difficult time,
particularly broadcasters like ITV as their success is based on the
advertising they can sell. However good their programmes are and
however many millions of people watch them, if they have no money
to spend on making them then there is a problem. The programme
makers long for an X Factor or an I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of
Here every week, as they need those big audiences to sell
advertising space around the programmes.”
An on-going debate within the industry centres around the BBC’s
licence fee. Other broadcasters such as Channel Four would like a
slice of this money, paid to the Corporation by the
television-viewing public. But Dorothy is strongly in favour of the
licence fee – but only for the BBC.
“The BBC has to be left with the licence fee intact and not
touched because it is no good undermining one strong broadcaster
because others are suffering. Critics attack the fact that it is
publicly funded, but it is also publicly owned so the licence fee
payers are the stakeholders. So if it makes a profit that goes back
into broadcasting. I believe it needs to be supported because other
broadcasters will never survive without the BBC being strong. It is
an assured asset and has nearly 100 years of reputation behind it,
and needs to be kept as it is.”
“We encourage students to be aspirational – we tell them they
can do anything they want, but they have to work hard to get
there.”
The media has certainly evolved since Dorothy began researching
the area. She was one of the first people to be writing and talking
about popular television in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and one
of her early interviews has recently been selected for inclusion in
the British Library Sound Archive. Her Masters involved researching
how young women made the transition from school to motherhood when
they were around 17, 18 and 19 years old. It became apparent that
television and radio were extremely important in their lives.
They picked out the programmes that were significant for them –
dramas, quiz shows and documentaries about families. Dorothy was
given access to the TV companies and was approaching the issue from
the point of view of the audience, which was then quite a novel
idea. And at that time, the concept of television being about
‘ordinary’ people didn’t really exist. But since the emergence of
Reality TV, this is now an almost dominant form. “I’m not a fan of
‘Reality TV’,” Dorothy, from the School of Humanities, Languages
and Social Sciences, says. “What has happened is that people who
want to be famous have to be ‘extra’-ordinary and over the top
before they will be considered. In the beginning, no-one knew how
it would go but Reality TV has become a self-perpetuating monster.
Big Brother has become a parody of itself – it goes too far and
then pulls back, and becomes boring. If people still watch these
shows, the producers will keep making them. “ITV has been quite
careful about what it makes, with big entertainment shows like X
Factor and Britain’s Got Talent proving to be big successes, and I
would never attack these in the same way. They follow the tradition
of people working their way through different entertainment
opportunities that perhaps don’t exist anymore.
“I still think that programmes like soap operas do push the
boundaries. They have storylines that are revealing and handle
issues that other series don’t, such as the recent child abuse
storyline in Eastenders. Doctors, which is a daytime series, also
has the ability to handle light and strong stories well.”
And as the industry moves forward, what words of wisdom does
Dorothy have for the next generation of media stars? One central
piece of advice is to immerse yourself in the subject, particularly
the newest forms such as social networking sites like Facebook,
MySpace and Twitter. The industry is always looking for the next
big thing, and it is important to be on top of emerging
technologies and trends. Mars Elkins, development producer from
Aquila, a Midlands Independent Production Company, recently came to
speak to Dorothy’s MA Contemporary Media students and stressed how
important social networking sites were for finding out what is
going on. Dorothy sees this as being in the favour of young people
going into the industry, who already have the knowledge of
contemporary communication sites. The MA has a number of visiting
Industry speakers, because Dorothy believes that students can learn
from those who are involved in the media business as well as from
academics. It also enables students to learn to ‘network’ which is
essential if they are to progress in their chosen careers.
Importantly in a time of recession, there are many areas where
media students can flourish and transfer the skills they have
learnt as part of their University course.
“The media is, increasingly, an integral part of everybody’s
lives and businesses, so our students can go on to work in any
business as most have that sort of presence, for example in media
relations, public relations or media training. You always had to be
good, but now you have to be the best because the competition is
vast.
“But, on the plus side, there are more opportunities for doing
your own news publications such as blogs. In some ways, it is a
hard time but in others there has never been a better time to make
your own programmes and documentaries – you just have to have the
talent and know the industry. The advantages of the degrees our
students have studied is that they have combined academic theory,
media practice and learning from media practitioners.
“The new ideas that are coming from our graduates are what the
future of the media will be.”
