Hold the Front Page

The debate about "appropriate prominence" has been going on since around 2002, when bright brains at the BBC realised its divine right to broadcast was threated by the arrival of new third-party "EPGs", the electronic programme guides which appeared when you switched on 'new tvs'. These new 'front pages' or 'shop windows' had no obligation to feature or even mention the current output of UK Public Service Broadcasters. 

For a while, there was 'industry consensus', so when people like BT set up a new EPG the BBC was in a traditional position. Freeview, Freesat and, generally, Sky, kept BBC1 as "101" or "001". Netflix, in 2012 in the UK, changed all that, with a landing page full of thumbnails of programmes, mini-DVD covers. 

All other landing pages followed suit:  indeed BBCiPlayer faces daily internal battles with departments who feel their brilliant product lacks 'appropriate prominence'  on the front page. "News" and worthy stuff is often to be found on the fifth or sixth 'rail' of goods on display. 

Now the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has embraced the prominence argument. "We support OFCOM’s recommendation that Public Service Media content should be prominent on major video sharing platforms and on fair commercial terms. If we need to regulate we will ", she told the Royal Television Society's Cambridge Convention.  And someone has briefed that she includes YouTube in this. 

Here, I struggle. Old media analogies may not be pertinent, but imagine, at a different fork in the media road, if the BBC, ITV and C4 had gone into magazine publishing, and the Government issued a regulation that their print output be displayed on shelf 3 and 4 of all W H Smiths branches, covering a minimum of 10% of the total area on view. 

US entertainment website Deadline carries the Nandy story, and the comments are interesting. 

"YouTube should create a special “viewing required by UK government” banner for this content, so people understand the government is shoving it down their throats and YouTube had nothing to do with it. Put it in big blocky black letters, very Orwellian."

"Too bad YouTube isn’t a European company and under no obligation to boost state propaganda."

"The legislation might require anyone with a IP address from the UK to see it. Wouldn’t impact anyone else."