New Phorm Board Member Kip Meek Presents Vision Of Broadcasting Future, “Alternative Ad Sources” Unsurprisingly On The Agenda
![](http://www.badidea.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/kip1.jpg "New Phorm Board Member Kip Meek Presents Vision Of Broadcasting Future, \\"Alternative Ad Sources\\" Unsurprisingly On The Agenda")
A couple of days back we had a look at Norman Lamont joining the board of Phorm, the shady internet advertising firm that pervs over your personal data to better target advertising towards you. Another Phorm joinee is Kip Meek, who isn’t a 50s cartoon but in fact one of the founders of Ofcom, the regulatory body for television and radio. Yes, he’s gone from addressing abuses in society to creating them. At least he’s used to having enormous numbers of public complaints!
Kip doesn’t work for Ofcom any more, but as Chairman of Ingenious Consulting, the consultancy arm of a company that also provides investment, venture capital and asset management to the media, telecoms and creative industries. Basically his guys go in and make everything better, in exchange for money. So we can presume that through him, Phorm can attempt to get itself a pretty wide client base in exactly the right areas.
More sketchy though is his paper “Public Service Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: A Longer Term View”, published this week by independent research unit the Social Market Foundation, with an intro by Greg Dyke. In it, the problems created by the financial crisis coupled with a broadband-enabled Britain are seen to create a situation where no-one wants to pay for anything, and that people will be able to choose exclusively whatever they want to watch online. Public Service Broadcasting (PSB), programming created for the public good like impartial news and quality drama, will have to adapt.
Meek and co-author Robin Foster propose that “key existing commercial players like ITV and Five should be given as much flexibility as possible to develop their commercial strategies”, ie not have to make any PSB output anymore. They also propose that Channel 4 be privatised, with the BBC acting as the core PSB provider while the others diversify their revenue streams to keep up. They mention spectrum access, getting the 1-5 channel spots, as being less of an incentive to have as the internet levels the playing field; therefore ITV for example won’t be persuaded to make PSB output merely by giving them the number 3 slot on the spectrum. And as everyone knows, ad revenue are down, so they’ll need “alternative sources of advertising”.
Bunch all this together with the fact that Meek is in bed with Phorm and we can presume that the advice to commercial broadcasters will soon be: don’t bother making PSB output anymore as only the BBC can afford to do that, and if you do want to, then get your money not from sticking Direct Line ads in daytime, but by getting personal information about your viewers off Phorm and advertising what they like back at them for a higher premium. Meek paints broadband as being full of “community and shared values”, and suggests that “ensuring access to high-speed broadband should play a much larger role” in spending from broadcasters. That’s because once everyone is signed up, Meek’s cosy community will be ripe for exploiting cash from via Phorm.
Is this the only way? It would be a cruel irony if it was necessary to give up civil liberties to keep Dispatches funded and on the air. Furthermore, giving up PSB creation to market forces is dangerous. Meek suggests “new media developments will allow a much wider range of perspectives and opinions to be accessed by citizens than ever was possible in the old world of four large highly regulated PSBs”, but in reality, it’s much cheaper to show reruns of American sitcoms than it is to commission truly public-service output.
Even the licence fee doesn’t seem safe in Meek’s hands: “policy-makers should be working out now what its long-term future is and how it can be changed to respond to future public concerns – especially as we continue to move into a world in which consumers expect more choice and control over what they choose to consume and to pay for”. Yes, the internet will breed choice – but we have to try and avoid revenue models that reduce quality items to choose from, and that are in thrall to the advertiser rather than the producer.
Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Sci-tech | December 4, 2008 11:55AM |
December 4th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
hear hear!
December 4th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
You make some interesting points, but overall this is too polemical, full of unfair ad hominem attacks on Kip Meek.
Many of the ideas in Kip’s recent publication are quite mainstream and supported by evidence of how the market is changing. I don’t think very many people would agree with your claim that his report is sketchy.
And even people who may disagree (often quite strongly ~ to the same degree as you) with Kip Meek would find your portrait of him as a cash hungry, civil-liberties raider as risible.
Russ Taylor
December 4th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
@ Russ. Perhaps Kip Meek isn’t a “cash hungry, civil liberties raider”, but Phorm sure as hell is. And he’s hardly joining their board out of the goodness of his heart, is he? The market for media advertising may be changing, as you put it, but surely that doesn’t also have to mean that whatever makes money in the short term is either ethically or economically correct. Or has the current financial crisis taught us nothing?
December 4th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Personally I find the idea of former Ofcom execs working for Phorm more ‘risible’ than this piece on Meek
You seem to speak for a lot of people Russ Taylor including “many people” and “people who may disagree with Kip Meek”. Do you work in focus groups or something, or are you simply telepathic?
December 4th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I’ve actually been interviewing people of all stripes about Ofcom and its leadership for almost five years.
So I’m not telepathic, but I also do not recognise this portrayal as valid.
I think the author of a piece like this owes it to the readers to actually talk with people before making such a severe ad hominem attack.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Sorry Russ, but agree with the other poster here. It is quite a cynical attempt by Kent Ertugrul to get his failing Phorming business out of the gutter by bringing this man in. And this man Meek really should have avoided the temptation of the cash waved at him, remembering his background and the services he undoutedly delivered in the past. Ofcom today lacks teeth and his ‘defection’ to ‘the other side’ is the sad thing here (I nearly said darkside, which for Phorm, may well have been appropriate)
>19000 people have now signed the Downing Street Petition against Phorm. Happy 9th Month Birthday to the petition and well done that man who started it.
Let’s hope the CPS takes on board that there IS real public interest in stopping Phorm and the BT trials should be challenged in court as the crimes of interception and others that they represent (IMHO!)
December 4th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Link for anyone who wants to sign it!
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ispphorm/
December 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Is Steve so naive that he thinks Norman Lamont and Kip Meek would just join the board because they were asked to? – They obviously knew that Ertugrul wanted them for their Ofcom CV track record and they are obviously happy with their own due dilligence.
There is NO public interest in this issue – just a few lonely NIMBY’s who want a lynch mob, crave attention and need a conspiracy theory to subscribe to….
December 5th, 2008 at 10:54 am
@ Russ, thanks for your comments. I’m not attacking Meek on the terms of his paper alone, which I agree is mainstream and understands the inevitable changes that will occur to PSB thanks to the digital age. What I find troubling is reading this paper in the light of the fact Meek will have been courted by Phorm during its drafting, and the fact that he is now on their board. Reading it knowing that brings to light some future worries about how PSB output is to be funded, potentially through advertising fed by personal information. Obviously that hasn’t happened yet, but I think it’s important to highlight the links between the various parties here that could easily lead to such a situation.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:14 am
@ NoWay – I think it’s a bit silly to call anti-Phorm campaigners NIMBY’s. A NIMBY doesn’t mind something happening, as long as it doesn’t affect them personally (not in my back yard). I believe anti-Phorm campaigners don’t want invasive advertising to happen ANYWHERE – in their back yards or no – because it’s an erosion of basic civil liberties.
Big difference.
December 5th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
CLoud computing is the way forward, SSL into a cloud will give the ISP’s nothing to molest but a single secure route so the expensive DPI boxes hawked by Phorm will end up sat in BT exchanges gathering dust!!
Phorm is dead in the water and that clunking sound that’s the share price dragging along the bottom of a sewer.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:01 am
It’s deeply disturbing that Kip Meek, a member of the Phorm board, is an adviser to Lord Carter. A plain Conflict of Interest if ever there was. Too many members of both Houses, as well as the Press, have swallowed the Phorm spin. Fortunately now the tide is turning and eyes are opening to the reality of this invasive snooping technology.