Kevin Werbach directs me to this article from the NY Times about a fascinating extension of Claude Shannon’s basic research to bust historic radio capacity limits.
Month: January 2003
Hastings on war
Max Hastings, veteran war correspondent and editor – a thoughtful hawk – doesn’t want a war but doubts that we have a choice in The Sunday Telegraph.
“I feel deeply uncomfortable about war against Iraq, but I now see no alternative to British participation. This is scarcely a dignified intellectual position. But the alternative, a decisive breach with the US when the West faces grave threats to its security, seems too painful to contemplate. I suspect Mr Blair thinks the same.”
The Manolo Blahnik of computers
How does Apple sustain a business ? a business that even makes a profit occasionally ? on a market share of less than 3% (so low, in fact, that it just fell off the bottom of the list of the top five suppliers)? I’ve been thinking about this for ages. Consumer brands (and Apple is a consumer brand) with market share below, say, 20%, are irrelevant, invariably destined for oblivion – and the smaller the percentage, the quicker the death – vicious circles and all that.
So how does Apple do it? Well it’s obvious when you think about it: Apple is a consumer brand all right, but it’s a luxury consumer brand. Hold on, I hear you say, even luxury brands with 3% market share are doomed, aren’t they? Yes, you’re right. Anyone with an ‘O’ level in business studies will tell you that 3% is never enough. But Apple is not doomed. And the reason is that there is no luxury computer category. if there were, Apple would own at least 90% of it and, finally, its market share would match its extraordinary mind share. Apple is the Manolo Blahnik of computers.
I would like to buy a car
I really would. But the Ford UK web site doesn’t work on a Macintosh. At least it doesn’t work in Netscape, Mozilla, Safari or Explorer (all latest versions) on two different Macs, both running OS X. What I get is a sort of stub of Flash down near the bottom of the screen and that’s it. Perhaps I should buy a Peugeot. Or a Renault. Or a Toyota or a Volkswagen. Anything really. Just not a Ford.
STAND and entitlement cards
The cyber-gerrymanderers (I’m going to keep saying that until it catches on) at STAND have done an extraordinary thing. They’ve reversed the voting for entitlement cards in the UK Government’s consultation. What they haven’t done is shown that the general public is opposed to entitlement cards (the general public – at best – doesn’t care about entitlement cards and – at worst – can’t see what’s wrong with them). What they have done is made it impossible to claim that they like them. This is important work and will make the Government’s job more difficult – what more could a campaigning group want?
The Oxford Media Convention
My day in Oxford at the handsomely endowed Said Business School was fascinating – I’ve written a comment piece about it for The Guardian. Although billed as a conference on ‘public service communications’ in general, the meat of the thing was television and its fate once the Communications Bill is law and Ofcom up and running. If there was a dominant theme it was the clash of the old school, quality-obsessed producers (the luvvies) and the scary men with clipboards from the new regulator. The language of ‘quality’ sits uncomfortably with the largely economic language of the clipboardistas. The next year or so should be very interesting. Below this entry you’ll find some more of my notes on the event (illustrated with photographs from my camphone).
Mark Thompson at The Oxford Media Convention
Mark Thompson is Chief Exective of Channel 4. His speech at the Convention was outstanding. His principle point was that the old, Reithian language of public service means little to contemporary audiences and that a new language is now required – one that acknowledges the ‘second order’ benefits of public service ‘merit goods’. These second order benefits are the indirect ones that ripple through society, making use of network effects as they go. For an example he used Jamie’s Kitchen, whose direct public service benefits may be uncertain but which, he claims, has created a new attitude to unemployment, apprenticeship and the obligations of employers.
Ed Richards at the Oxford Media Convention
Ed Richards is The Prime Minister’s priniciple adviser on media matters. He’s a famously shadowy figure (he actually tried to dodge out of the frame as I took his picture!). His presentation was a fairly robust defense of the Government’s record on new services and particularly its attitude to applications from the BBC.
Critics accuse the Government of being too soft on Dyke’s BBC and too quick to grant the corporation entry to new sectors already well catered for by the private sector.
He was one of the few speakers to actually mention the Internet (or at least ‘broadband’ which seems to be the respectable way to say ‘Internet’ these days) but when I cornered him about the exclusion of the net from Ofcom’s scope he held his hands up in the now rather tired attitude of “hey, the net’s too big and complex for regulation…”
Lord David Currie at the Oxford Media Convention
Lord Currie is the first Chair of Ofcom. He’s building his rag-tag team (rumoured to be at least 600 strong) and setting terms of reference now in readiness for the green light once the Communications Bill hits the statute books. Perhaps understandably he remained resolutely vague about the direction and tone of the super-regulator and when I asked him why he thought the net was explicitly excluded from its scope, he literally shrugged his shoulders as if to say “nothing to do with me, guv”. I hope he’s able to form an opinion by the time Ofcom is formally in operation.
Paddy Barwise at The Oxford Media Convention
Paddy Barwise heads the London Business School’s Future Media programme and is a perennial commentator on broadcast regulation issues – particularly ownership and quality. He’s usually defending quality thresholds or opposing foreign ownership. He wasn’t speaking at the event but he told me, intriguingly, that beyond the Communications Bill lurks greater peril for British public service media – in particular he?s worried about the next round of the GATT negotiations which will attack the UK Government’s right to ‘protect’ a state broadcaster and fund it via a compulsory licence fee. The worst case could result in the abolition of ownership rules, content quotas, the license fee and much that British people hold dear. I think that radical change is likely in all these areas but it’s obviously vital that we get a public debate going before it’s too late to influence the outcome.