Broadcasting 06 Informed


London booms as a global TV hub


Simon Spanswick, chief executive of the UK-based Association of International Broadcasters. “Te rise of streamed broadcast content and a more general migration from radio to TV, allied with the falling entry costs to produce television, have brought a host of new entrants to the sector in the past few years.” He cites some of the factors drawing


broadcasters to the UK (he believes that nearly 1,500 are now based here): Heathrow; a flexible and highly-skilled broadcast workforce; multitudinous established international communities; and the desirability of London life. Most significant, however, according to Simon Spanswick, is Ofcom. “It is widely perceived to be the strongest and most transparent regulator whose work, unlike some regulators elsewhere in Europe, is not politicised.” Te UK represents 21 per cent of the


TV stations from the Gulf, China, Africa and Europe now broadcast from London. Tim Dawson travels to Chiswick to find a global broadcast revolution in progress


Walking into the Chinese state broadcaster’s gleaming studios, Mick Hodgkin passes a galaxy of other media outlets. Te offices of Yanga! (serving African markets), Aparat Media (TV content producer), Arab News, and Iran International are all close by. Elsewhere on Chiswick Park’s sparkling


new, university-style campus are the Discovery Network, Walt Disney and Paramount Pictures. Setling down to continue work preparing for China Global Television Network’s (CGTN) planned London launch, programme editor Mick Hodgkin is among hundreds, possibly thousands, of media staff now working in this west London enclave. It is but one of the international TV hubs that have made the English capital possibly the world’s most significant global broadcasting centre. “Britain has always had a strong international broadcast sector,” says


European TV market output, according to a 2018 report by the European Audiovisual Observatory, with 1,203 TV channels of the 3,005 in the EU based in the UK. Ofcom currently has 893 licences in issue that can be used to broadcast on cable and satellite; for digital terrestrial TV they have issued 135 licences. Mick Hodgkin’s career trajectory gives some sense of how skills networks are key to this burgeoning sector. “I started at Reuters TV and spent several years at Al Jazeera.” Estimates of how many journalists CGTN is planning to hire vary from 150 to 350. Tere is no question, however, that state-funded broadcasters, such as Al Jazeera, Press TV and Al Araby, provide the bulk of the new employment. Tey are not alone, however. Tey have been joined by scores of much smaller operators, many of them dissidents, who choose to make programmes in London for broadcast to audiences elsewhere in the world. Jobs created by this sector are welcome,


they also provide an NUJ organising opportunity. Recognition at Al Jazeera’s London centre in 2013 was followed in


Ana Jaks


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