Fade to black?

So, in the most widely expected of early announcements by the new government, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has pulled the plug on the independently-financed news consortia due to be piloted later this year.   Barely twelve months after their inception in Lord Carter's Digital Britain report, they have become a casualty of Britain's uncertain plans for the future of public service broadcasting in the digital age.

Ultra local television has been heralded by the coalition as the saviour of plurality in broadcast journalism in the nations and regions, should ITV decide that it can no longer honour its commitments to regional news.   Several commentators and industry insiders have now begun to ask the obvious questions about the financial viability of such a plan.   Factor in the dubious editorial sustainability and resultant quality of hyper local broadcast news and the proposal is far from an appealing one to those of us who value regional broadcast journalism.   Parochial news on the cheap?   Hardly an enticing prospect.

The IFNCs were not without their flaws, both ideological and practical.   Their worth would largely have depended on the make-up of the groups chosen to run them.   Now we'll never know for certain whether they would have been a success.   They were, however, at least a stop gap, where now only a void appears to exist.

In an ideal world, ITV would find a sustainable way of staying in the game.  Sadly, the world of regional television news is anything but ideal.

Regional news re-think?

A change of government in the Spring would doubtless have many consequences.   One of the less publicised (and, to many minds, less important) of these would be its effect on the future of regional news provision on ITV.   The Tories are now openly admitting they would scrap the fledgling concept of independently-financed news consortia (IFNCs).

This is hardly surprising, given their lukewarm response to last year's Digital Britain report, in which the proposal was first mooted.   What is surprising is their proposed solution - the creation of more than eighty "local media companies", which will be able to take advantage of plans for a burgeoning number of local television licences.   These LMCs will apparently generate sufficient advertising revenue across print, broadcast and on-line and will require no government subsidy, either directly or through the licence fee - the very reason the Tories run for the hills whenever IFNCs are mentioned.

This seems a curious standpoint for two reasons.   First, given the collapsing revenue and readership levels of the traditional local print media, why would LMCs with their websites (a concept with which most local newspapers are familiar) and their substandard television channels be any more successful?   Second, what would their presence mean for said crumbling local media, apart from a more rapid decline?

Meanwhile, even ITV is trying to distance itself from IFNCs, in spite of the fact that they were created as a solution to what the company claimed was an acute financial drain on ever-dwindling resources.   Contention over on-air branding and generation of advertising revenue around regional news lots (thereby reducing its potential ad minutage around peaktime audience grabbers) are the two most significant issues.   Yet surely these are mere sticking points in comparison to the implacable objection of a future government.

Encouragingly, there has been no shortage of bidders for the pilot schemes due to operate in Scotland, Wales and the Tyne Tees/Border areas.   Those of us keen to see the survival of a plural system of regional television news will be hoping some pretty watertight contracts are signed before May.