Mychannel

I’ve just found out about the Blinkx and Miniweb deal from the Guardian’s article “Blinkx moves into telly with new set-top box deal ”. Blinkx is the rather astonishing video search engine that emerged from Cambridge University (with some confusing ties to Autonomy ), and Miniweb is into “next generation TV” with their platform already powering set-top boxes in over 9 million homes according to their website. Now you will be able to search through 35 million hours of video from your sofa. Cool, although you might be running dry as you approach your 4,000th birthday, although one would hope some more content will have been indexed by then. But that’s not the point. Just over four years ago I posted a blog about “myChannel ” which described a future without, effectively, any channels as we know them today. Or to put it another way, if there’s 7 billion of us on this planet then there are 7 billion channels. Everyone has their own. myChannel will be created bespoke based on a customisable combination of four sources… ...

“Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters”. So said Tony Benn, Member of Parliament, to constituents in 1968. That same year, the Free Communications Group (FCG) was founded to demand “democratic control of all media”. Lets skip the next forty years’ analysis of broadcasting motives and actions that so preoccupied these politicians, broadcasters and journalists. In 2008, convergence has emerged as a force of nature, irrevocably changing “broadcasting” globally, and the FCG might just be smiling if it still existed. I put “broadcasting” in quote marks because I decided, as chair, to start last Thursday’s Convergence Conversation, titled “Is broadcasting dead or merely taking a break? ”, by seeking to define broadcasting. Not as trivial a task as it sounds, rather a critical task if the 65 conversationists who attended the event hosted by BT Media at BT Tower were going to reach a conclusion. ...

It started with the town crier. Then the daily newspaper. It broadened with radio and then television. Communication now comes at you from all angles – via papers, magazines, journals, radio, digital radio, satellite radio, terrestrial TV, TV text services, digital TV, satellite TV, cable TV, mobile portals, push alerts on mobile devices, newsgroups, websites, RSS newsfeeds, streaming media services and pod-casting. The choice has become so complex for consumers that there is even a choice of magazines and websites dedicated to helping us make a choice. The selection and diversity will continue to grow but the act of “choosing” is about to change significantly. We are returning to just one channel – myChannel. ...