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The Media Massacre

Tuesday, 18 November 2008

Ok we are in recession, the credit crunch has had its first birthday and we are about to hit 3 million unemployed, never mind how many hundreds of thousands missing illegal immigrants. 2008 has been tough on the media and advertising agencies alike. Here at WL we have seen a massive swing in terms of client spend from traditional media to online advertising.

But I find myself asking myself are we in danger of killing our media offerings off too early? For decades the Great British media scene has been the envy of many western countries. Many of our EU compatriots dont have the regional press scene never mind the regional offerings from commercial tv and radio. Frankly media buying abroad can be likened in some cases to the MacDonalds offering. i.e. do you want fries with that sir? We are unique and that is what makes us great.

Here in Great Britain (a name I fight daily to retain!) we have our regions, our heritage and our wonderful accents. Being a middle aged brummie, i have gone throught the life stages of blissful ignorance or other accents until my teens (incidentally there are still many of inner M25 circle who have never and have no intention of visiting the regions), then a period of trying to hide my accent and therefore my regionality and now I embrace and celebrate it because it really is ok to be different to other areas and benefit from belonging to a community or a region.

The point of my opening ramble in this blog is just that - We have our culture, we have our regional heritages, we are fiercely proud as regions more so than a nation now - just ask your local footy fans. All this is well and good but it only works because we have our regional media. Try and explain to me how the nationals are going to cover the likes of Walsall, Widnes or Wallasey with the same amount of coeverage and quality the regional press,tv and radio do currently.

On line is cool and hip but frankly the quality is not consistent because of the ease of access and regionality is really difficult to achieve. Just ask any Media buyer buying Pay Per Click geographically in the UK.

Ultmately the media too have to take some repsonsibility. The editorial teams are guilty of not working with the sales departments for years and and with the usual arrogance that they are impervious to the real commercial world have grasped the credit crunch with a relish and have now driven their own companies to their knees. We are now seeing large scale redundancies of both editroial and sales personnel and this trend will continue well into 2009.

The worry for me is if you lose these regional media companies, it is irreversible and we will lose the quality of our regional coverage and ultimately our very identity and culture. I would ask you to consider where you are going to get your local media consumption in the coming months and years because at the moment you have the choice, but in in the future you probably wont.

Remember we live in Great Britain, we need to be proud of our history and our uniqueness. With this media massacre we run the danger of becoming well just bland..

My next offering will be focussing on how to get the politicians out of their Ivory Towers and back to what they should be doing - serving us the public and making us feel proud to be British nay Proud to Be Great British!

Labels: Media Regional News

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