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Politics
4 February 2012

Regulation is dead: long live the independent TV viewer?

Polls suggest the public is ready to take a more active role in TV regulation to ensure it does its

Source: Getty Images

In my living room, I can turn on my web-enabled TV, watch an ITV drama and last week's episode on ITV Player. Then, I might watch a political podcast from a newspaper's website, and if I fancy it, round things off with a prank video from YouTube of someone pretending to drop an electric cable into a swimming pool.

If my husband wanders in with a cup of tea, all four of these pieces of content look like TV programming as I switch between them with my remote. But in reality they are regulated (or not) under three different regimes (Ofcom, ATVOD, and no content regulation for the internet). An hour of sofa surfing can produce a whole range of things that walk like TV programmes and talk like TV programmes, but are not in fact TV programmes. While some of them are subject to stringent regulations on harm, offence, protection of minors, privacy, fairness and impartiality, others are not.

And here in lies the future challenge for Ofcom and others concerned with protecting viewers. How should audiences be protected, when more and more regulated and unregulated content appears next to each other on converged TVs, looking, to the untutored eye, exactly the same?

Ipsos MORI's latest audience research for Ofcom shows that protecting minors and other vulnerable audiences from inappropriate or harmful content clearly remains the main concern for most people. Protecting other vulnerable groups from financial or emotional harm is the second most important principle. Whatever we are watching, whether delivered through the internet, on new converged TV's, or on mobile devices, people wanted the same, or more, regulation in future on these issues.

But findings also show there is a degree of pragmatism about what can be achieved in this world of ever-increasing channels and platforms. Importantly, viewers recognised that regulating content is not the same as censoring it.

The participants in our study broadly formed two somewhat contradictory attitudinal groups. A 'Protect me' group wanted regulators to take more of a traditional authoritarian role, stopping broadcasters putting out anything potentially harmful.

On the other hand an 'Inform me' group felt that empowering individuals might be the most effective way forward. They wanted viewers to understand that a YouTube and newspaper video will not been regulated in the same way as Channel 4 news or a BBC drama; and then allow the viewer to use her common sense while watching.

We are entering a new era, where our viewing is not policed by authority figures censoring at source or guiding us with a timeframe of what we can watch when. Everyone will, though, need help to make choices, in the form of more information, and technical tools to signpost the difference between regulated and unregulated content.

The youngest participants in our study, a group of very media-literate 16 year-olds, seemed the most enthusiastic and the readiest for this. This may be a natural evolution for regulation for the young but are their adult counterparts happy to see them use the information and technology at their disposal to make their own choices when it comes to some content?

However the 'Protect Me' group - older, more conservative overall - may need more help. If regulation shifts its focus, it is crucial that all kinds of vulnerable groups, who are likely to be the least digitally literate, are not left behind.

New regulation has to cover the views both type of audiences so that everyone sitting on their sofas understands what they are watching, where it comes from, and how far it has been regulated - and then we can all enjoy an evening's viewing.

Technical note: Ipsos MORI conducted seven pairs of reconvened workshops with about 20 participants in each in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, York, Birmingham and Manchester. Quotas were set to ensure that Ipsos MORI achieved a range of ages (from 18 to late 70s), gender, ethnicity, socio-economic group, and high and low users of new technology.

Sarah Castell is head of qualitative research at Ipsos MORI

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UK
2 April 2016

Here’s why nothing – and no one – can stop me running up and down escalators

It’s official: standing on busy escalators is faster than walking up (or down) them.

Yes, it’s official: standing on busy escalators is faster than walking up (or down) them. Research undertaken by my favourite local transport provider, Transport for London, has conclusively proved that if people stand on both sides of the escalator during peak travel times, the numbers carried can increase by as much as a third.

Well, for once that’s a piece of good crowd news in our febrile and fissiparous world, guiding us towards sensible mass behaviour of a type to appal Yevgeny Zamyatin: think We, people, not a Beckettian I. TfL’s aim is to introduce standing-only escalators at some of its busiest and deepest stations in order to cut down on congestion.

The idea that plonking yourself on an escalator like an inert potato is faster than walking obviously seems absurd if you’re a limber fellow like me, who cannot see a long escalator without wanting to sprint up it or trip lightly down, sole after sole barely glancing the groovy tread – but of course the vast number of London Tube passengers are morbidly obese tourists humping ectomorphic wheelie bags, and such is their aversion to exercise that they clutter up the subterranean halls waiting for a tread to stand on.

Moreover, according to the escalator-flow wonks at TfL, passengers also jealously guard their personal space, often not using up all the treads available, but insisting on at least one between them and the next tubby traveller.

So, from now on, using just signage and other info-bumf, TfL will instruct its passengers at a number of the busiest stations in London to stand on both sides of the escalator. According to the aptly named Peter McNaught, operations director at London Underground: “Anyone who wants to walk on the other escalators will be free to do so, but we hope that with record numbers using the Tube, customers will enjoy being part of this experiment to find the most efficient ways of getting around.”

To which the only possible reply is, “Go f**k yourself!” Because I’ve not only been running up and down crowded escalators for years, I also experience some of my wildest and most bacchanalian pleasure from elbowing aside anyone unfortunate enough to get in my way.

As any true Londoner (or city-dweller generally) knows, observing these mass-travel mores is what divides us thrusting rams from the baaing flocks of docile ewes. To take the escalator at a run is a badge of honour for a metropolitan type – it shows he or she is a force to be reckoned with, fully competent when it comes to navigating the urban millrace.

As I’m pounding up or down I like to cry out, “Excuse me!” even as I barge against unsuspecting shoulders, or kick small children into mid-air – this retrospective “warning” being, naturally, a stern admonition, and even a punishment. Yes, yes, I know my behaviour is obnoxious – I understand that on crowded public transport we should all try to rub along (metaphorically) – but as our cities grow more densely populated, and the pace of life grows more frenetic, we all have recourse to strategies that help us to feel the shape of our individuality amidst the crush.

So, Mr McNaught, your signage and info-bumf will avail you naught. I intend to go on escalator-yomping for as long as my legs hold out. Other folk imagine that by piping pop into their inner ears, or fixedly playing Candy Crush as they bumble along, they’re somehow mitigating the ugly reality of being just a number, not a name, but to those of us who view the Tube as a psychic assault course, they’re clearly out of the running: mere drones, waiting for some operations director or other to tell them what to say, and think, and, of course, do.

(And apropos Candy Crush, has anyone else noticed the strange similarity between these streams of cascading and intermittently exploding citrus fruits, and the flows of underground passengers on, er, escalators? People are pretty scathing about Candy Crush, but a reasonable case can be made for it being the legitimate art form of mass transit systems for precisely this reason.)

Not only will I continue running on escalators, but I’m going to persist in sprinting on travelators. You can really get up speed on a travelator! And when the wooden passengers fly every which way out of your path, the similarity to a ten-pin bowling alley is most pleasing. I often used to go to Paris just in order to run full pelt along the notorious trottoir roulant rapide installed in the Montparnasse-Bienvenüe Métro station. I like to think my bullish runs alone contributed to some of the injuries that led to its being replaced by a boring old one that runs at 2.9 kilometres an hour.

Every child has experienced the sense of wonder that comes as you watch the once-solidly right-angled risers and treads mysteriously flattening under your flying feet, before disappearing into the steely maw – but if McNaught and his ilk have their way, future generations will be condemned to leaden passivity: standing there, watching the advertisements purl past. That’s the wet-look of capitalism. In Mr McNaught’s happy world all you have to do to progress is stand still.

Will Self is an author and journalist. His books include Umbrella, Shark, The Book of Dave and The Butt. He writes the Madness of Crowds and Real Meals columns for the New Statesman.

This article first appeared in the 31 March 2016 issue of the New Statesman, The terror trail

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