Member Article

#1000flowers - Opportunity knocks around LocalTV in Newcastle

Next Tuesday Addiply is hosting a conference in Newcastle on the future of Local TV in the UK, #1000flowers.

The name comes from a quote by the US media thinker, Clay Shirky; who in turn borrowed it from Mao.

‘Where once there were newspapers, let a thousand flowers bloom…’

This week’s publication of the latest ABC circulation figures show again what a challenging future faces the UK’s provincial newspapers - caught in a perfect storm between the structural challenge posed by the Web and the on-going cyclical pressures of a severe economic downturn.

It aint a good place to be any more - staining trees.

The suggestion always is that the greatest opportunity lies in the areas of biggest market failures - which is why we are delighted that Jamie Conway, the CEO of Made TV- winners of the MadeInNewcastle Local TV licence - is one of the principal speakers.

Made have won four of the city licences - from as early as the end of this year, Made will be delivering a new content and marketing platform to the people and businesses of Newcastle, Leeds, Cardiff and Bristol.

I think it would be fair to assume that to service his four new stations, Jamie will be looking to offer new business opportunities to those on the door-step. From sales people to video production houses, from student interns to fresh young faces seeking their first break into TV, the arrival of Made into the North-East will, I hope, inject fresh belief and vitality into the local creative industries.

But Jamie is not the only one looking to for new, collaborative partners to emerge from #1000flowers.

Addiply as an ad platform is busily finessing our own ability to offer affiliate sales opportunities across the growing Addiply network; re-tooling and re-training, say, former newspaper sales staff to sell anew across a whole swathe of digital platforms.

Plus we strongly believe that the young people in our communities have to be given the platforms upon which they can build new careers in this digital space - sales being principal among them.

Last summer we won funding from the Technology Strategy Board to make our API Public; to allow developers and app builders the chance to build again on our initial work and find their own fresh revenue streams from within the realm of local.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, insists that the next generation of winning platforms will those that touch three bases - that we build around things that are mobile, local and social. Hence why the US media analysts BIA/Kelsey are forecasting the mobile-local ad space in the US alone to be worth $5.8bn by 2016. Given that the market was $611m in 2011, that is an explosive rate of growth - one we want developers here to be able to tap into.

Which is why we are equally delighted that two data friends of ours have also agreed to share their wares.

Voovio is Google StreetView for the ‘Local Shops of the World’; they are looking to re-tool local photographers with the kit and the sales thinking to revolutionise how I market my pub, club, shop or restaurant; Placr deliver open transport APIs - data that charts every train and bus movement in and out of a Newcastle or a Sunderland.

In that sense, Jonathan has 365,000 bus stops across the UK that now come with a piece of content attached.

Go build on top of that data…

Finally we have Lee and Simon fromLeedsOnLine, probably one of the most vibrant, new content communities in any city in the UK. They have 56,000 FaceBook likes. The circulation of the Yorkshire Evening Post last year fell to an average of 32,000. Perhaps, just perhaps, there lies one flower that is starting to bloom…

The event details are here. Its a tenner. All welcome.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rick Waghorn .