Public television archives: the strategic context

paul.gerhardt@archivesforcreativity.comJune 2008

Some questions

Why is public broadcasting at a crossroads?

Case study: what happened to the BBC Creative Archive?

Digital literacy – a new culture war?

How can we legitimise creativity?

Case study: the concept of the American Archive

Public service broadcasting

• from analogue to digital

• from scheduled to unscheduled

• from over the air to over the internet

• from one to many broadcast to one to one conversation

• from traditional production to user conversation

• from ephemeral to permanent

A new landscape where archive content can generate new public value.

But there is a paradox:

• we are capturing all new content• past content generally remains locked up

So: key issue for psb’s is how to release that public value.

What happened to the BBC Creative Archive?

Copyright: the Creative Archive proposition

Free access to selected content for learning, for creativity and for pleasure.

From home, members of the

public will be able to:

• search for legally cleared TV

and radio content – from

extracts to whole programmes

• preview and download

• modify and create their own versions

• share with others – and with the BBC – on a non-commercial basis

Headline results of the BBC pilot

• 500,000 downloads by the end of the pilot

• 100,000 registered users

• BAFTA for interactive innovation

• Commercial sector endorsement

• International support

• Only two minor breaches of the licence

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/index.shtml

BBC Trust

Management control through the public value test

Vision: Creative Archive UK

a Creative Archive for the nation, drawing on moving images, stills and sound content from a range of public and commercial sources

Public Value:home use/learning/creative applications

Commercial Value:Wider publicity/profile“Upgrade path”/commercial licensing/investment opportunities

Founding members:

New members

Creative Archive vision

Creative Archive UK will provide the public with online access to a rich heritage of moving images, pictures and audio for downloading, keeping, using, re-mixing and sharing. This unique and growing resource, supplied by broadcasters and national and regional archives, will support learning, self-expression and creativity.

Public Value:home

use/learning/creative applications

Commercial Value:Wider publicity/profile“Upgrade path”/commercial licensing/investment opportunities

Digital literacy – a new culture war?

“The cinema is a much more momentous invention than printing. Before printing could affect you, you had to learn to read……now, the cinema tells its story to the illiterate as well as to the literate.

That is why the cinema is going to produce effects that all the cheap books in the world could never produce.”

George Bernard Shaw 1914

The 5 types of digital literacy

• Photo-Visual Literacy – Learning to Read from Visuals• Reproduction Literacy: The Art of Creative Duplication• Branching Literacy: Hypermedia and thinking or

multiple-domain thinking• Information Literacy: The Art of Always Questioning

Information• Socio-Emotional Literacy

Towards a Theory of Digital Literacy: Three Scenarios for the Next Steps

Aharon Aviram and Yoram Eshet-Alkalai

http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Aharon_Aviram.htm

Read?

or

Read/Write?

TV Archives:

“…digital literacy is not equally shared among all age groups and … the commonly used notion that the younger generation is more digitally literate than the older one should be examined with care.”

Is digital literacy….

simply a new, additional set of skills for the internet age?

Or….

a “clash of cultures” between the “old” (modern, rationalistic, linear, conceptual, book based) and the “new” (post modern, branching, multimedia based, reproduction oriented)?

“The truth is that the book as invented in the 15th century has not been bettered as a compact, transportable and "sustainable" receptacle for almost all the human imagination can devise.”

Simon Jenkins, The Guardian 16/05/08

Legitimising creativity: Trying Things Out

CHILDREN TALKINGDay Trip to Calais1967

Harold Williamson joins a party of boys and girls from Lauriston School, Hackney for their first visit to France

MAN ALIVEVince, Paul, Lawrence and Richard1971

Denis Tuohy looks at the past and present lives of four young teenagers and their families

The project included“BBC in the East End updated”A film by Chris Dorley-Brown

“It’s about us!”- Comment at the exhibition

• The 20th century history of almost every community in England is represented in our important national film, television and sound archives.

• Much of it has value only to the communities themselves; to artists, to local historians, and to dispersed individuals and families.

• Archive sound and vision needs to take its place alongside the photograph and the printed word as a local source of cultural identity, history and creativity.

• This project brings back to the community an asset they already believe they own.

• It can stimulate new media creativity, historical and family research, and topics for teachers and schools.

• User generated content will complement, expand and enrich these unique collections.

Creative usage of clips

I used the clips to challenge myself to write music to them. I used it as

practice for the TV Composers competition the BBC ran.

(Composer)

I downloaded the nature clips and used them to help teach my son (14yrs) how to edit and

apply a voice over. So it had a real educational element to it. But it then got

really fun as we had a laugh putting our own silly commentary over the top like creature

comforts or Ricki Gervais Animals

(Producer)

I use the clips to download onto my laptop and then amalgamate them into my lesson plans I pull them up onto the whiteboard

within the lesson itself.

Showing video engages children much more than a book will.

(Primary Teacher)

I have used the clips as background to a presentation I have pulled together for

work, moving images make it much more dynamic and interesting

(Management Consultant)

Case study: the concept of the American Archive

• PBS and NPR stations: local digital innovations

• Core brand?

• American narratives

• Links with other cultural institutions

• Political dimension

$400m federal funding for pbs and sponsoring body for the American Archive

Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Is YouTube the de facto American Archive?

Thank you

paul.gerhardt@archivesforcreativity.com