Stuart Cosgrove on standing out from the crowd

[Nicola More]

The September issue of The Hirer magazine sees George Bewley interview Channel 4's Director, Nations & Regions, Stuart Cosgrove, on the challenges and opportunities presented by new media. One of the central tensions, says Stuart, is that while people expect to get content for free, content creators do not feel inclined to work for months on a project only to give it away.

The music industry is a prime example, and one close to Stuart's heart, being the former media editor of the NME and an avid fan of Northern Soul. Yet while artists and record labels may wince at the prospect of free downloads and piracy, in some senses the digital age has sparked a kind of sentimentalism - a nostalgia for traditional collectables such as vinyl. Stuart explains: "Auctioning is a new example of how digital media has found new ways of doing quite traditional things. You used to have to be in the same physical space as the buyer but now you can sell to anyone in the world. Ironically, the vinyl market has been increased through the internet."

If you can take advantage of this democratisation of the production process, the next challenge then is how to get noticed among a sea of content. On that matter Stuart recalls some advice he was once given by a TV producer: "Be known for something, anything." Stuart points to Steve Humphries of Testimony Films in Bristol, who is the only person in the TV industry to have a PhD in the psychology of interviewing bereaved people. For Stuart, the key to success in any media is to have a point of difference and a clear purpose. Get that right, and you win hearts and minds. After all, he says, "work is not media until it is mediated."