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.

Drawing the line between local and regional

The news that STV - the operator of Scotland's two Channel 3 licences - has won the local licences for Edinburgh and Glasgow is another interesting twist in the embryonic story of local TV.

At first glance, it appeared a strange notion for the regional, heritage broadcaster to be setting up in seeming competition with itself.   If its local offering were to prove 'too good', then the regional ratings would surely suffer.   A quality localised service (of the kind an established broadcaster like STV is surely capable) could tempt viewers to rethink their attachment to a wider region and become as alligned with the idea of local news in vision as they are with it in print.

Even more curious is the fact that STV already has one of the most localised services on the ITV network, with separate programmes for North, West and East Scotland and further sub-regional opt-outs within them.   As this blog has mused elsewhere, viewers seem to respond well to the regional so long as it is relevant - a feat STV has apparently achieved.   Direct competition from well-resourced local TV might result in a fight to the death - of either one service or the other.

Yet the channel says it can create local TV stations which can "complement" the established output.   And there are undoubtedly benefits to the idea of having an interest in both regional and local services.   Clearly, there is massive potential for cross-promotion.   News-in-brief items that would never make full packages on a regional programme could be highlighted as being covered in more detail on the local channel, for those interested in finding out more.   One of the biggest challenges facing local TV is generating an awareness amongst its potential audience.   The other big challenge - financial stability - will be partly addressed by economies of scale and use of shared facilities, which ultimately might prove the difference between viability and failure.

The heavy involvement of the broadcast journalism courses at Glasgow and Edinburgh universities not only provides an enviable training ground for students, but also ensures that the local services will look somewhat different to their regional counterparts.   That is not to belittle student efforts in producing high quality output (as one who has sweated blood over in-house university news programmes), but the local stations will necessarily be offering a different style of journalism - and could even flourish for it.

Scheduling will be a trickier issue to resolve.   The local stations are tied to broadcasting news and current affairs output at peak time, inevitably prompting a clash with the flagship regional programmes at some point.   Yet even this shouldn't prove an insurmountable problem.

Perhaps the biggest benefit to the channel of being involved at both the regional and local level is also the most obvious one - whatever choice viewers make, there is every chance they will still be choosing STV.

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)