April 9: Kent TV Mark Two...sort of
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KENT TV may be no more but the
county council is pressing ahead with plans to develop what is
calls the Kent Digital Service and these plans came under the
watchful eye of the authoritys cabinet scrutiny committee last
week.
According to a paper presented to the
meeting, KCC is earmarking £250,000 for the
development of various initiatives with the over-arching aim of
finding "new ways of engaging the public through digital
media".
This follows the much-publicised
demise of the 1.8million Kent TV project.
The principal outlet for all of this
looks like being through the county council's website, which will
be used to stream video content but will not allow residents to
upload their own videos - as they could with Kent TV.
The cabinet member in charge,
Cllr Roger Gough, was at pains to stress that
whatever KCC decided, the council was not about re-inventing the
past or what he termed a retro-fit justification,
which might just be a phrase that will soon appear on one of those
lists of banned local government jargon.
He's also pointed out that at
£250,000, the costs are less than half the £600,000 it was
costing to subsidise Kent TV.
There were one or two interesting
observations made by some members of the cross-party committee.
One came from Conservative councillor
Jeremy Kite, who argued that KCC should perhaps be
considering setting up a "super-blog" along the lines of the
success of independent political websites such as
ConservativeHome.
His argument was that such blogs could
avoid a situation in which members of the public felt they were
having things imposed on them rather than being involved as active
participants. (cf Kent TV)
Its a novel idea but I can see all
sorts of ways in which it might fall foul of the various
restrictions there are on what kind of publicity councils are
allowed to produce.
And blogs like ConservativeHome are
full of comments and articles that are not always complimentary
about the Conservatives. I really can't see that sort of thing
being allowed at County Hall but who knows? That really would be a
piece of innovative risk-taking of the sort KCC likes to
trumpet
Cllr Kite also warned that KCC needed
to be careful that it did not, in its endeavours to develop new
ways of communicating information, end up creating KentTV Mark Two
- a pithy point.
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MIND YOU, I am beginning to wonder
exactly why Kent TV was scrapped. After Conservative county
councillor Mike Northey described it as a
brilliant, raging success there were more complements and
expressions of sorrow at its demise expressed at the committee
meeting.
Cllr Alan Chell (Con) said he believed
the concept had been "absolutely brilliant" while
Cllr Paulina Stockell declared that she was very sorry to see it
go. Just who did vote against it when the Conservative group held
their private meeting to decide on what they should do? Someone
must know.
It wont be entirely bad news for all
those who used to work for Kent TV. Of the 12 members of staff,
five are expected to take up jobs with the county council.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I see the latest edition of "Around
Kent", the county council's magazine that some see as a vehicle for
propaganda, is out. I counted seven pictures of KCC leader Paul
Carter (Con) among its 24 pages. Only seven? Note to editor...
Friday, April 09 2010
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