Saturday was a first for me as a Pompey fan. And no, I'm not referring to the fact that my beloved team, perhaps for the first time in its history, managed to record more red cards (one) than shots on target (none) in losing 1-0 to Hull City.
Instead it is a personal first, where I was at last able to use 20 years' experience of teaching media and communication studies to help shed light on events at Fratton Park.
Marshall McLuhan was an eminent and visionary, if sometimes controversial, scholar of the mass media in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps his most famous concept was the 'global village' (1962) created by mass media technological advances. But it was another phrase of his which rattled around my brain on Saturday night as @PFCTV on Twitter frantically tried to plug a 'BIG EXCLUSIVE' on PFCTV.co.uk which would allow me to see and hear Pompey owners Vladimir Antonov and Roman Dubov speak on the record for the first time in a video interview, provided I was was prepared to pay £4.29 for the privilege.
For McLuhan also coined the phrase: 'the medium is the message' (1964). In simple terms this means that rather than the 'content' (that is to say what Dubov and Antonov had to say) we should focus our attention rather on the way the message is delivered, if we are to really gain any insight beyond the mere 'obvious'.
There is nothing wrong in principle of the club having its own online broadcasting arm charging fans for exclusive content - match commentary, highlights, player interviews and the like. If pfctv.co.uk can remain a revenue stream rather than drain, there will be no complaints from me. That will mean it is providing a sufficiently attractive product for fans to justify spending out 'less than 10p a day', to quote the website, to access the material.
However, to choose the channel to finally give fans, or a select proportion of them at least, the first real insight into the thoughts of Messrs Antonov and Dubov about their plans for the club was a misjudgment.
On a basic level the decision was flawed, as all fans deserve the chance to hear and see what Antonov and Dubov have to say, especially for the first time. This video should have been 'free to air' on the official site, allowing all fans to access and other media, such as The News, Express FM and Radio Solent, not to mention Pompey websites, to re-transmit the message as widely as possible.
Instead, the bad feeling engendered by the decision to put Thursday's interview behind a paywall, means that rather than discussing what they had to say - albeit not a great deal by all accounts - fans are discussing, often negatively, the way they chose to say it. McLuhan would have been rather proud of those fans, I'm sure.
But there's more. For the past couple of years Pompey fans have been routinely fed whatever the polite word for 'bullsh*t' is. Gaydamak, Storrie, Al Fahim, 'Ali Al Faraj' (Pah!), Jacob, Azougy, Chainrai, Kushnir and Andronikou have all to a greater or lesser extent played their part in the charade.
The takeover by CSI was a chance for a new start. An era of relative openness and transparency was not too much to ask for, given the depressingly low standards Antonov and Dubov had to follow.
It is somewhat disappointing then that it has taken three and a half months for them to finally speak publicly, apparently only fielding tame questions on the club's own propaganda channel. That is not good PR management in anyone's book.
My understanding is that we should be hearing more from the owners in the coming days, as other broadcast media were also given embargoed access on Thursday to ask their own questions. How much better it would have been to have led with 'independent' scrutiny of Antonov and Dubov's ambitions for the club and allow pfctv.co.uk the chance to follow up with more 'in depth' coverage? You know what? I might have even been tempted to fork out to hear it.
In 1967 McLuhan published a follow-up book called The Medium is the Massage. If PFC had wanted to suggest the message was very much being manipulated, I have to say they have succeeded. Unfortunately I don't think that's what they intended at all...
References
1962 McLuhan, M - The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographical Man - University of Toronto Press
1964 McLuhan, M - Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man - McGraw Hill
1967 McLuhan, M, Fiore Q - The Medium is the Massage - Penguin Books