Rolling News: Backbone Of A Digital Future
John Ryley, Head of Sky News
RSA Lecture
11th June
Ladies and gentlemen,
Please think about the furniture in your own sitting room. I'm pretty sure that the chairs are arranged so you can watch the television.
The day that you decide to arrange the furniture in another way is the day when I will get very worried indeed.
Now that I have persuaded you to think for a moment about your home I am going to tell you something about the home I grew up in. My father was a Vicar's grandson. Right up to the day he died he was horrified that his son was a journalist….…..and worst of all……… a television journalist!!
My dad hated the way that ‘the news’ had an almost religious hold on us. After all, the news summoned us at fixed points of the day, to be present at a particular place...looking in silence in a particular direction….……with one channel even starting its 10 pm ceremony….with the tolling of a very loud bell.
My dad was not the first person to notice the ritualised reverence that some people give to the news. In the early 19th century, the German philosopher Hegel wrote: “Reading the morning newspaper is the realist's morning prayer.” Hegel believed that news had eclipsed religion.
That same Hegel quote has also turned up in a book called “The News – A User’s Guide”. The author is Britain’s “philosopher of everyday life”.....Alain de Botton. In it, de Botton is fairly disdainful about the news media in general, though his research seems not to have reached much beyond the BBC.
Anyway, de Botton goes a lot further than Hegel. He suggests that this quasi-religious aspect of news in the 21st century has a very specific consequence.
It means that we – me, you, the public – must treat it deferentially and comply with its rituals without question or hesitation.
Sounding a bit like George Orwell, he says – and I quote - “the distinctive priorities of the news are crafting a new planet in our minds.”
With all that in mind, I have some Breaking News: I would like to formally announce that I will NOT be changing my job title......to Head Priest of Sky News.
Instead, I am going to explain why de Botton has simply got it wrong and why non-stop news services like Sky are part of the reason that he’s got it wrong.
Far from shaping peoples’ views, we are simply giving them the most accurate information impartially so that they can shape their own views.
To do that properly in the 21st Century people want the most accurate and up to date information, but they also want it on their terms. And that is best delivered by a 24 hour news organisation that is available live and on-demand in many different guises
Which brings me to my second text of the evening. About the same time de Botton was publishing his book, the BBC’s former Director of Global News Richard Sambrook, with his ex head of strategy Sean McGuire wrote a full-frontal attack on 24-hour news channels.
I am delighted to say that they are here this evening.
They argue that, in the digital age of instant on-demand news...delivered via the internet specialist rolling news channels have had their day.
In a nutshell, they said that you could stick the whole lot online spend the savings on more journalism and therefore serve the audience better.
It’s a clever argument, Richard. It’s a persuasive argument, Sean. But you’ve both got it completely wrong.
If you accept Sambrook and McGuire’s article, everyone in this room should see me - the head of a major non-stop news organisation - as a dinosaur.
Unsurprisingly......I...don’t. And here’s why: Their argument is simply too narrow and out-of-date. It considers an old world where it’s possible to pigeon hole organisations and what they do.
News organisations can no longer be categorised so easily.
Sky’s News is not just a rolling news channel. Just as The Guardian or The Times is not only a newspaper,
Sky News is live and on-demand, 24/7.
The ability to offer live coverage is a critical part of our service – you can call it a channel or a live stream. It is both the backbone AND the beating heart of a non-stop news service.
In today’s world, customers demand to know what is happening as soon as possible – and it enables us to be distinct from our rivals. But we are so much more… we are also an on-demand service on multiple platforms – providing text, graphics, audio and video whenever people want it. We are a service which allows our audience to consume news when they want it......how they want it.....and where they want it
This evening I want to set out my core views about the news industry, and my vision for Sky News in particular.
The pessimists who look backwards to some mythical golden age of journalism are mistaken. The Golden age is now.....and even more so in the immediate future. The constant technological revolution has made this a better time to be a journalist than ever before.
The range of technology available for gathering news, especially video news continues to grow at a breath-taking pace. It means that we have more tools at our disposal than ever, not just to report events as they happen, but to analyse them, explain them and put them in context.
The growth of technology has also opened previously undreamed of frontiers in the way news is distributed and delivered. Smartphones, tablets, connected devices and the rest....mean that all news is now available non-stop, live and on-demand.
The key to exploiting these multi-platform opportunities remains being a 24 hour service with the live stream at its core. It is the spine of our non-stop news service - its main source of strength. To put it another way: the news channel is certainly not sufficient on its own. But it is a totally necessary component of the whole immediately accessible news proposition and if we didn’t have it we would have to invent it.
When it comes to the profession and the industry of journalism as a whole I proudly accept that I am unfashionably positive even though the news industry has been gripped by a depressing spiral of gloom.
Mainstream media is losing young people to alternative sources which deliver bite-sized, easily digestible factoids via social media.
There is now a veritable array of start-up online providers like Buzzfeed and Now this News. One of the most striking techniques employed by their new type of journalism is the listicle. This is something which combines being both a list and an article. It was pioneered by Buzzfeed but is now a phenomenon throughout the Internet.
In fact, Buzzfeed’s recent 37 “Brutally Accurate Slogans For British TV Channels” listed Sky News at number 21....as....and I quote….“Art project revolutionising the limits of ‘breaking news’.” Well, it could have been worse!
Channel 4 was billed as “Mocking everyone we see for your entertainment”...... while BBC 1 was described as “the leading channel among people who lost the remote.”
Anyhow, in the spirit of the Buzzfeed listicle......and to show that I don’t bear grudges.....or to show that I’m good at appearing not to bear grudges.....here is a listicle – said out loud - of SIX Ryley reasons to be positive about the future of journalism and positive about the future of Sky News.
And, as a tribute to both David Letterman AND BBC Radio1’s Top 40 SHOW......I will give them in reverse order.
Reason number SIX. – Why the future of journalism is positive.
The world market for news is actually expanding dramatically. And you don’t have to take my word for it. One of America’s most prominent futurologists is Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape.
He believes we have drastically underestimated the scale of the smartphone revolution. He says that now, more people have access to phones than have access to running water – a sobering fact.
In turn, that means the “global addressable market” for news will grow to 5 BILLION by 2020. He says that market size equals destiny.
And I am certain that he’s right.
Reason for optimism number FIVE - Why the future of journalism is positive
Journalism remains the most effective way of holding institutions to account.
I don’t just mean in the sense of the very big, sensational exposés – like the MPs’ expenses scandal. Or the scale of state surveillance by American intelligence.
I mean it in the way, day in, day out, professional journalists...chip away at the public relations shields which the establishment erects around itself by asking awkward questions and unpicking the facts.
Persistent, tenacious inquiry is the rock on which good journalism is based at home and abroad: Typified by Alex Crawford in South Africa, Robert Peston in the City....Matt Frei in Ukraine.........and Eamonn Holmes in Osterley.
When Alex Crawford was covering the Arab Spring in 2011, everywhere she went, she heard the same thing: that foreign journalists are often the only people who can credibly bear witness to what is really happening....in repressive regimes with state controlled media.
My point is simply this: while journalism prospers, so does democracy.
Reasons for optimism NUMBER FOUR – Why the future of journalism is positive
Technological change is happening so fast, it is hard to keep up. Hardware and software seem to be changing every day.
At heart, though, the revolution is powered by an explosion in internet provision. The latest thing from Facebook and Google....is the use of drones and balloons to spread internet connectivity in the developing world.
The technology revolution has also transformed journalists’ ability to tell stories. Today, we can gather news from almost anywhere – and often we can do it live....as it actually happens.
In 2011 Alex Crawford scooped the world by reporting live.... in vision.....from a rebel truck as it drove into Tripoli. It was an amazing team effort. Her producer pointed the broadband satellite dish at the sky, tweaking it a few millimetres at a time to keep the signal steady. They got power from the truck’s cigarette lighter. Last year, Mark Stone reported live - but covertly – from the North Korean capital.
This was an unprecedented feat only made possible because of some in-depth research by his cameraman into North Korea’s mobile phone system. Perhaps even more remarkably, Stone reported live, on camera, from INSIDE a Chinese Police Van....after being arrested.
I have discouraged him from trying to repeat the experience!
At home, the advent of 4G has transformed the mobile phone into a miniature camera-cum-satellite truck. Our reporters used mobile phones to report live, in vision from the West Country floods when it was impossible to get a vehicle anywhere near them. One reporter even used his phone to not only shoot....but also to edit and feed his report after the main camera packed up.
Our latest piece of kit is a drone equipped with a High Definition camera.
It provides remarkable aerial video, closer up than a helicopter can offer and at a fraction of the cost.
This is an era in which we have had to report on far too much bloodshed.
And so I am quietly proud of the fact that we are using drones ....not as a platform for launching air-to-surface guided missile.....but as a platform for delivering precision guided NEWS.
Reasons for optimism – number THREE - Why the future of Sky News is positive
This revolution in technology has not just transformed the way we gather Information. It has also revolutionised how we present it and analyse it. Today, the concept of multi-media journalism is no longer some text, a few stills and maybe a bit of video. It is an intricately woven tapestry which uses the most suitable media to tell every aspect of the story.
One of the most important departments at Sky News is our graphics area where highly skilled designers create technically complicated, yet brilliantly simple visual explainers. The best examples recently have been their work on the missing Malaysian plane MH370 providing a depth of analysis which no amount of video and words could match.
If there is one point on which I find myself in complete agreement with Alain de Botton, it is this: News can’t just give us the facts. News must tell us what these facts really mean.
Our recent focus has been on expanding and reinforcing our already powerful team of specialist journalists whose job is not just to report the news, but to explain it using all the resources available on multiple platforms.
Ed Conway, our Economics Editor, even devised a piece of bespoke technology to help him explain the intricacies of higher economics. It’s called “Conway’s Console”. It’s an app which brings together a raft of data about how different regions of the UK are performing economically. We use it regularly on air and on digital platforms to show which regions are faring best and worst. But, it’s also a tool which is proving very popular with our users who can use it themselves on the web and mobile to do their own analysis.
We are not doing what de Botton’s accuses us of trying to craft a new planet in the minds of the audience. In fact, we are giving them the tools to discover the facts and form a view for themselves.
A key advantage of a non-stop news service is the scale of the canvas we have to work on. 24 hours of airtime every day....plus infinite capacity on digital platforms............
For example – we have produced....under extreme time pressure........nightly reconstructions of the Hutton inquiry......when no-one else could even think of doing that.
We spent an entire week reporting on ORDINARY life in Afghanistan.....
.....and provided precisely what de Botton says should be the task of Foreign News......that is to....and I quote...’foster our attention to what is apart from us....to facilitiate mutual understanding between us and other populations’.
And we surprised the world……the then Pakistan President……and the White House, when we ventured deep into the Swat valley in northern Pakistan to show video evidence that the Taliban were carrying out Sharia law in broad daylight.
And more recently, Sky’s week long look at immigration posed questions that are seldom asked or answered in Britain.
Reason for optimism, number TWO - Why the future of journalism is positive.
Great journalism has real value.
The expanding global market for digital news includes an incredible range of appetites: from the micro-niche to the very broad - a category that Sky News is very happy to be part of.
Marc Andreessen, the futurologist I mentioned earlier, also says that to succeed you need to go for maximum depth or maximum breadth. Well, I know that it’s possible....and necessary.... to do both.
We must not be satisfied with just licking the surface of the apple...we should aim to bite into the core.
Accuracy and truth...and depth in journalism also have real, immediate.... AND lasting......value.
News may have been swallowed deferentially and without question at some time in the past....when news was handed down like tablets of stone. But Sky News smashed that mould a long time ago.
The very concept of a rolling news channel has transformed the whole relationship between broadcasters and viewers in the UK. The challenge to provide news at any time, day or night, immediately puts the viewer in charge. They decide when and for how long to watch. It’s up to us to grab and hold their attention. At Sky, we have learned to trust our viewers. Virtually no news breaks neatly and cleanly – with all the facts available, completely verified. As soon as we hear something…..our viewers do too….. while at the same time we help them to understand the quality of the source. By being as transparent as possible we trust our viewers to make their own judgments. It is a model that has worked time and time again for us . . and them.
So before Sky and the other 24 hour channels, news......whether delivered by newspaper, TV or radio bulletin......was no more than a quick snapshot of what the editors believed to be the truth.......on the evidence available at the time.
In November 1989, the night the Berlin Wall came down, I was a producer at the BBC. It was probably the most significant story of the second half of the 20th century. The news began coming in in the early evening that East Germans were free to travel yet the BBC News began as usual at 9pm because that was when it was scheduled to begin and came off air 28 minutes later. Scheduled in stone although astonishing events were still taking place in Berlin. 24 hour news channels changed all that.
A couple of years ago, the think tank Demos reported that despite the myriad of trustworthy journalism and accurate information which is available online there is also - and I quote - “equally unprecedented amounts of mistakes, half-truths, mistruths, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation.....and general nonsense.”
A recent survey carried out for Sky News showed that the two most important features the public wants in a news provider are high quality and impartiality even ahead of ease of access and speed of delivery.
For that reason, mainstream journalism inevitably has a strong future.
Reason for optimism – number ONE. – Why the future of journalism is positive.
The old strangleholds on the distribution of news are being systematically undone by disruptive technologies. The most obvious way is through growth in smart phones.
According to the analysts Gartner very nearly a BILLION smartphones were sold globally last year ...compared with a paltry 680 million the year before. In the developed world, 83 per cent of people have got active mobile broadband subscriptions. This collapse in the barriers to entry has caused a democratisation of news....and that has allowed in the new services, like Vice. These are services which are hiring experienced journalists to create alternative streams of news.
I warmly welcome them.
They are devising new techniques to engage new audiences in dynamic and interesting ways.
Traditional mainstream news organisations would be foolish to ignore them. In fact, we should learn from them.
So much for de Botton’s picture of news organisations preaching to the masses. If you needed evidence that Marc Andreessen’s prediction that news consumption can only get bigger just look at the exponential growth in the number of people who access Sky News on phones and tablets.
More than 10 million people have downloaded our mobile apps. And once downloaded, many people check for updates at least once a day.....sometimes several times. But that’s not all. The new big thing is connected devices.
Last year, Sky News launched on the Apple TV and Roku platforms.....which are growing fast, especially in the United States. These platforms are entirely legitimate children of the internet and TV. The service comes via your broadband connection but you watch on your television.
It’s literally plug and play.
In fact, soon you will be able to watch Sky News via your X box.
Now half a million more people a month across the US are watching impartial, international news both live and video on-demand streamed from Osterley.
This is where the world of on-demand really takes off.
As more and more devices are connected to the internet, more and more people can sample content live and on-demand.
Just last month we launched on Sky’s own On-Demand service, providing a range of catch up TV News. Think about it… before rolling channels you had to watch the news at a pre-determined time – scheduled in stone,
with rolling channels you can watch at any time, but still, you can only watch what the producers have chosen to run at the time
But in a world of Sky+ and catch-up TV, you are equally likely to finish watching a programme at 8 minutes past the hour as on the hour. If all you want to watch are the headlines, you might miss them and have to wait. In an on-demand world, you do not have to wait any more. Choice is even broader – including regular bulletins, weekly press reviews, entertainment news programmes...and a vault of some of the biggest news stories of the past 25 years.
On-demand provides the canvas that liberates the creativity of our specialist journalists. And adds more breadth and depth at the same time to our service.
What’s more – when it comes to our digital services – we have accurate, real time, information about what stories our audiences are looking at and on which services. But I MUST stress that it is just one of many factors which drive our editorial agenda.
Now I’d like to focus on the supposed demise of the 24 hour news channel.
In the media world, the Jeremiahs said the advent of radio was going to kill off newspapers. They then said that TV would finish off radio. And now Messrs Sambrook and McGuire say that the internet....will spell the death knell for live, rolling news channels.
Well, let’s examine the evidence.
You might think that the market in news consumption has finite capacity......so if it increases on the web, it will decrease on television.
In fact, the opposite is true.
More choice of platforms where you can get the news has actually expanded the market.....and the audience.
According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.....as people acquire more devices.....they consume more news. 77 % of people who get news from their mobile-phone and 81 % cent of those who get it from a tablet also watch it on TV.
In Britain, 74 % of people said they looked at news online at least once a week while 79 % also watched it on TV.
That is a significant crossover.
It is also significant that in March this year the month when flight MH370 went missing....Russia annexed Crimea....and Oscar Pistorius went on trial....
Sky News digital platforms recorded their highest consumption figures yet at the same time, the TV channel’s consumption figure was the third best overall for the past 10 years.
As the Reuters Institute report says, digital may be impacting traditional platforms but it is not yet replacing them.
While user engagement on our digital outlets continues to grow, our TV audience remains buoyant. That is because each platform has its own particular advantages for following the news which are reflected in their patterns of use. Mobiles are good when you are on the move....computers work at work.....and tablets and TV are best for the evenings and weekends.
Nothing beats live video when something big is happening… if we suddenly heard the missing plane MH370 had been found and there were pictures of it to see… what would we want to do to find out more?
The rolling TV news channel remains a supremely powerful, engaging and efficient way of distributing live coverage of unfolding news events to large numbers of people.
Guaranteeing shared experiences that we remember.
We watched live on television the first leaders debates in the spring of 2010. We watched live on television the rioting spread across London in the summer of 2011. We watched live on television the sudden fall of Tripoli the same summer. And this winter we watched live on television famers on the flooded Somerset levels confront the head of the Environment Agency. Communal moments of big national and global significance that no other media can capture in the same way.
However, this debate is not just about the best ways of reaching audiences. The technological revolution in news is forcing the entire industry to reassess every single one of its working practices.
A recurring theme in this transformation is the idea that other newsrooms have grasped - that a non-stop video news service needs a production backbone.
The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Live is a live programming stream which has much of the look and feel of a rolling news channel. So does Huffpost Live.
Both Huffpost Live and WSJ Live are delivered via the internet only, as live streams but also as video on demand. They are effectively rolling news channels which are not on what people traditionally call TV.
They generate vast amounts of video which online attracts premium advertising rates. They have paid us the highest possible compliment....by imitating us.
The impact of these developments has reverberated around some of the world’s most established news organisations. At the New York Times.....executives have recently been warned by their own staff that they are in danger of getting left behind. Hence my unshakeable belief that if Sky did not have a rolling news channel, we would have had to invent it.
It is at the heart of all our journalism on all our platforms. It is necessary, but – as I have stressed – not sufficient on its own. It is merely part of a non-stop news service albeit a massive and vital part. Sky News, live and on-demand, 24/7
To conclude I’m going to do something which no News Journalist should ever do.?? I am going to tell you what I think will happen in the near future…?.and also what I would like to happen.?
One of the laws of the digital world is Amara’s Law – coined by Roy Amara – a Stanford computer expert.??
It states this: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run........and underestimate the effect in the long run."??
But is that really true? ?? Will we all be getting our news from today’s ultra-fashionable must-have devices?? Wearable Tech like Google Glass.? Or Samsung’s Galaxy Gear watch phone – a computer on your wrist. Or connected cars, currently being developed by Ford…..?…… which don’t just give you the news, but tell if you are about to have a heart attack.? ?
I am certain that gadgets like these are no real threat to rolling television news.
I visited Silicon Valley recently and returned with the conclusion that the world is now run by 22 year olds playing pool and bouncing round pastel coloured offices on pogo sticks.??
But I also returned with a renewed conviction that we must work harder than ever at staying ahead of the curve delivering the right news on the right platforms to diverse audiences whose tastes and lifes are constantly evolving. ??
That is the way to make sure that we are ready not just for next year…?or even the next ten years. I mean ready for the next century.??
I will make my final message to you as blunt and simple as possible. After all.....as Britney Spears once said........This is NOT Rocket Surgery.
I want us to follow the example of the Archaeopteryx. The Archaeopteryx was a creature that managed to survive the massive climate change that wiped out all of its fellow dinosaurs 65 million years ago.??
They did it by being small – actually tiny weighing less than a kilo. This allowed it to be very agile, very nimble, and remarkably adaptable. ??
It adapted by growing wings and feathers…..and somehow developed the ability to fly. Its descendants are what we now call......birds.?
And they seem to be doing rather well.? ? The news organisations which will be flying in the future are the ones which are agile...which are nimble..?…… and most of all.....which are adaptable.??
Sky News is an evolving creature. We are always looking for ways to change
Simply because we thrive on it.
END