Regional reprieve?

As a flag-waver for traditional forms of journalism in the face of the many threats ranged against it, this blog is usually engaged more in wishful-thinking than prophesying.   

Yet just a fortnight after musing that ITV might be persuaded to reinstate the seventeen regional news programmes it once boasted in return for a slice of surplus digital switchover cash, there is a very real chance that the smaller regions and sub-regions abolished in 2009 could be poised for the unlikeliest of comebacks.   ITV Plc has this week submitted a proposal to OFCOM indicating its intentions for regional news if and when its licence is renewed in 2014.

For a decade, the smart money has been on ITV walking away from this particular aspect of its public service broadcasting remit altogether, just as soon as digital switchover gave it the opportunity to do so.   Fortunately, though, this interminable regulatory brinkmanship has climaxed at a point when those at the helm of ITV have more of an appreciation of the channel's heritage than some of their predecessors - and, no doubt, an eye to getting their licence renewed without the pesky business of a franchise auction. 

The proposal involves ITV de-merging the super-regions (Tyne Tees and Border/West and Westcountry) and pan-regions (Anglia/Central/Meridian/Yorkshire) created three years ago and resurrecting the channel's more locally focused news service.   The price?   A cut in the duration of the programmes provided.

ITV wants the flagship 6.00pm regional magazines (in England) reduced by a third to twenty minutes.   However, by reinstating the pre-2009 boundaries, most areas still see a significant increase in tailored coverage.   The proposal provides something of a windfall for the former sub-regions, which currently get just a six minute opt-out in the main programme.   It is also a modest increase for the constituent parts of the super-regions, which have received fifteen-minute opt-outs since they were merged.   Ironically, it is the regions which were untouched in 2009, which would take a hit this time round - Granada and London simply lose ten minutes of their main bulletins.

Even for those of us from the IBA school of regulation, it is difficult to advocate playing hardball with ITV over what is a generous, largely unexpected, offer.   To be talking of providing a more localised service beyond 2014 is quite remarkable in the context of the doom-laden predictions which have characterised the regional news debate in recent years.   Whilst it is much more than might have been expected of ITV, it is not without its limitations.   Even with narrower geographical boundaries, is twenty minutes sufficient time to create a fully-rounded running order, when things like sport and weather are taken into account?

The proposal has come about as part of a wider OFCOM submission to the embattled Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to inform his decision about renewal of the Channel 3 licences at the end of 2014.   Incredibly, it is now two decades since the last ITV franchise round (the first and only one based on a blind auction) and the incumbent licencees hope that they can persuade the government to automatically renew their right to broadcast.  The new commitment to local news (as well as unchanged quotas for national/international news and current affairs) suggest the value of the licence - a high position on the electronic programme guides and guaranteed spectrum on Freeview - has not diminished in the digital era as much as has previously been forecast.

If the government does not opt for automatic renewal, then it follows that there would be a franchise auction along similar lines to that held back in 1991.   Surely, this time round, such an auction would encompass a single licence for all of England (with regional commitments, rather than individual regional entities), plus separate applications for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.   The attractions of this option would be to place a true market value on the Channel 3 licence and its associated public service obligations - it is conceivable that a bidder could put forward a PSB offering which exceeds that proposed by the incumbent.    However, the vagaries of the auction process, such as the blind bids and the quality threshold criteria, could introduce variables which would not necessarily see the strongest programming proposition come out on top.

Instead, is it now time to introduce a small subsidy to guarantee to plurality in public service provision?   The regulator would have a stronger negotiating position regarding PSB if it came to the table with a bit of cash in its back pocket.   All of a sudden, eeking a few more minutes out of those more localised news programmes (and more besides) becomes eminently achievable.

Whatever happens next, a fuzzy picture of the future of public service plurality is - at last - about to become much clearer.

Protecting plurality

In all the coverage of the fallout from James Murdoch's appearance at the Leveson Inquiry last week, I spotted the P-word - plurality - only once.   While the word itself has become rather stuffy terminology to describe the existence of multiple sources of news and media, the concept it represents goes to the heart of the story about News Corporation's aborted bid for full control of BSkyB.   Amidst the political ramifications of recent days, it is easy to forget that it was the simple notion of plurality that necessitated government (sorry, "quasi-judicial") approval of the Murdoch takeover in the first place.  

The test of whether an organisation or individual controls too great a share of the country's media is one which has radically changed in line with - and maybe even precipitated - a rapidly evolving media landscape.   For instance, it wasn't until the early 1990s that the same company was allowed to own more than one ITV regional licence - just a decade later and one merged company was given the green light to control every single region in England and Wales.   Similarly, it is only in recent years that there has been any attempt to relax strict cross-media ownership rules governing local radio and newspapers.

The BSkyB case is clearly the most extreme example of a potential restriction in choice of media provider - the country's most influential press baron (or not, apparently) seeking to acquire the country's largest paid-for TV service.   Concerns about plurality often centre on the need for multiple 'voices' in news and media provision, but consideration of this rather nebulous concept should, theoretically, be negated in the world of broadcast by rules governing impartiality.   However, speculation that Murdoch was hoping to get such regulations overturned and his subsequent offer to spin-off Sky News as a separate entity, reflected a general reluctance to allow the tentacles of News Corp to spread any further without the necessary safeguards.

Yet, as this blog has noted on several occasions, a less high profile, but longstanding threat to broadcast news plurality is that posed by the uncertain future of regional news on ITV.   That might not be as compelling a subject as attempts at world media domination by an octogenarian overlord - but it has been exercising those of us with an interest in these things for many years.   Of course, things are not as bad as they could have been.  In the mid-2000s, it was widely predicted that anybody writing about ITV regional news in 2012 would be doing so in the past tense.   To its credit, ITV continues to provide a regional service, albeit in a much slimmer form.

Coincidentally, in the same week that the Murdochs were on the stand at Leveson, two stories relating to Jeremy Hunt's beloved local TV project slipped under the radar.   The Minister's big idea to bring television journalism to a sub-regional level (no matter what ITV may decide to do in the future) has failed to persuade many, but the most damning verdict came when Manchester's Channel M  finally faded to black last month.   The city's local station - operating long before Hunt's grand scheme - was mothballed two years ago.   This was a worrying enough development for a man committed to a network of at least twenty similar stations, but Channel M was kept alive on the basis that it could be born again under the government's plans.   When the station's owners, GMG, finally pulled the plug, they did so because they were unconvinced that Hunt's vision for local TV could provide a sustainable future for the station.

Meanwhile, the government has just got its hands on the unused licence-fee cash which was intended to enable the BBC to prepare the country for digital switchover.   With that job done, there is now 305 million pounds worth of funding heading back to the Treasury, part of which is earmarked to buttress the embryonic local TV stations.   The government is clearly not too squeamish about subsidising these unproven ventures - but a more effective way of guaranteeing plurality in the regions might be to partly subsidise the established service on ITV.

That might sound like top-slicing of the licence fee, but, crucially, the switchover cash was a ring-fenced addition to the 2006 settlement.   The downside to that is that the money is consequently finite - but it provides a timely opportunity to experiment with ways of encouraging long-term commercial public service competition to the BBC, both in regional programming and wider PSB content.

All of which is reminiscent of OFCOM's long-forgotten idea for a Public Service Publisher - a contestable pool of money from which commercial broadcasters could bid to fund programming deemed unprofitable to produce.   The regulator bizarrely scrapped the plan in 2008 after years of talking it up.   The arrival of the switchover surplus provides a perfect juncture to resurrect it on a much smaller scale than the 300 million pound scheme first envisaged - thereby leaving plenty of money for Hunt's other (admittedly more eye-catching) plans for super-fast broadband.

Of course, the last thing any such fund should be designed to do is encourage the commercial PSBs to abandon their commitments and rely solely on subsidy.   So, for instance, any deal on regional news on ITV should only fund part of the cost and could perhaps be tied to a de-merging of the super-regions created in 2009 and an agreement to a modest increase in non-news regional output.   Other PSB genres could be similarly part-funded across the commercial networks, with conditions attached perhaps in terms of scheduling subsidised content in peak.   

The question that would inevitably be asked of such a plan (as it was in its first incarnation) is why should scarce resources be spent on subsidising commercial productions when the BBC exists to cater for all our PSB needs?   Because plurality matters.   It generates competition, engenders quality and is healthy for both the BBC and its competitors.   Viewers and listeners benefit immeasurably as a result.   

It is all too easy to theorise about plurality while it still exists and make it sound desperately dull and eminently expendable.   It's only if we lose it that we will realise its worth.