The final session of the StrangerFestival’s Expert Meeting has the provacative title There’s a Viewer for Everything
An expert panel with representatives from the BBC, MTV and Finnish public broadcasting company YLE presents select projects

Erin Barnes, Executive Producer from BBC Blast (UK) introduces the Blast project which aims to support 13-19 years old to create films. It’s one of the BBC priorities to celebrate, nurture and support talent as the creative future. BBC Blast project can provide young film and video makers with an entrance into industry and great mentoring opportunities.
The film presented at the session is Knights by Callum Cormie (watch out, this is the uncensored version!), a fantastic Lego-anomation of knights under threat of a dragon – BBC Blast has made it possible for Callum to receive mentoring from the Shrek animation team.

Kaja Wolffers is Head of AV Productions from MTV Networks (NL) and responsible for local content on MTV, TMF & Comedy Central. He refers to TMF Jump – a hype around a Dutch dance style that prompted viewers to upload their short films – amounting to 25.000 uploads on the internet which lead to a server overload. MTV’s interest lies on the creative and entertainment side – and much of what is sent to them is either pretentious or of insufficient quality.
Another example of user-generated content within one of their commercial broadcasting channels (TMF) is the project Sing yourself a TMF Award .

Journalist Maria Seppälä from Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE introduces the Save the World project which they have set up together with a Finnish religious charity. After a pilot project in Mozambique, YLE has set up another project in Cambodia, as they are interested in
user-generated content as a means of empowerment especially in developing countries.

The projects and approaches that the three experts introduce highlight the huge gap in approaches towards user-generated content between commercial and public broadcasting companies.

Both BBC and YLE, as publicly funded institutions, regard it as their mission to nurture and support talent and work with young people to develop interesting content for the broadcasting sector. MTV on the other hand reacts to the rule of the market, and its viewers. Whereas quality control within public broadcasters lies with their editorial team, content can be influenced (or dictated) by viewers with commercial broadcasters.

Public broadcasting companies suffer from inflexibility and both Erin and Maria talk about frustrations when they want to turn around projects and ideas quickly. Erin reports that the BBC is still bound by editorial guidelines which are hard to overcome – user-generated content usually cannot be published immediately as it will have to be controlled beforehand. She admits that this can be a struggle. The BBC is at early stages with integrating user-generated content, and a large young audience does not watch it anymore. The justification of a public broadcaster like BBC is under threat (why is it supported by taxes, who is it for?), and BBC Blast can be regarded as one of the tools to justify its future existence.

According to Kaja, MTV has initiated several calls for user-generated content, but the response (and the quality of the submitted projects) have not been overwhelming. For a commercial broadcaster like MTV, the number of viewer numbers have a direct impact on what is being broadcasted – thus what is broadcast has to be good or be wanted. Kaja also points out that with end-user content, 80% is ‘not so good’ as opposed to the 20% of whose makers that would make it anyway.

In the case of TMF Jump it was an advantage to be a commercial music broadcaster with much bigger flexibility: the whole project could be turned around within a few months. The hype was just emerging and TMF brought it to the mainstream. It can be hardly argued that empowerment of young people and the quality of content are less at the forefront than engaging with its audience to raise ratings and as a way of generating cheap content?

However, public broadcasting companies have far bigger budgets than commercial ones and are by definition less bound to ratings. Nevertheless, issues like producing content mainly for the internet rather than broadcasting it, and prime-time viewing are challenges that also the public broadcasters face.

Thus: Lot's to be done!
Many more discussions and debates to be had about the change that user-generated content has and will lead to for broadcasters. Given the quality of the StrangerFestival submissions, the transformation has probably just begun.