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.

The power of television

The internet obsessives told us 2010 was going to be the year that the general election would be won or lost on the internet.   Really?   Well, television seems to be doing a pretty good job of setting the agenda so far.  

The general consensus seems to be that the seventy-six rules imposed upon the broadcasters did not stifle the inaugural debate.   Much as I enjoyed it and am glad it has been deemed a success, I did find the proceedings a little stilted as a result of the understandable fixation with timings.   And perhaps it was just me, but I still felt like Nick Clegg got the lion's share of the airtime - or was that just because he was doing such a good job of holding my (and the nation's) attention? 

Whether or not Clegg can maintain his bounce in the polls, his emergence from the political shadows is testimony to the power of television.   It seems incredible that the leader of the country's third party (hardly an obscure political entity) can gain so much traction simply from ninety minutes of unveneered televisual debate with his two main opponents.   

What is even more remarkable is that the last-but-one Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, had a man-of-the-people message that was just as strong as Clegg's and which he conveyed in an affable style which I don't think Clegg himself has yet mastered.   Kennedy's opposition to the Iraq war screamed "different from the other two" more than anything Clegg said on Thursday night.   Yet the Scot's seven years as Lib Dem leader saw only incremental gains compared with the recent shift in public opinion of Clegg and his party.   The only thing Kennedy didn't have that Clegg did?   An hour and a half of primetime television.

So the blogosphere can carry on tweeting to itself while the box in the corner of the living room basks in its reaffirmed status as a superior power broker in the democratic process.

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.  

Cover those backs - there's a journalist about

There's a strange paranoia pervading the nation.   It stems from the fear that, on an otherwise inocuous day at work, there might be a call from .....a journalist!   And, in my case, a trainee one at that.

At some point in what I imagine to be the recent past, the majority of the working population seems to have been imbued with an innate fear of even the most harmless of journalistic approaches.   "You'll have to go through head office," comes the plaintiff reply.   "We're not allowed to say anything."   Even when the subject is a good/indifferent news story for the organisation for whom they work, the default position of most people is one of blind panic.   If you are lucky enough to coax somebody to talk, the next hurdle which you have to clear is the necessity to make some kind of record of what they actually say.   Producing a digital voice recorder in such situations often elicits a reaction akin to if someone had been waving a sawn-off shotgun around in a confined space.  

Accounting for a natural mistrust of journalists and the inability of most to distinguish between non-threatening broadcast trainees and foot-in-the-door tabloid types, this mind-set is a difficult one to fathom.   The vast majority of companies are employing press officers or public relations bods to field all their enquiries.   Whilst that is hardly surprising nowadays, it seems these individuals are trying to safeguard or even justify their existence by instilling an irrational fear into staff that anything they say will be noted, duly twisted and used against them in the very near future.   The result is that it's increasingly difficult to get informed, authentic local voices to comment on anything at all - thereby stifling one of the most important features of local and regional journalism.

So what scraps are journalists offered instead?   A dry statement, prepared hundreds of miles out of the catchment area which eventually arrives long after your deadline has passed.   And that's before you even start investigating anything controversial.   

Or am I just being unlucky?  

Substance and soundbites

The BBC's Politics Show today brought together the Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, and his Tory and Lib Dem shadows for a debate on this week's main political story - the row over the funding of personal care.   Presenter Jon Sopel understandably opened the interview by teasing out the sudden divergence of opinion on the subject, after an initial attempt at forging a cross-party consensus appeared to have been shattered by the Tory's "RIP Off" poster last week.   And so the political posturing began, with Conservative Andrew Lansley straight out of his starting blocks.

Andy Burnham's response to a direct question from Jon Sopel about the row was to meander off on a description of the issue itself, rather than focus on the political bust-up - normally an annoying diversionary tactic, but, on this occasion, one which seemed genuine enough.   Sopel was having none of it.   He assured the Health Secretary that the discussion would come round to the substance of the issue soon enough, but not before he had commented on the political fallout from the week's events.   The tenor of the discussion was set and, inevitably, the substance never really made it to the table.

It wasn't the fault of Jon Sopel.   It wasn't the fault of his Producer.   It was my (and possibly your) fault for routinely indulging ourselves in the latest political spat.   However much we might insist, po-faced, that we care only about the issues, our heads are easily turned by a bit of political theatre on the small screen.   

It is for that reason that package-based political programming is so worthwhile.   Ironically, The Politics Show is the only regular example of the genre on television, but it was obviously concluded that this particular topic demanded a three-way thrashing-out and nothing more.   In-depth, well-crafted packages deftly inform and engage - and we can always have our more combative cravings satisfied in a post-package 'debate'.   It is a formula which largely works well on The Politics Show and, traditionally, on many of ITV's regional political programmes - Granada's erstwhile Sunday Supplement being a prime example. 

As the broadcasters make their bold plans for the forthcoming General Election - leadership debates, swingometres and the rest - it's to be hoped they remember to provide an outlet for both the substance and the shouting matches.

Regional news - a confused picture

The GMG decision to sell the Manchester Evening news stable to Trinity Mirror is clearly an important development in the ever-changing landscape of the UK's provincial press.   However, from a broadcast news perspective,  it is the absence from the deal of Manchester television station Channel M which is particularly interesting.

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the Tory idea for securing plurality in regional television news is the creation of dozens of city-based services across the country akin to Channel M.   Trinity's decision not to buy the station may have been purely a strategic one.   However, if the station is not soon snapped up from a GMG which seems willing to sell, a question mark would surely hang over the viability of the services which are a key tranche of Tory broadcasting policy.   And maybe then Jeremy Hunt's vehement opposition to those ITV regional news pilots might seem a little out of step.

Here's to the hierarchy of news

Where does news come from?   You might think that, six months into a Broadcast Journalism Masters, I'd be able to answer that poser in a heartbeat.  Not a bit of it.

I had naively imagined before embarking on the course that we were all going to be let in on some kind of industry secret about how journalists get a good story - or any story.   It transpires that the secret to finding a story as a trainee journalist is that rare combination of luck and judgement.   Luck that you happen across something of vague interest in the first place and judgement that you are able to discern just how vague the interest is permitted to be before it no longer constitutes a story.

Until, that is, you find yourself in the fortunate position of working for a news organisation with real status.   Then, it seems, stories have a habit of coming to you.   How else to explain the fact that the country's national and local press, not to mention broadcast media, are full of stories which elude the mortal trainee?   Because some of us just aren't very good?   Well, probably - but I think there is a more fundamental reason. 

News finds its way to the organisations with the greatest ability to disseminate it.   If you had information on anything from a church fayre to a big political scandal, where are you going to take it?   Some obscure blogger (asks the obscure blogger)?    No - the chances are you would go straight to one of the 'traditional' media outlets that are increasingly portrayed as some kind of stain on the modern media landscape.

That's not to say established media outlets have it easy when it comes to generating stories.   Much of their material will be down to old fashioned legwork and contacts.   Yet here again, they excel, because of the access their status affords them.   Real journalists from real news organisations succeed where trainees operating in an artificial environment never could.

All of which reinforces my innate scepticism about the fashionable concept that 'we're all journalists now'.   Even as a trainee, I don't consider myself a bona fide journalist - no authority has been conferred on my words.   The lack of status and access means that I could never aspire to emulate anything a traditional media outlet could produce.   

Some commentators seem to be confusing citizen journalism (the ability to state your opinion in a blog or get lucky with some mobile phone footage) with the craft of newsgathering and production.   The internet and those who populate it have undoubtedly opened up a new journalistic frontier.   The speed, breadth and depth of available information assists journalists enormously - but it should never replace them.   Elites are deeply unpopular in an age when the internet is seen as a great leveller.   Yet without a journalistic elite to gather, filter and judge the raw material, the competing, partial, biased voices of the internet could mislead us into thinking we know a lot about everything, when, in fact, we know very little about anything at all.  

The hierarchy of news remains intact - for now.   If the dark day ever comes when the presses stop rolling and the television news goes blank, then we had better hope the organisations behind them survive in some other form.   If they don't, then it won't just be trainees like me who will be missing out on stories - we all will.     

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.    

All Talk

It used to be one of the great mysteries of U.K. radio - why can't local talk stations be commercially viable?   The demise of Edinburgh's Talk 107 a year ago and the ever-shifting format of City Talk 105.9 in Liverpool have provided a rather obvious answer to that poser - such services are simply too costly to sustain in view of the number of listeners they attract.

Outside of the capital, there doesn't appear to be a successful business model for an all speech local radio format.   After just over a year on air, City Talk applied for and was granted permission to introduce a 50/50 speech/music split outside of peaktime.   Yet within six months of implementing that change, they were back at the door of the regulator and now even bigger changes are afoot.   The station attracts around 50,000 listeners per week, but its share is a meagre 1% - to justify the cost of its operation, a talk station would probably have to equal or even out-perform the heritage ILR station in the area.   Sadly, it always seemed a big ask.

Whatever the reasons for the difficulties experienced by recent attempts at all-talk formats, the inherent lack of local commercial speech dates back nearly twenty years - in fact to the demise of another station bearing the name City Talk.   When the FM and AM frequencies of the early independent local radio stations began to broadcast separate programmes in the late 1980s, most operators rolled out an oldies service on medium wave.   Radio City, however, bravely went for the more daring option of a speech station - City Talk 1548AM.   Although it broadcast for only twelve hours each weekday, it was a class act and will almost certainly have required levels of investment which would make today's commercial groups balk.   Even with far less competition and so a much higher audience share, the station still didn't pay its way and the early 1990s recession is generally thought to have brought about its demise in 1991.   A valiant effort, nonetheless.

There is a key link between this era of local radio evolution and the fate of local talk stations today.   Radio City Gold, the station which rose out of the ashes of the original City Talk, retained a high level of speech content - full-length news programmes, discussion features within daytime programmes and the usual phone-ins.   Meanwhile, even licencees which hadn't gone down the talk route, still had speech quotas (mostly in terms of extended news bulletins) to adhere to - and these were largely fulfilled on their AM stations.   For a short time in the early 1990s, the U.K. had found its model for commercial speech.   It wasn't all-talk, because maybe that format was never going to be viable on a local level - but it was meaningful and largely popular speech-based local radio.

Unfortunately, the recently-formed Radio Authority soon paved the way for the erosion of this embryonic model before it had time to develop.   Mergers and format changes soon saw speech requirements jettisoned in favour of the quasi-national networks which we know and, according to listening figures, don't really love today.   The regulator rolled over at almost every request.   Meanwhile, unrealistic speech quotas were being forced onto applicants for the new small-scale licences of the late 1990s, which had neither the resources nor the editorial area to justify them.

The opportunity to make speech an integral part of strong local AM stations was missed.     Had it been taken, these stations might today have been a worthwhile competitor to BBC local radio.   They might even have been driving the migration of an important sector of the audience to digital radio - and we almost certainly wouldn't have witnessed two brave, but ultimately aborted attempts at all-talk local radio.         

Head-to-head hype?

The Presidential-style debates which have threatened to cross the Atlantic for so long will finally put in an appearance in the U.K. during next year's General Election campaign.   It was confirmed today that the three main party leaders will all take part in a trio of a ninety-minute shows to be broadcast by the BBC, ITV and Sky.

The general consensus amongst politicians and commentators seems to be that this heralds a victory for democracy.   To some extent, that will undoubtedly be true - but I'm not altogether convinced that such occasions represent the zenith of democratic debate.  

Surely there is an inherent danger that the theatre of the occasion will take over and very little will be revealed in the way of detailed policy.   The inadequacies of the only comparable event - Prime Minister's Questions - will be magnified.   It will be all soundbites and pseudo anger.   Factor into the equation the heightened level of interest in the occasion when compared with the average PMQs and you are soon confronted with another problem.   The leaders will be so hamstrung by the fear of having their words and every nuance of their performance analysed to the nth degree that they will be more reluctant than usual to deal in the currency of candour.

The issue of fairness to nationalist parties was quickly raised and the suggestion is that there might be other debates scheduled in the nations involving the leaders of the parties in the devolved assemblies.   However, that doesn't address a related issue - namely, the fact that three-way debates like this inevitably skew the political debate in favour of the three main parties.   That seems a shame in an election when minority parties might be expected to put in a strong showing - but it was ever thus.

For me, the pre-election coverage in 2005 had the potential to be far more illuminating than anything proposed for next year.   The one-on-one leadership interviews conducted by Paxman for Newsnight and Jonathan Dimbleby for ITV boasted the kind of forensic interrogation of our political leaders that we only really get during an election campaign.   For some reason, this style of political programme seems to have fallen out of favour over the past five years.

The BBC ditched "On The Record" in the early 2000s for a more package-based affair in "The Politics Show."   Meanwhile, ITV turned Jonathan Dimbleby's one hour, one minister discussion into a sofa-based melting pot which did neither the presenter nor the audience any favours.   When Dimbleby left soon after, ITV attempted a return to the highbrow with Andrew Rawnsley fronting "The Sunday Edition", but this was scheduled into oblivion before the channel decided to jettison its national political programming altogether.   An unwise move for many reasons, not least because they don't now have a seasoned political heavyweight to front their version of leaders debate - luckily for them,  Alistair Stewart is more than up to the job.   Channel Four, inexplicably, has not scheduled a regular political programme for more than a decade.

As for next year's debates, I might be pleasantly surprised by the way in which they engage with and mobilise a mass audience.   Yet even if they succeed on that level, will the viewing public be any better informed by the time credits begin to roll?