Really new ?

An entertaining "we're-more-digital-than-you" playground row has broken out over leader debates in the run-up to the General Election. This week, Google, representing YouTube, joined with The Guardian (presumably channelling the thoughts of Labour, Libdems and Greens) and The Telegraph (Conservatives, UKIP and ?) to offer the staging of an online debate. According to The Guardian it would "break the monoploy of existing broadcasters and allow innovative forms of audience participation for the political parties".

Harrumph, responded the monopoly of existing broadcasters. BBC News boss James Harding was relaxed on the face of it : "I think that there's a lot of positioning at the moment." For Sky News, Digital Director Andrew Hawken, whilst happy to work "alongside" the consortium, said the idea for an online debate was not new - the 2010 debates were "streamed live on skynews.com and the other broadcasters' websites in parallel with public webchats. Members of the public had the opportunity to rate the leaders on their performance during the debate and had the opportunity to comment in real time via the Sky News leaders' debate Facebook fan page".

I suspect the "existing broadcasters" think the committee trying to pin down the politicians is unwieldy enough as it is. We need more flesh on the bone from the new trio. Have they really something different to offer (that the leaders could stomach), or would their debate simply be different ways of posing the same avoidable questions ? And who would they offer as an innovative chair ?