What will public-interest media look like in 2030? Yesterday, the BBC announced it had appointed a new director general, an ex-Google executive called Matt Brittin, to guide it through its critical next year.
But the future it faces is bleaker than anyone in Britain seems to realise, and the pace at which AI is going to turn our media landscape upside down will be faster than we think.
Today we're publishing a short three-minute film that's essential viewing for anyone who cares about the future of journalism, independent film and public service broadcasting in Britain.
In it, Beadie Finzi, the co-founder of Doc Society, a non-profit dedicated to supporting the work of independent documentary makers, explains what happened when she tried find out what the media will look like in four years’ time, given prevailing trends and the rise of generative AI – by asking AI.
Last week, Finzi presented this for a convening of public broadcasters, film-makers and senior media executives at Europe's leading documentary festival, CPH:Dox. The full transcript of the film is below the link.
The state of public interest media in 2030
A set of predictions from Claude
By 2030, public service broadcasting still exists, but it's a shadow of what it was. The BBC, the ABC, the CBC – they've survived, but they're commissioning entities now, not broadcasters in any meaningful sense. Smaller PSBs in Europe have been quietly absorbed into government departments or captured by the governments that fund them. The ones that held on did so by going hybrid: public money, philanthropic endowment, direct membership. That's the model that worked.
Documentary is at the extremes. The streaming boom that felt so promising in the early 20s – that window closed. The SVODs walked away, and what's left is prestige work funded by foundations and three-way co-productions, and creator-led work on YouTube. The competent middle – the investigative, socially urgent documentary – that's the endangered species. The people who knew how to make it, commission it, nurture it: that community got very small, very fast.
The real loss is the idea that a society could have a common information experience
The information environment is flooded. Synthetic content is abundant. The EU has provenance labelling; most of the rest of the world doesn't. Audiences who care about accuracy have clustered tightly around a tiny number of deeply trusted brands. Everyone else is swimming in content that may or may not be real.
And how are people finding serious work? Through creators they personally trust – through the newsletters and podcasts that function like personalised public broadcasters. Not through institutions.
That's the real loss by 2030. Not the buildings or the budgets. It's the shared commons – the idea that a society could have a common information experience. That idea is largely gone, and rebuilding it will take longer than losing it did.