Kent TV is bollocks
Reading over today’s recommended posts from Liberal Conspiracy, I noticed the following article from a site called Bartholomew’s Notes. It recounts how a Kent blogger, a Tony Flaig of BigNews Margate has been threatened with legal action by Jo Phillips, “director of communications” for Ten Alps production company and Geoff Wild, KCC director of law and governance, for daring to voice his opinions about our local internet channel, Kent TV. Well piss on that.
Below is a snippet of Mr Flaig’s views, which I largely agree with on this subject.
There is a growing trend for councils of all descriptions to threaten legal action when someone says something they disagree with. In my opinion this legal threat falls under that category. Moreover, Mr Flaig has Kent TV bang to rights. Far from being about “old media versus new media” as Bob Geldof (who owns Ten Alps) has it, I object to Kent TV on the grounds that I don’t want our taxes being spent on something so frivolous.
Nor, with potentially £1.2 million being spent on it over two years by the council, is it “commercial.” Local papers are commercial; we individually choose to buy them or not. The free papers are commercial because advertisers choose to place ads or the whole thing goes bust. An internet TV channel which could effectively be bettered by YouTube is not commercial when it is subsidised by the state, effectively taking money from our pockets without providing a service that most of us will use.
Playgrounds, primary care trusts, public toilets, roads and associated paraphernalia, community centres, local fairs…an internet TV channel. Anyone else notice a disparity?
What I would like to know is this: are all the “Board of Governors” drawing an allowance or a salary for the work they do? After all, there are fifteen people sitting on it, from a “Director of Strategic Development” to an Assistant Chief Constable. How much do the “media consultants” involved in this get paid? What about the rest of the staff? Is there an independent monitor for how many individual hits the KentTV.com site gets? How much is Bob Geldof’s production company making from this boondoggle?
Kent TV is bollocks, and instead of spending over a million pounds on a ridiculous internet television channel, they should spent fifty thousand on a newly qualified computer nerd, give him an office and a desk and get him to “content manage” a Kent County YouTube channel. Or they could invest the money in the LEA, for example. Literally anything but such a ridiculous concept as an internet TV channel. Really, trust the Tories.
David there is a very strong and fairly local government critical blogging scene here in Thanet and we all breathed a sigh of relief when KCC caved on this one, nicely topped of with this weeks article in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs this week.
This talk if hits from Kent TV is very worrying, as hits don’t mean page views or anything much at all.
For anyone unfamiliar with what I am getting here this link takes you to the webstats for one of my websites http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/stats/ I am not sure if the link will work as I haven’t posted here before, but if you can get there its pretty self evident 21.55 hits means 1 page visit on my site.
I can’t see how a throwaway comment about “hits” rather than “page views” is “very worrying”, Michael. I haven’t picked up my copy of Private Eye this week so I didn’t know an article was included.
Sorry don’t mistake me not your throw away comment Kent TV said hits i.e. about the same as my site.
Ah, now I understand better; well said.
Thank you for you comments they are much appreciated, as far as I can tell in writing about Kent TV, my opinions and thoughts have been made in regard to policy.
I’d like Kent Council to accept responsibility or what some people call ownership.
Even to day the deputy leader Alex King has put out an email to council members informing them that “Paul Carter and Geoff Wild, Director of Law and Governance, have replied to Mr Flaig to assure him that KCC respects the right to free speech and that his comments have been taken seriously.” well I have yet to see the reply from Paul Carter that mentions my right to free speech. Probably in the spam folder!
I’m afraid the first comment with all its errors was done between customers on a fairly hectic day in the bookshop.
As Michael quite rightly says, there is a very active blogging scene in Thanet, primarily because of the dissatisfaction with our Tory dominated local government. I would hesitate to call them corrupt, as incompetence often does a pretty fair impression of corruption, but it’s borderline if you ask me.
We’ve broken a number of stories over the past year or two which the local papers have been too cowardly or subservient to touch. Until we’ve published them, that is.
The letter Kent TV sent to Tony was outrageous. I’ve seen it (I wrote the story for the Eye) and frankly it’s a jaw dropper. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Tony is not a man to take these sorts of things lying down, he would almost certainly have never criticised Kent TV or KCC again. Which was presumably what they intended.
Well frankly I’m glad to hear that in this part of the world, there are people on the ball – well done the lot of you.
Ta. Just added you to my links
I actually meant to do a blog post saying what a good statement of intent Richard (I think) set out sometime around Christmas – really hitting ther nail on the head about how blogs should b be used to analyse Tory practices in a way which the local press never does.
But i didn’t, as some other stuff came up, and now I feel stupid. Perhaps I’ll revisit it, having just recently been ‘invited’ in myself to talk with the senior big wigs about my blogging activities etc.
Well done.