The future starts here

Since its inception, this blog has keenly charted the tortuous issue of the future of regional news on ITV.  In recent years, the only thing certain about that future was the fear that there might not be one.   

Successive management regimes made increasingly gloomy predictions about the ability of the channel to continue to provide one of its founding, core services.   Champions of plurality and competition in regional news watched in dismay as ITV's regions became larger and its staff fewer.  

Alternative propositions - like independently-financed news consortia and sharing resources with the BBC - came and went, finally to be trumped by former Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's great white hope/elephant (delete as appropriate), the soon-to-be-launched local TV.   Whatever the future looked like and in spite of the exceptional output still being created by those working in its newsrooms, ITV seemed to be inching closer to the regional exit.

Yet despite this relentlessly bleak narrative, last week saw the start of a series of changes designed to create a sustainable and enhanced regional news service for the digital age.   The sprawling super-regions created back in 2009 have made way for the regional and sub-regional coverage that viewers previously knew.   This more targeted output does, however, come at a price - the flagship 6.00p.m. programmes, whilst still 30 minutes in duration, can now include 10 minutes of 'out-of-area' material drawn from other regions entirely.

When mooted by ITV eighteen months ago, it seemed a perplexing prospect.   This shared material would, according to the channel, have "relevance, resonance and application" across more than one region.   Yet within the constraints of a regional programme, it would be a daily challenge to ensure it was logically and seamlessly incorporated.   Surely all but the most unsavvy of viewers would query the sudden presence of stories from outside even their pan-region;  alternatively, if the geography were stripped from a story completely, the result could easily be an issue-led package more suited to the national bulletin.

ITV has, however, tested the model and is convinced it can be made to work.   Although clearly a trade-off for the return of the sub-regions, the out-of-area quota is no mean undertaking in itself and will require deft editorial handling and delicate linkage so as to create a rounded programme in each region.

Of course, the occasional dual-region story has long been a feature of the output.   Granada and ITV West both recently broadcast the story of a woman from Weston-super-Mare who had unearthed memorabilia of the Beatles, a group which - hey presto! - emanated from Granadaland.   Such a gift of a shared story won't come along every day, but if the out-of-area strands are well-woven into the programmes (as ITV obviously intends them to be) and it sustains their increased sub-regional commitments elsewhere, then it could prove an inspired, if unlikely, innovation.

The '20+10' rule will not apply to all the English regions after OFCOM uncharacteristically refused to sanction it in the North West and London.   As regions without any sub-opt-outs, ITV was unable to argue that it was a quid pro quo for more localised coverage.   Instead they pointed to the fact that local TV would be strong in these areas and so viewers would still be well catered for.   This was a shame as it didn't chime with their more positive vision for the other regions and it was ultimately rejected by the regulator.   Meanwhile, the sparsely populated Border region has been rewarded for its continued love affair with regional news (whose viewing share in this area reads like a BARB statistic from 25 years ago) with the generous reinstatement of a full 30-minute Lookaround and a weekly political programme to improve political coverage for those in southern Scotland.

Super-serving the regions after digital switchover?   That was a prospect which even the most optimistic flag-wavers for the ITV service (myself amongst them) failed to forecast.   And at a time when many feared screens would metaphorically be going blank, there's finally some good news about regional news.

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.  

The news from where you REALLY are?

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has a vision.   If he is able to realise it, then large parts of the country will soon be served by their own local television service.   That's right - local. 

Content emanating from the next cul-de-sac, not the next county.    Television news tailored to the community it serves.   What's not to like?    In principle, nothing.   After all, other sub-national media naturally gravitate to the local rather than the regional - local radio, local press, even hyper-local websites.   Yet television in the UK has traditionally been a different story.

Whilst the establishment of the different BBC and ITV regions was often more an accident of history and transmission sites than any plan to form geographically cohesive areas, the regional nature of television news in the UK now has a fifty-year heritage.   Audiences never seem to have balked at the concept - rather they embraced the idea of regionality when it came to television, proudly and affectionately taking regional stations and personalities to heart.   Regional television, largely through its news coverage, helped to reflect - and even forge - a wider geographical identity than had ever before been the case.    Witness the fact that for several generations, the North West of England was often simply referred to as "Granadaland".

Time has undoubtedly moved on - sadly, non-news regional shows have all but been consigned to television history and the share of viewing for regional news programmes themselves has steadily declined in a digital era which offers so much more choice than news and, er, news at 6.00pm.   However, one thing which has never been called into question by the viewing public is the notion of news at a regional level.   In fact, so ingrained is the concept of regionality in television, that in an OFCOM survey, respondents attached equal weight to the importance of regional news as to events affecting their own immediate locality (1).

All of which is not to say viewers do not appreciate regional news on a smaller, more coherent scale.   It is difficult to imagine modern-day viewers accepting the super-region that was the unceremoniously-joined North West and Yorkshire, the sprawling coverage area for the BBC's North at Six back in the early '60s.   Regions steadily became smaller on both the BBC and ITV over the next few decades, with sub-regional opt-outs eventually giving way to dedicated programmes for these new mini-regions.   Unfortunately, by 2009, financial pressures caused ITV in particular to row back on these commitments, re-merging split regions like Yorkshire and Central and even creating pan regions out of once separate entities like Tyne Tees and Border. 

Yet the disquiet at some of these changes was surely an endorsement of television news at the regional level - as long as it was the meaningful regional level which viewers had come to expect.   Even in these straightened times, the ITV licencees which have seen changes to their borders continue to provide significant amounts of split programming to ensure their regional news retains that 'closer-to-home' feel.   Meanwhile, in Scotland, STV has been able to expand its sub-regional coverage after viewers responded well to the pilot of a more targeted service.

The proposals for local TV were born out of uncertainty over the future of regional news provision on ITV when the current Channel 3 licences come up for renewal in 2014 - for the first time in a fully digital televisual world.   So with the BBC guaranteed to continue producing quality regional content, why not experiment with local TV as a complementary, but distinct, alternative?

It is possible that local TV could hasten or encourage ITV Plc's exit from the regional news map.  That would be a spectacular own-goal given that Hunt's plan is at least partially designed to protect plurality.   Initially, at least, the budgets and audiences for the new services are unlikely to provide the robust competition for the BBC which is currently generated by the healthy rivalry with ITV.   And when there is genuine plurality in news provision, it is always the output - and so the viewer - which is the winner.

Moreover, television is a big medium which thrives on telling big stories.   Of course, regional television does - and should - cover the worthy and the worthwhile.    However, the large geographical footprint of the regions provides opportunity for light and shade in the running orders.   City-based stations would find themselves covering the minutiae of life in the area, something which radio and the press does effectively, but which does not necessarily transfer well onto the small screen.   

It would be trite to say of some of the proposed locations for local TV that nothing much happens there - but that does not mean enough happens there to support an entire television station.    Even some of the bigger cities with experience of local television from the mid-'90s onwards (like Liverpool and Manchester) have seen these services either fold or become hollow shells of their original intentions.   Editorial sustainability, as much as commercial viability, will be a key factor in the success or otherwise of these new ventures - and, in an unproven market in much of the UK, neither can be guaranteed.

So can local TV work?   Of course - in a decade's time, we might be wondering what took us so long in this country to embrace a concept which thrives in other parts of the world.   However, at a time of increasing uncertainty over the future of regional news outside the BBC, is it the surest way to secure a diversity of news providers?   My instinct would be to find a sustainable way to carry on doing what we have long done so well - making the regional relevant.   

(1)    New News, Future News, OFCOM (2007)

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.

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.  

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.