I was reminded the other day that over the years, amongst many other rather magnificent achievements, Oxfordshire has played host to a vast array of film and television productions.

From Inspector Morse dashing around in his famous Jag to last year’s critically acclaimed Belle, productions filmed in and around Oxford have been entertaining audiences around the globe for many years.

And with the launch of Oxford’s very own local TV service later this year, it will continue to do so, well into the future.

But the ways in which audiences are actually seeing these productions and engaging with the shows is changing, and changing dramatically.

Oxford Mail:

 

Back in the 1970s (when Le Carre’s riveting Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was being filmed right here) television was a very different, much simpler, beast. Today, the picture has changed almost beyond recognition.

There are now more than 500 channels in the UK and more than 70 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds now regularly watch television online. Half of their media consumption is taken on something other than a TV. Across the UK, we’re increasingly downloading content from services such as Netflix, Blinkbox and Sky On Demand, then watching at a time and place that suits us on the device of our choosing. All of which is reliant on access to fast, reliable broadband.

You can’t download a whole TV series if you have an unreliable, low-speed internet connection run over copper wires.

You can’t have a whole family enjoying different programmes on different devices if your connection crawls along at less than 2Mbs. So the Government, together with local authorities, is investing billions of pounds to make sure 95 per cent of the UK has access to the superfast broadband they deserve by 2017.

More than £25m of this is being spent in Oxfordshire.

Across the county, an additional 10,000 homes and businesses have already been reached by the new fibre network, and by the end of 2015, more than 90 per cent of Oxfordshire will be able to access superfast speeds.

Of course, the benefits of this 21st century infrastructure go way beyond the ability to binge-watch the first four series of Game of Thrones on the way home from work.

For every £1 the Government invests in superfast broadband today, £20 will be returned to the national economy.

It’s already helping local companies do business with customers both at home and abroad. It’s already giving young people across the county instant access to online educational resources from some of the world’s greatest universities.

And it’s already connecting the people of Oxfordshire with family and friends around the world through Skype and Facetime, letting grandparents watch distant grandchildren grow up in a way that was unimaginable just a few years ago.

Thanks to the Government’s nationwide superfast broadband project, the UK will be ready for whatever the future of broadcasting looks like. I congratulate Better Broadband for Oxfordshire for the part it has played, and will continue to do, in the transformation of Oxfordshire’s digital landscape.