I don't know why ITV keep up the pretence that they are interested in news and current affairs, and especially regional news coverage. Let's take the Anglia TV region, the one I know best. It covers a massive area of ten counties, all the way from Norfolk and Lincolnshire across to Milton Keynes, Bedfordshire, Northants and down through Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Essex. Up until now the east and west of the region have had separate half hour news programmes. These will now be abolished, with a combined programme taking their place. Much of the regional programming will be prerecorded rather than live. ITV are seeking to save a third of its £120 million regional budget.I well remember the days when Anglia TV produced some of the best programmes on the ITV network - Survival, Tales of the Unexpected, Sale of the Century (!), Cross Question, Farming Diary, The Chief, Bygones. Those days are long gone.
I suspect the time will come very soon when regional terrestrial TV will cease, and a whole host of low budget internet TV stations will spring up and take their place. Perhaps the Conservatives should be looking at using some of the BBC licence fee to encourage such initiatives.
17 comments:
The BBC tax should be abolished and the free market should be allowed to take up the slack.
...or perhaps let the BBC spend their licence fee on regional news. The BBC provide local radio, local politics on a sunday, a weekday magazine show, and a decent local news product here in the West. Of course the first thing that would be cut by the BBC hacks in London if the licence fee was slashed would be regional budgets.
Sorry for ranting, but having lived in Australia and Canada, I know what happens when national boradcasters are put out to pasture to die.
This is all down to poor regulation by Ofcom.
ITV have guarenteed capacity to broadcast on Freeview and proprity position on the EPG. The package is worth serveral hundered million per year.
ITV will continue to reap this huge commercial advantage AFTER digital switchover finishes and ofcom should get undertaking from ITV the price of this free public spectrum and priority position is a commitment to regional news (the viwers most appriciated service - says ofcoms OWN research)
Free public space should equal programmes of public benifit.
Instead Ofcom has confused itself with bogus economic assesments and market models that let ITV off the hook.
At the same time it has put the extra new space ('the digital dividend' in quangospeak) available for local freeview services up for highest bid auction for any use; making any business planning or launch unviable.
Ofcom have created the worst of all worlds.
As it happens, I'm already laying the bare bones for such an operation, Iain.
As you will remember from our Doughty Street days, there was KentTV set up and our old suppliers GDBTV were keen on setting up city-based TV stations, but struggled to power the content side. This is always going to be the key driver. The content is there, and the people are interested, but it seems to me that the old media organisations are incapable of getting a grip on this.
My project, CovWatch aims to instead take a grassroots approach and provide an open platform for the audience to provide their own content also - a 360 community model.
I have a team behind me consisting of developers and business people and although it's very early days I remain hopeful and optimistic.
Regional TV has a bleak future with old media organisations of the past, but with fresh grassroots approaches and people that understand the medium better I think it's outlook couldn't be brighter.
Mike
Not sure what the list of mostly execrable programmes you list has to do with regional news output?
Next to chuff all happens across those ten counties. Local people would be much better off with genuine community TV stations and/or BBC trimedia news rather than commercial telly which is inevitably profits not service driven.
Mike Rouse may be on the right track. Channel M in Manchester is the epitome of how not to do it, simpluy aiming for Granada mini me.
@andrew ian dodge:
Riiight. Did you read this post? The market doesn't seem to be doing a very good job.
Regional News has ALWAYS been 'shonky'. For example, usually on ITV the 'Oxfordshire' region is covered under 'West Midlands'(esp- under 'teletext' news- though you do get a 'Thames Valley Tonight programme...'); whilst on BBC there is an 'Oxford' setting usually encompassing 'The South' as well. Whilst, unusually, just near the Oxfordshire/Wilts border you will get the 'West Country' local news!!! This makes 'regionalism' on tv a dud. Those living in North Gloucestershire, are not very likely to have owt to do with South Gloucestershire- more likely more to do with North Wilts, West Oxon & Worcester!
Sorry Iain I can't agree with all your argument
The BBC Regional Service "Midlands To-day" based in The Mail Box in Birmingham is excellent and their team of reporters and presenters fronted by the veteran broadcaster Nick Owen is first rate. They also have a string of equally good younger presenters including Suzanne Verdi Shefali Oza and Ashley Blake to name but three. Their news coverage of ALL the West Midlands(not just Birmingham) is pertinent, topical and well delivered and they are not averse to going into local issues in depth and often against the "party line" espoused from London
http://www.bbc.co.uk/midlandstoday/
simon: how very labour of you!
Just becouse some people cant do/get/provide something (those in the outer reaches of a tv region, who dont get best servive) You want to take it from those people who the service does work for.
You can't drag everything down to the lowest level just becouse not 'everybody' can get it.
Internet tv: the cheapest mass market way to reach a TV audience is satellite TV, not internet tv - thats assuming you want proper tv with paid journalists on a commercial basis rather than state/council handouts.
A channel on sky only costs £250k to distibute for a year. Local freeview for a region could cost around £1M
Unfortunatly Ofcom have allowed Sky to close access to the system - in breach of EU law and UK competion law and have been blocking the 100+ small broadcaster complaints from proceeding through their own complaints process.
Simon
The BBC recognised that and wanted to create a new region based around a broadcasting centre in Milton Keynes. Sadly the lower than expected licence fee means it's been scrapped.
But the BBC is hoping (Trust permitting) to launch local tv via the web.
BBC Regional news remains the most watched news bulletin in the UK. It remains a mystery why ITV can't make it pay.
Ah Iain, your mention of those things brings back old memories. A host of large old TV aerials for the 405 line sytem on the skyline at Cambridge; noisy pictures marred by car ignition interference. Yep, regional TV from Anglia - or London if you were in the right locality.
Nowadays we have insipid feeds from 'regional centres' - and as you say, soon - nothing.
The sooner regional news dies the better. I can't stand Midlands Today or Central News. They both follow the same format: one news story about a shooting in Birmingham, one sentimentalist "human" story, and everything else is claptrap about some school play about Muhammad or whatever else is going on. Once I even saw a ten minute report about ducks in a paddling pool on Central News.
Does it matter? Norfolk will be underwarter soon anyway I hear; the fish can tune into the national rubbish and will be just as unhappy.
To chris paul... "next to chuff all happens across those counties..."
Erm, like the Afghan jet seige (Essex) the Ipswich serial killer, Foot and Mouth (started in Essex) regional flooding, brutal gangland murders (Essex again)... that's just for starters.
There is life outside London and the big cities. But maybe not much inside them...
Carl Eve
JakeW-Apr4th@1:25pm- I was NOT advocating the entire extermination of Regional News! Just saying it has been generally crap for YEARS. Having a 'region' DOES NOT give in-depth 'local' news. You can't argue that anything going on in Brum has the slightest interest to anyone living in Oxfordshire (ie) central news- and i agree with the previous poster: 1 murder in Brum followed by an 'ethnic' interest item...)! Why not have 'regional news' covering the 'counties' under the umbrella of said region (for example- the South West: Gloucestershire,Wilts,Berks & good 'ol Somerset:if i've forgotten one- tough!)? makes more sense that way!
sam tarran 3:34 PM "Once I even saw a ten minute report about ducks in a paddling pool on Central News."
Well, in contrast to a lot of the news items on Central News, I would find the goings-on of a gaggle of Mallards far more interesting.
Anonymous said...
"The BBC Regional Service "Midlands To-day"...is excellent and their team of reporters and presenters fronted by the veteran broadcaster Nick Owen is first rate. They also have a string of equally good younger presenters including Suzanne Verdi Shefali Oza and Ashley Blake to name but three."
You're joking, right? Regional beeb is an even bigger pile of poo than the rest of Al-beeb.
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