Tories (and Google) embrace DIY TV

Another example of the Tories embracing new media: after Webcameron we have "politics for adults" in a mix of streaming video and blogging, as Slugger O'Toole reports in Doughty Street Goes Live!.

Long trailed by Iain Dale, and subject of a comprehensive blog on Comment is Free, you can get the Doughty Street TV station now online. It’s being billed as Tory TV, and it is true that that is where the money is coming from and where the mainstays hail from. But Tim Montgomery sketches out its wider identity as anti establishment on Channel Four. I will even be putting in an occasional report on matters Irish.

That other high-ranking political blogger Guido Fawkes observes that the Tories are much-taken with Google.

Staff flow from Google to CCHQ and from CCHQ to Google. Google's boss Eric Schmidt spoke at the Tory conference (giving the most intellectually stimulating speech).

Over at The Progreessive, home for Labour bloggers, Dan Fox bemoans The Amazing Missed Opportunity of Mrs Pitchard, a TV drama in which a supermarket manager played by Jane Horrocks, angry at the state of politics, stands as an independent and ends up as Prime Minister. Dan offers a critique of political dramas over the past decade.

In many ways, those responsible for drama are simply reflecting the culture of their colleagues in news and current affairs, where the path of least resistance in representing politics is not so much naturally taken as actively sought with a GPS system and master atlas. Stories over substance. Personalities over issues. Entertainment over information.

The Tories have decided on the value the DIY approach ... something Google have put money on with their $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube. That broadcast-yourself  site didn't exist a couple of years ago. Robert Paterson explains the importance for business and participation here and here.

So for all those analysts who miss it - value today has two dimensions - the transaction revenue as per always and now more importantly the participation factor that does away with all the normal expansion and brand protection costs. To get the right kind of participation the enterprise has to create an ecosystem in which the participant can do things that help expand his or her identity. Where the action expands and deepens their relationships to others.

At one time political parties offered people an eco-system of goodwill, some shared values, debate, stimulation. Now we look elsewhere. I think the Tories have understood that.