The North goes mad for decentralised media

Monday, February 22, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories: Media sector | Tags: Alex Connock, entrepreneurs, media, investment, digital, Digital Britain, BBC, TV, Media City, culture, Mark Thompson, regional, animation, North, Northwest

Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps, reports on the media industry for the Grant Thornton blog. This month, he looks at how media power is being redistributed outside London with certain cities and regions reinventing themselves as the UK’s new media hubs…

Hamlet said: “I am but mad North-North-West.” I have no idea what he was on about, but what I do know is that for the next decade in Britain, the whole geographic north of the British Isles looks set for a decade of media investment and development – such as these developments in Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast and Newcastle. Digital Britain is a more creative-economy mix. Power is being redistributed from the centre, and in media, the North is a winner.

To make the most of it, investors and content clients are going to have to think about getting some trains. The good news is that the politicians are already on board – in cost-efficient standard class let’s hope.

Strategic industrial planning

Any Marxist economic theorist would be impressed by the industrial policy of the media’s move north.

The publicly funded BBC made the first moves, in Glasgow (entertainment) and Manchester (children’s, sport, radio and online). The project has moved from debate to reality, with office furniture arriving in Salford’s remarkable Media City.

Less high profile is BBC engagement with Yorkshire and the North-East, and bumping up of the quotas for Belfast.

That’s how I found myself at a well-attended and vibey ‘Connect and Create’ conference last week about online and TV projects in Middlesbrough, hosted by BBC director-general Mark Thompson and featuring a bizarre turn by Vic and Bob.

The North-East is also where the government itself is focusing its English experiment on TV news (in which we’re one bidding company, among many) and there is another in Scotland. Meanwhile, the Tories are looking at city stations, as well as ‘big bang’ deregulation to empower firms to cross-own radio, TV, print and online. One way or another, the government is going to be backing a rejuvenated local media in the North. (And with some development agency help, we’re shortly launching our own online science channel Newton in Newcastle, too.)

Raw media entrepreneurship

Meanwhile, a 1980s Thatcherite would be impressed by the entrepreneurial pizzazz of the media sector in northern cities such as Manchester.

The city had a halcyon period in the last century with Granada TV, but its media sector now is vibrant in a more multi-faceted way.

This week, local media trade How-Do brought out comprehensive reports that are well worth a read. From search to PR, to TV drama from Paul Abbott and Red, to advertising and publishing (including our company Ten Alps), there is a robust media industry even before state intervention.

Creative devolution

Until the BBC began its seismic moves out of London, media power in the UK was centralised like the focus of 17th-century France on Louis XIV’s courtly Versailles. But this could be changing, too.

The other day I was looking at cutting-edge 3D animation created in a university studio – at the rurally located media school in the University of Cumbria, in Carlisle. Bury has a ‘culture quarter’. There is a truly cutting edge media ‘factory’ at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. Scotland never needed anyone’s affirmation of its cultural or national status, even before political devolution came onto the horizon. Meanwhile, Belfast has the vibrant UTV, a strong BBC, plus a growing independent sector.

There never was a metropolitan monopoly on good stories, but there was one on transmitting them. Now with technology and investment more mobile, and huge ultra-fast broadband initiatives such as the NorthernNET (connecting all the big cities of northern England), there is less requirement to being close to London. This could be a smart time to get seriously provincial.

Image: © Lee Finney 

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