back to article Revive the Nathan Barley Quango – former Downing Street wonk

The compulsory TV tax could be divvied up and given to Shoreditch digital types to create “compelling digital content”, says Shoreditch property developer and former No 10 special advisor Rohan Silva. Writing in the Sunday Times, Silva called for “a new media fund that invests in private companies producing innovative digital …

  1. Terry 6 Silver badge

    BBC

    At least part of this is that there is a strong coalition of "Free Marketeers" * and politicians who hate the independence that the BBC has from both political interference and the commercial push to the bottom.

    They would like nothing more than to get their mitts on the Beeb and its funding.

    God knows the BBC has already been wounded enough between the cuts and dumbing down, relying on low cost programming and repeats to get within the budget.

    *Interpreted as not wanting government/public money to go to anybody but themselves.

    1. arnieL

      Re: BBC

      @Terry 6: Cuts? Last financial report shows licence fee income going up, not down. Total revenue dropped due to less income from commercial sales. Not enough Top Gear probably...

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/annualreport/2014/executive/finances/licence_fee.html

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        Re: BBC

        As I understand it the BBC has had to fund the World Service, previously paid for by the Foreign Office, and divert funds to channel 4.

        And has been required to make a 20% cut in spending since 2011.

        How the figures square with the license fee income doesn't seem to be visible in that statement.

        But the cost cutting on the BBC's programme making is there for all to see.

  2. Tony S

    Made a wrong turning somewhere

    I've spent most of my life working my nuts off; clearly, I should have just learned to speak gobble de gook and I could be earning a fortune for producing nothing of value.

    </cynicism>

    1. Gordon 10
      FAIL

      Re: Made a wrong turning somewhere

      Indeed you fool! Has El Reg's very own Steven Bong! taught you nothing.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Made a wrong turning somewhere

      I should have just learned to speak gobble da dick

      FTFY

      1. Steven Raith

        Re: Made a wrong turning somewhere

        You're talking a load of cock, Charlie.

        Steven "obvious pun" R

  3. TimR

    Would be interesting to hear Mr Worstall's take on this....

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Public or private?

    If it's to be public money then definitely not. If he's looking for private money then he's going to have to join all those Nigerian princes and others in competition for the attention of the gullible.

  5. JimmyPage Silver badge
    FAIL

    There's a reason for that ...

    There is a chronic funding gap in the UK for companies creating digital media content, as our venture capital funds do not typically invest in this sector.

    UK Venture capitalists don't do investing - what a curious idea. They do do short term profits over any idea of long term growth.

    As a result, while US companies such as Vice, Netflix, Hulu ...have attracted huge amounts of investment, comparable British digital content companies have not.

    That's because they have a decent track record. Sopranos, Breaking Bad, True Detective, The Wire, Mad Men. All top-drawer stuff. I can't see UK TV - particularly the commercial players - investing in a 5-year drama that means you have to think. Not when shite like Dapper Laughs managed to get commissioned.

    Me ? I just gave Richard Herring £30 via Kickstarter, to be able to enjoy his excellent series of podcasts on video. I think that's the way the market is moving.

  6. Doctor_Wibble

    Shoreditch again?

    Those streets must be paved with actual gold now! Unless all the money was spent on dandelion frappucinos with chocolate-coated ants' brains served on driftwood which wouldn't particularly surprise me either.

    So anyway does this 'producing innovative digital content' mean they just do everything on iPlayer instead of broadcast but with more hashtags?

    Also noting the remark about lack of rules on profiteering spads. Not good.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      Re: Shoreditch again?

      Frankly, if something like this keeps all the Hoxditch hipster twats in one place then I'm all for it - makes it easier to nuke 'em from orbit.

      Nathan Barley was satire (and very good satire, at that) - now it's beginning to look more and more like a documentary.

    2. Aldous

      Re: Shoreditch again?

      You forgot to add a running twitter commentary across the bottom and an option to have your favorite youtuber provide live commentary. Then you factor in "If you want Dr Who to escape from the daleks tweet #teamDoctor" else you get shown a dalek curb stomping whoever they have playing Dr Who this week.

      1. Doctor_Wibble

        Re: Shoreditch again?

        > twitter commentary across the bottom

        I can't think of a more appropriate location for it.

  7. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Coat

    Shoreditch

    It's well weapon. *

    *No I don't think this is a "market failure." The market thinks the idea is crap.

    The idea is crap.

  8. Irongut

    Scandal-mag-cum-style-sheet

    Is it just me or does the word "cum" usually only appear in porn. And why would you cross a scandal mag with CSS?

    1. Hollerith 1

      Re: Scandal-mag-cum-style-sheet

      I say we start a campaign: "Keep Latin in the Bedroom, you purvs!!"

    2. Kubla Cant
      Headmaster

      Re: Scandal-mag-cum-style-sheet

      I think "cum", Latin for "with", is found in place names where two villages shared a single parish church. Within a few miles of where I live are Pidley-cum-Fenton and Earith-cum-Bluntisham. Neither name is in current use except maybe at the church. The Manchester district of Chorlton-cum-Hardy is a case where the composite name seems to have survived.

      The formula X-cum-Y, meaning "X amalgamated with Y" is presumably derived from this.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
        Go

        Re: Scandal-mag-cum-style-sheet

        I think "cum", Latin for "with"

        It is. Nevertheless, I am reliably informed that it is also p0rn spelling for come…

        <nostalgia>

        Staring wistfully at my M21 coffee mug and chintz Chorlton coster:

        Chorlton hasn't really been "-cum-Hardy" since my long dead aunt Sis was young, when it was Chorlton-cum-Hardy, near Manchester. Hardy essentially became post-war estate on the "other" side of the park… Alas Cosgrove Hall's studio behind the baths has been turned into retirement homes. And the place has been invaded by BBC people working at Media City.

        </nostalgia>

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Scandal-mag-cum-style-sheet

          @Charlie Clark

          You can't take a Slow Train to Chorlton-cum-Hardy any more - http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/anotherhat_slow.html

          And they don't write them like that any more either!

  9. Fihart

    Well spotted.

    That the impetus behind this scheme is property values. Fact is that fatuous, boy-beardy, businesses are soon be priced out of currently affordable spots by chain stores and prestige buy2let residential blocks.

    See Notting Hill, Camden, Islington, Brixton etc.

  10. Anonymous Blowhard

    "There is a chronic funding gap in the UK for companies creating digital media content, as our venture capital funds do not typically invest in this sector."

    Is the lack of investment in any way related to past performance indicating that most of these "digital media content" ventures have no possibility of ever returning a profit?

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      It's totally spurious. Everything the BBC, ITV, Sky, Channel's 4 & 5 produce is "digital". And then there's BT. If what BT and Sky just agreed to spunk on football for the the next three years isn't significant investment, then I don't know what is.

      Netflix makes much less sense in the UK than in the US because the cable companies don't have such a stranglehold on people's wallets. Moan if you like about the licence fee but you get much better telly for much less than all the 400 shopping and astrology channels you forced to buy in the states.

  11. SVV

    Attack of the Clones

    Twas passing through Shoreditch and Hackney myself the other day - The horrid huge beard trend has now reached critical mass and every young(ish) bloke now looks ridiculous as well as exactly like every other young(ish) bloke. One got on the train and opened a chi-chi box of designer cupcakes and started eating them leaving his beard full of expensive crumbs.

    I know several people who have lived in this area for years, and they go on about how most of these people are having their super trendy lifestyle funded by well off, very indulgent parents. Which means they are likely to be able to afford their lifestyles of not doing much work, but selling each other vacuous rubbish for quite some time to come, until one day the money river has run dry.

    However, only appalling "Sugar Ape" type online content seems likely to ensue from any of their "businesses" and my bet is that we will see nothing of the much-wished-for-by-clueless-politicians massively successful content providers or social media. I;m betting that very few decent tech companies emerge as for that to happen you need to know about the workings of technology and how to manage tech projects and people. Which isn't so "street cool", but certainly interesting enough for the likes of boring old me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Attack of the Clones

      I would expect any such group that prove to be able to get money from the UK government to come from a similar background to ministers and/or senior civil servants.

    2. Anonymous Coward 101

      Re: Attack of the Clones

      I recall reading a wee while ago that the soap Eastenders ought to change to 'better reflect the people that now live in the east end', or words to that effect. I thought it was about having more ethnic minorities on the program, but after reading on they actually meant having more poncy yuppie type people on the show.

      1. Steven Raith

        Re: Attack of the Clones

        As if Eastenders isn't depressing enough, they want to infuse it with hipsters?

        Oh dear oh dear.

  12. disgruntled yank

    Compelling digital content

    One finger for Americans, two for Britons?

  13. Duffy Moon

    I read that Times article

    I thought "who is this Rohan Silva twat". Now I know, I dislike him even more. He seems to want more of the sort of thing that sent the quality of BBC output into decline twenty years ago.

    The best BBC shows were in the sixties and seventies. Shouldn't the aim be to find out what went wrong in subsequent years?

  14. Robert Grant

    Hulu and Netflix didn't get big on content

    They got big on delivering content. Overcoming the technical challenge is what paid, not buying a camera and filming people in costume.

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