DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES IN THE AUDIOVISUAL INDUSTRIES - THE CASE OF NORTH-EAST ENGLAND

It is only recently that broadcasting and the audiovisual industries have come to figure in urban and regional development strategies. During the 1980s, a number of such strategies have developed in Britain's cities and regions. These have drawn on ideas developed within the flexible specialization hypothesis, centred around the clustering of small firms. This perspective is extremely problematical, however, and more recent developments now make it clear that the dynamic of change is driven by quite other forces. Media development strategies have, in fact, emerged as a consequence of regulatory changes which have sought to open up the British audiovisual industry to competition. While local and regional media development initiatives originally emphasized the centrality of an emerging sector of small, independent production companies, more recently they have placed a greater stress on attracting inward investment and expenditure from large media interests. National public service broadcasting is being eroded by the rise of multinational media markets. Regional media development strategies, then, represent an attempt to adapt to, and perhaps even to exploit, the possibilities opened up by these changes. Through a case study of the relatively mature media development activity in the North East of England, this paper argues that such possibilities are strictly limited.