The BBC's local TV proposals get the thumbs up in a report issued this morning. Despite the continuing hostility of regional newspaper owners, the Corporation's plans to create a network of 66 local TV stations across Britain are given enthusiastic support by Roger Laughton, the former Meridian chief executive. His argument is based on his inquiry into the effects of a nine-month pilot project carried out in the West Midlands, where the BBC offered local TV in six areas.
Laughton concludes that, on the basis of both that project and a previous four-year local broadcasting experiment in Hull, there is definitely a public appetite for local TV, and it's one that the BBC should fulfil. But he makes a distinction between TV delivered through the digital spectrum (ie, terrestrial transmission) and that delivered by broadband through the internet, and he clearly favours the latter. He also raises questions about funding the stations, pointing out that the pilot service was more expensive than expected.
He warns: "The questions of how new services will be distributed and paid for after 2014 needs to be answered before a commitment is made to deliver BBC local television nationwide".
Laughton's report, which you can read here in its entirety, was commissioned by BBC management but was carried out at arm's length from the Corporation and is therefore regarded as an independent assessment. The Newspaper Society may well see it differently however. Laughton worked for the BBC for 25 years before becoming Meridian ceo. More recently he was head of Bournemouth Media School and remains one of its visiting professors. He says: "The Newspaper Society have been vigorous opponents of the BBC's local TV plans but I have examined their arguments in detail and it's difficult to believe that the threat to regional newspapers is as real as they propose." Indeed, he can't see any merit in arguments that tend to act as a restriction on media plurality. Nor is he convinced about claims that competition from TV will adversely affect newspaper sales.
Pointing to the experience in Hull, he says that the Hull Daily Mail's circulation declined at a slower rate than evening papers elsewhere during the course of the BBC's TV rivalry. It also happens to be the case that the paper has one of the best websites in Britain, offering a daily diet of video material. Was that a coincidence?
Nor has it passed Laughton's notice that regional newspapers were "slow in coming to terms with competition from the internet." In a statement likely to stimulate further debate, he writes: "It is no coincidence that three of the most innovative UK media companies of recent years - the BBC, Channel 4 and the Guardian Media Group - do not have direct responsibilities to shareholders. Each of these organisations has interpreted its public service remit as a reason for investing in news ways of delivering content. As a result, each appears to be surfing the wave of change more gracefully than competitors with direct responsibilities to shareholders." He does concede, however, that Johnston Press is now making its own waves by deciding to roll out 70 digital newsrooms across Britain.
In effect, the Laughton report - despite its excursions into the problems posed by the delivery platforms - is extolling the virtues of an investment in journalism. And, on that basis, it cannot be faulted. He calls for the BBC to staff local TV with more journalists, he comments on the "value for citizens of having access to an alternative news provider" and he is delighted that some 25% of the output in the pilot scheme was user-generated.
However the Newspaper Society eventually reacts to the Laughton report in public, it is obvious that there will be private deals between individual chains and the BBC. Laughton reveals that Trinity Mirror has let it be known that it would like to see "a commercial 'agency' relationship with the BBC for news content supplied by their video journalists to the BBC." Meanwhile, the Press Association "has already identified a potential role for itself as a local video news agency."
As the BBC's director-general Mark Thompson suggested last week, the best way ahead is for regional papers to form partnerships with the BBC. Laughton also argues that "in reality" regional papers know that "BBC local television is a sideshow."
What strikes me about this report is that, if successful, the BBC's local TV could eventually supplant its regional TV programming. Local news delivered to 66 locations would surely make redundant those regional news programmes that offer far too little local content to people in small communities.
As for the regional newspaper concerns, I can't see that they have as much to fear as they have claimed. I recall that papers were originally opposed to the BBC's creation of local radio only to discover that it was a complementary service, not a replacement. In the mid-1970s I worked simultaneously as a casual sub at the Brighton Evening Argus and as a newsreader/reporter at BBC Radio Brighton, but the radio newsroom never really posed a genuine threat to the paper's newsroom.
Newspapers in this digital age should be thinking about improving their own products rather than worrying about initiatives by the BBC. Anyway, according to media owners, competition is supposed to be a good thing, isn't it? I know they will argue that the BBC is "unfair" competition, because of its guaranteed funding, but much of the detail in this Laughton report should calm those fears. I await the Newspaper Society's response.
