The bongs verses the beats - or just old news?

When the print press turns its attention to the broadcast news industry, it is usually to report machinations that matter only to media insiders or to generate soap opera-style intrigue for the masses.  In both scenarios, the basis of the story is so often ITV's News at Ten.   Whether it be the original decision to axe the programme in the late 1990s, its various comebacks or a change to its many iconic newscasters, the programme has inspired more than its share of column inches.

Rarely has this been more evident than in the months since the channel revamped the format of what was the nation's first half-hour news bulletin. From the moment Tom Bradby was installed as the programme's new anchor, there has been an avalanche of articles focussing on the fluff -  his looks and royal acquaintances - and the facts - a serious attempt to overhaul a broadcasting institution.   Not to mention a spat over ratings with BBC counterpart Huw Edwards, which straddles both categories.   QED.

Bradby was brought in with the seemingly contradictory objective of making the programme less formal and yet also more upmarket.   However, October's overhaul was a soft launch (which fermented this week with a new on-air look) and so a degree of experimentation could be justified in the name of getting it right.   Since then, the strikingly conversational tone has been slightly subdued, but other editorial changes have bedded in - longer packages and a more analytical bent, in the form of extended conversations with correspondents.   Three months in, the strategy might now be best described as less formulaic rather than less formal, more interpretive rather than more intellectual (although the phrase "non-sequitur" made an unlikely appearance last week).

In spite of the breathtaking ignorance and arrogance which characterises much of what passes for informed media comment on this subject, ITN is simply building on what ITV News has always done best - bold, but accessible, thoughtful, yet meaningful television journalism. Unfortunately, the myopic actions of a malign ITV management regime nearly twenty years ago allowed a narrative to be woven which conflated a then downmarket trend in the channel with the quality of its independently-produced news output.   No such link existed, but the dye was cast and sadly stains to this day.

ITN weathered the 'News at When?' wilderness years and more enlightened channel bosses soon recognised what Trevor McDonald later described as the "shocking mistake" of sidelining news content and put it back at the heart of the schedule.   Yet, even today, broad-brush misconceptions persist, perhaps best crystalised by Polly Toynbee opining on Twitter that she would "hardly ever see" Robert Peston after his defection to ITV - as if her finger might dissolve should it even hover over the third button on her TV remote.   All too often, media commentators appear to have read the script, but not watched the output.  

Whilst it would be invidious to compare the relative merits of Bradby as a solo anchor to the established pairing of Mark Austin and Julie Etchingham, there is, in any case, much else about News at Ten's refresh which is worthy of comment.   ITV News seems to cultivate a culture of powerful and creative storytelling;  it is one one which has percolated through the ranks from one generation to the next, with a spine of long-serving correspondents at its core.   The likes of John Irvine and Geraint Vincent, amongst many others, turn the process into something akin to an art form.   So it makes sense to afford more time to the building block of TV news - the package - when it is such a well-practised craft.   

Similarly, the analytical weight offered by an expanded team of editors brings greater scope for context and allows for easier development of running themes.   Tracking a group of refugess across Europe was standout journalism of the type for which ITN (via ITV) is famed - at least by those who understand the history, rather than the histrionics, of broadcast news.   Dedicating the vast majority of one edition to disecting an interview with fomer Guantanamo detainee Shaker Aamer was something else - a statement of intent.

Yet as much as this revamp matters to ITV and ITN, it matters just as much to the wider broadcast news sector.   It's a stark fact that the audience figures over which Edwards and Bradby were quibbling late last year are down by around a combined seven million for the flagship BBC and ITV bulletins since the late 1990s, with ITV's audience barely a third of the level it once enjoyed.   Even allowing for the scheduling clash which has arisen since, that is evidence of a clear direction of travel, reflected in the decreasing share of total viewing accounted for by news.   So is appointment-to-view news just an ageing anachronism in an on-demand era?

Clearly, there are still millions who value the concept of a daily digest and many, like me, who would not want their news any other way.   Yet statistics unsurprisingly show a sharp decline in linear television news viewing within the youngest age groups.   Even amongst those for whom 'the news' has been a constant, the possibility of a drift to digital is a real one.

The evangelists say such a shift does not matter, that content is king.   Yet the ecosystem of broadcast news is delicate when transposed into a digital-only future.   OFCOM found that, whilst three in five people regularly use the BBC website or app, just one in twenty use that of ITV and, perplexingly, a meagre one in a hundred turn to the televisually-trusted Channel 4 News when operating in the on-line world (1).

That portends a significant future threat to a key component of a healthy broadcast news industry and one which this blog has regularly championed - plurality.   Should the sad day ever come when their primary on-screen product becomes unviable, it seems unlikely that commercially-funded operators will make the same level of investment in a digital offering with such potentially poor returns.

Competition between the main players in broadcast news has always been to the benefit of the viewer.   Coincidence of timing it may be, but the BBC has this month lengthened its own ten o'clock bulletin as a new front opens in the ratings battle.   And whether or not it is so manifestly overt as it has been in recent months, professional pride will always engender a desire to be the biggest, the fastest - or simply the best.    That makes for better content across the board and helps television defy the digital odds and remain the most popular platform for news consumption (2).

So whatever judgment is finally made about the latest News at Ten revamp, it will hopefully have achieved one thing for which even its competitors should be thankful - making a demanding and distracted audience think again about television news.

(1) OFCOM News Consumption in the UK 2014    
(2) OFCOM News Consumption in the UK 2015 

The news conspiracy

"What is wrong with Channel 4 News?" demands the title of a blog on the website BS News.   It's a tough question to ask of an outlet that recently retained the RTS News Programme of the Year title and is usually regarded as a bastion of original, long-form journalism.

Seemingly, it's an equally tough question to answer - the author draws her conclusions over the course of three blog posts, spanning twelve months.   Or rather she adduces evidence which she sincerely believes supports the conclusion reached in the opening paragraphs of the very first blog - namely, that the mainstream media is incapable of disentangling itself from vested interests and/or official sources and producing truly independent journalism.

The power of the argument being advanced, which focuses on the quality of foreign news reportage, hinges on whether you accept the premise that all such pieces should be 360-degree polemics that relay every conceivable contradiction about the protagonists involved.   Apart from practical considerations like limited time and the finite knowledge of even the best journalists, would such an approach be as illuminating as the blogger suggests?   An increase in standalone, off-diary reports on foreign affairs might be a better remedy than trying to explore tangential global complexities in each and every package from the world's troublespots.

Yet it's doubtful that contributors to Bullshit News, to give it its full title, would be swayed by any proposed solution to the inadequacies they identify in the "mainstream media" (imagine that phrase spat out with contempt, because I have a feeling that's how it is written).   For them, like so many other corners of the internet, the mainstream is all that's malign.

The author of the Channel 4 News critique doesn't even grant these seasoned ITN journos the status of conspirators with the vested interests they should be challenging - instead, they are dismissed as being "conditioned" to the point where they cannot even recognise their own shortcomings in holding the powerful to account.   To suggest that the likes of Paul Mason (who has turned looking askance into an art form) and the rest of his profession are in thrall to some global elite seriously undermines the case.   It also seems curious to alight upon a broadcaster which has a strong investigative history (both at home and abroad) and which, only this week, broadcast a host of new angles from the Syrian conflict, at a time when it could easily be dismissed as a story in stalemate.

Yet BS News is far from a lone voice in the on-line wilderness.   Visit a media messageboard or enter a Twitter hashtag for any of our broadcast news or current affairs programmes and it's not long before a stream of critical armchair analysis unfolds.   The BBC, unsurprisingly, is berated for supposed bias at both ends of the political spectrum (as here and here), while the editors of various programmes are accused of allowing their reporters to misrepresent the facts of any given story.   Maybe when journalists find that they are annoying everybody, they are pretty close to doing their job properly.

In years long since past, the most a broadcast journalist had to worry about was an official complaint to the regulator or a critical review in the print press.   Nowadays, their work is subject to a cacophony of comment with which different reporters and editors will engage to varying degrees.   That can only be good for the sum of human knowledge and journalists should never be allowed to occupy some higher plain where they go unchallenged.   Moreover, the growth in fact-checking, both from within and independent of traditional media, has been a great leveller in holding journalists themselves to account.    

Sometimes viewers or listeners with particular knowledge will be able to add facts and perspective to a story, as was the case with this blog, which put a more nuanced spin on BBC coverage of an exodus of train carriages from the North to the South.   Still, the author couldn't resist having a pop at "headless chicken" journalists in the process.   

Whatever the on-line world makes of the mainstream, it's fanciful to suggest that broadcast journalism is populated with those who are too blind, too lazy or too conditioned to pursue the real stories.   Be it professional pride, egotism, or a combination of the two, the majority of broadcast journalists thrive on the age-old thrill of the scoop.

The profession is far from perfect;  time pressures and human fallibility mean there will always be examples of poor journalism or instances where the industry falls short of the high standards it sets itself and mistakes are made.   But acknowledging these weaknesses does not mean acquiescing to the view that broadcast journalists are living in a lemming-like stupor or engaged in a grand conspiracy.

The potential for an on-line commentariat to improve and complement (if never compliment) traditional media output is a journalistic fact of life in the digital age.   However, its insistent, insidious undermining of the mainstream just for being mainstream often drowns out anything worthwhile which it has to say.  

And the headlines - television news still matters

The permanent hum of new media soothsayers predicting the imminent demise of traditional sources of news has reached almost deafening levels.   And at the end of a week when one of the oldest provincial papers closed its daily operations and more than a million people were found to have drifted away from Sunday newspapers, the doom-laden prophesying of the past decade seems ever closer to becoming a reality.

Yet it's not all bad news for the news.   A long-term academic study by Westminster University has just given television news a clean bill of health.   Analysis of bulletins across the terrestrial network found no evidence that news on the main channels is dumbing down and, in contrast to the last time the study was carried out in 1999, the researchers' confidence both in the future worth and relevance of television news was positively unbridled.   Their prediction that appointment-to-view television bulletins will remain broadly unaffected by on-going technological change is a bold, but welcome one.   That television news has already weathered a digital revolution does seem to bode well for this particular branch of journalism, even while the rest of the profession appears to be in a state of constant flux.

Although the reach of television news is not what it once was (the combined BBC and ITV audience for their 10pm news programmes today is less than that enjoyed just by the ITV/ITN bulletin thirty years ago), recent polling by OFCOM has reaffirmed the value placed on it by the viewing public.   Three quarters of people rank television as their primary source of news and an even higher figure regard it as the most trusted source.   Incredibly - given the carefully-cultivated narrative of the direction in which news consumption is heading - the internet fails to make it beyond single percentage figures on either measurement.    Meanwhile, we are still watching more than twenty minutes of television news per day on average and the regular combined audience for all terrestrial bulletins exceeds ten million.

So what do the millions of us who are still tuning in actually get?   Fears about trivialisation have proved largely to be unfounded, with all the terrestrial channels except Channel 5 following an overtly broadsheet agenda.   The unfortunate (but persistent) lie that the ITV bulletins have dumbed down in recent years should be nailed by the fact that their tabloid content has remained static, at about a third, for over a decade.    The slight shift in their editorial stance - often overblown by ill-informed commentators - came not after the abandonment of the original News At Ten in 1999, but in the years prior to that, as costs were cut to the bone when the network merged into two controlling conglomerates.   Remarkably, ITN is today producing content not dissimilar in terms of scope to that which made the organisation renowned, but for little more than half the £80 million budget they were afforded in 1990.   

Editorial shifts and the vagaries of the news agenda have, in fact, resulted in tabloid levels fluctuating across all providers.   At times, the BBC's tabloid content has hovered around a third, but has now settled at a fifth.   It is also worth pointing out that 'tabloid', in the definition adopted by the study, includes crime and consumer stories, many of which are inherently worthy of reporting and appear on bulletins across all channels.

The healthy ecosystem of television news in the UK is due in no small part to the breadth of coverage on offer - something which stems from having competing and slightly contrasting providers.   The BBC's ten o'clock bulletin, for instance, features the highest proportion of foreign news of any programme, whilst Channel 4 is the place to go for detailed coverage of social policy.   Interestingly, political coverage has also generally increased in the past decade, in spite of the perceived wisdom that politics, for many, is a turn off.

Against all the technological and societal odds stacked against it, television news has proved itself to be a resilient beast.   It is comforting to know that, even in the digital age, when we want to know what's happening, many of us simply still turn on the TV - and find news that is worth watching.

 

What next for regional news?

So, where does OFCOM's slightly surprising announcement of its preferred bidders for the ITV regional news pilots leave this interminable debate?   The failure of ITN to win control of any of the three schemes can surely not have been the outcome anybody expected.   It means that the Scottish and Tyne Tees/Border pilots are to be operated by newspaper groups and television production companies with little or no track record in broadcast news.   That doesn't mean it is impossible for them to be editorially successful, but plans in the Scottish bid to include ultra-local news provided by community groups and children has raised concerns that the ouput might be rather parochial for regional television news.

In the Scottish case, it also creates the invidious situation of requiring STV to surrender its regional news slots, in spite of the fact that, unlike ITV Plc in England and Wales, it has never sought to do so.   Indeed, STV has increased its sub-regional opt-outs and, as part of the ITN consortium for the Scottish pilot, planned to create a more rounded, outward-looking news offering in Scotland.   It does seem a perverse outcome that STV might be forced out of regional news provision when it has never suggested that it wanted to walk away from its licence obligation in that regard.   The pre-occupation with trialling the independently-financed consortia in the nations, as well as the regions, meant that the possibility of such an outcome was overlooked.

Added to the mix is an apparent softening of ITV's position when it comes to the future of regional news on the channel.   Chairman Archie Norman has said it is an important strand of ITV's output, a very diffferent tone to the one set by his predecessor, Michael Grade, who started the stopwatch ticking on the demise of the channel's newsgathering presence in the regions.   

Meanwhile, the Tories remain implaccably opposed to the IFNC concept and, with the contracts now unable to be signed this side of a general election, they could be in a position to scupper the entire scheme.   As could ITV, if it decides not to surrender its airtime and either maintains its own output or walks away from regional news altogether.

So at least the future looks a bit more certain, then.  

Redrawing the map for ITV regional news

At last - an announcement about the future of ITV in the regions which isn't just about allowing further drift towards the impending digital glacier looming larger than ever on the broadcasting horizon.

For so long we've been used to OFCOM and the Department for Culture Media and Sport acquiescing to ITV's (from a commercial outlook, understandable) demands to reduce its presence in the regions.   First, the non-news regional quota was slashed and then virtually abolished.   Next, network production outside bases in London and Manchester sharply declined and once iconic production centres like Central and Yorkshire were reduced to little more than a collection of offices.   Finally, and most damagingly, various regions and sub-regions were merged to create geographically meaningless newsgathering areas - viewers suddenly found that their 'regional' news could now encompass places as far as two hundred miles away.

As a fan of ITV regional news and a firm believer in plurality, I feared for the future - I feared whether there was a future.   The announcement late last week by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw that trials of so-called Independently-Financed News Consortia (IFNCs) would begin next year (in the Scotland, Wales, Tyne Tees and Border areas) was a welcome one.   It is probably not the panacea I would like to be, but it's a step in the right direction.

There are certainly some issues which need addressing, the most obvious being the question of where the "independent finance" comes from.   The perceived wisdom is that it will originate from that part of the licence fee reserved in recent years for funding the digital switchover.   That is top-slicing in all but name.   Personally, I am surprisingly indifferent about it, but it is far from a done deal.

Another issue is the composition of the consortia themselves.   Several local newspaper groups view INFCs as a much-needed way of diversifying, but concerns have been expressed about the ability of print media to operate a broadcast-led operation.   For me, local newspapers undoubtedly have a contribution to make in this evolving model, although I would probably be more comfortable with an established broadcast news provider like ITN taking the lead.

Then there's the Tories.   The other side of a general election, a future Conservative government would seem to favour taking the IFNC approach beyond what I believe to be its logical conclusion.   Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has suggested creating a network of local TV stations, adopting some aspects of the successful American model.    In the States, there is competition between local broadcasters serving the same populations.   Hunt concedes that there isn't the scale for this in the U.K., but believes monopolies of privately-funded local commercial broadcasters could be created.

As far as I'm concerned, the U.S. model, albeit modified, simply doesn't transfer to the U.K..   Local television news, let alone local television per se, would be too parochial and poorly funded to attract an audience.   It could only mimic what local radio and the struggling provincial press already does so well - but which would be too naff to contemplate on screen.   It would replicate the problem in local radio about ten years ago, whereby heritage stations with large populations were allowed to jettison many of their news commitments, whilst ultra-local stations had unrealistic quotas imposed on them even though they served unsustainably small audiences.   Television is much more deft at reflecting, perhaps even forging, a strong regional identity in otherwise disparate areas.

That's not to say the slightly anachronistic map of the ITV regions shouldn't be redrawn.   There are clear anomalies, such as the presence of the Scottish Borders in an English ITV franchise.   Other tweaks to questionable border demarcations could also be made and, at the very least, the level of regionality enjoyed by viewers pre-2009 should be reinstated.   This is eminently possible, since the annual budget for ITV regional news stood at £100 million before this year's mergers and that is now the level of funding being suggested for the IFNCs.   Noises from the DCMS suggest that they share my sentiment and it is one aspect of the proposals which should be non-negotiable.   If broadcast regional news needs one thing to survive it is an injection of relevance.

There is still plenty to be finalised, both about the trials themselves and any concrete inception of IFNCs in the near future.   For once, though, I'm excited - and it's a long time since I've been able to say that about the future of regional news on ITV.