Dyke is Tory Media Guru

Fascinating story on the BBC website. Greg Dyke is to chair a Tory think tank review of Creative media. What interested me is the make up of the committee.

Ex-Sky executive Elisabeth Murdoch,
Carphone Warehouse's Charles Dunstone
Brent Hoberman, Lastminute.com's co-founder
Lucian Grainge, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Group International
Kip Meek, board member of Ingenious Media
Alex Hope, managing director of Double Negative Ltd
Ian Livingstone, life president of Eidos
Rupert Dilnott-Cooper, former Carlton executive and former chairman of the British Television Distributors Association
Ex-BBC new media chief Ashley Highfield, who is now managing director, Consumer & Online UK, part of Microsoft

It seems that Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt wants the review to "turn Britain into the world's creative and digital hub". Well I guess none of us would want anything else. I just have doubts about these panels. The guys who set up Twitter & Blogspot were not inspired by creative media task forces. The best British inventions have always been made in sheds by mad inventors. I suspect that if the Government wants to protect & nurture creative genius in Great Britain, they should

a) Protect back gardens and stop people building flats on them
b) Make every shed in the country a listed building

If you lock any boy aged between 6-12 in a shed with a video camera and a load of shed stuff, you will nurture far more creative genius than a million Government worthies sipping Cappucinos. If there is a problem here it is that people aren't encouraged to think independently. "Sniffin Glue" magazine published three chords with a rallying cry, "now form a band". We did in our thousands, most of us still do. I doubt that any panel would have inspired Mark P.

I don't believe for a second these think tanks ever achieve anything in the creative media arena. All of the best artistic movements are not the product of teams, panels or any other scheme. They are the result of like minded people getting bored with the rubbish they are being lumbered with and doing their own thing.

These ideas then take off and get a life of their own. No government panel would have invented punk rock, pirate radio, Picasso's art or even Twitter. The idea that the bloke who invented Roland Rat could transform the fortunes of British Media is ridiculous. Even in the realm of TV the best British TV was never the ideas commissioned by panels, it is the programs made by mavericks. People Like Lou Grade were succesfull because they realised this.

The most successful commissioners of programs are those with the balls to take risks. I'm sorry to say that people on the panel such as Elisabeth Murdoch come from backgrounds were cash is king at Sky TV. Will they take chances and let ideas develop if there is no instant payback? My guess is that whatever great media innovations emerge from this country in the next 20 years, none of them will emerge from this panel of media hacks.