[This article was first published in the Western Mail on Friday 22 May.]

I sat at a dinner last week with a group of prominent figures in Welsh television past and present. I was listening intently to some great stories passionately told.

Memories always evoke a powerful emotion. One speaker described vividly being woken in the dark of the night to creep downstairs to listen to one of  Mohammed Ali’s fights on the wireless. The affection towards the medium and the memories that played were gripping.

I wondered to myself how long will it be until I sit at one of these dinners and reminisce about the website that streamed the Obama inauguration, or the Twitter user who sent the first pictures of the Hudson plane miracle?

As wonderful as memories are, they are also our biggest obstacle to change.

This week we’ve witnessed the final act of the prolonged ITV Wales drama. The demise of ITV has been widely predicted, debated and feared. Although a terribly sad and desperate situation for all involved, it marks what I believe will become known as the watershed moment, the moment of fundamental shift in attitude towards broadcasting as we previously knew it, in Wales.

There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief

It is now time to move on from mourning the demise of ITV in Wales. This is quite possibly the best singe opportunity for us in living memory. An opportunity to re-define, re-shape and re-boot our tired broadcasting and media landscape.

It was H.L. Mencken who once said “Never argue with a man whose job depends upon not being convinced” and those words ring true more now than ever before, as we must seek to solve digital problems with digital solutions, and not just prolong our analogue past.

This downturn will be marked in history as the time where many of the business models built in the industrial era finally collapse as a result of being undermined by the information age. It is inevitable and we can’t fight it. Technology and information forces are unstoppable and they will reshape the world as we know it regardless of whether or not we want them to.

The times they are a-changin’

The time has come for radical thinking and answers. The type of answer born out of the internet age, that carries the principles of the new media economy: partnerships, transparency, speed and action.

This week has itself demonstrated what happens when old institutions try to come to the digital party without reconstructing themselves. The cataclysmic results are highly visible and damaging.

What Wales certainly doesn’t need is another re-heated commission, a body whose decisions are worthy, thoughtful and slow moving. We mustn’t let ourselves sleepwalk into an analogue commission, another arts council of the airwaves in a post-airwave world.

Act small, think big and see the world differently

It is well within our reach for Wales to become a ferocious player in the UK digital landscape. The base for creative and radical digital solutions for dogged problems that we’ve been wrestling with for some time – news, plurality, children’s provision and even Wales focussed content.

Instead of arguing for quotas and protectionist practices that guarantees Welsh or Wales-looking content, wouldn’t it be far more exciting to posses a powerful media entity in Wales operating fast, powerfully and confidently on a UK level?

Look at the potential, for example, of the S4C model. A robust, competitive and pluralistic commissioner of digital cross-platform content and services for Wales. It’s a youthful existing vehicle for change.

Wales needs a post-media company, championing and puffing itself in a digital converged marketplace. A company defined by its spirit, its strategy and ambition.

Whatever the model, we need a nimble, flexible, confident structure to operate in the harsh realities of a fast-changing digital world. A structure that needs to move at great speed to pilot, deploy and manage exciting new revolutionary services.

Stop the past, create the future

In his book, What would Google do?, Jeff Jarvis takes aim at a number of large analogue businesses. He tries to apply the thought patterns of the most successful company around and one of the truly global companies, in order to harness the power of the digital economy.

Do you think for a second Google would have stopped and thought, how do we resurrect this old model that worked pretty well for us in an age we are no longer in?

I’m looking at Wales and I believe that it is within its reach to create that post-media company operating ferociously on a UK level deploying revolutionary new products and services first. From Wales, for Wales. And beyond.

We’re just getting started.