Out With A Bang

Tempted as we all may be to pull up a ring-side seat and watch our Shane and our Jemima go for the full, three rounds and one submission routine over whether comment is freer on one side of the great divide or the other, for now my eye strayed to this… http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/531627.php

It is a fascinating piece. Because it builds on Sly Bailey’s remarks to the House Of Lords the other day, flagging up TrinityMirror’s alarm at the BBC’s tanks moving onto their local lawns; here given voice by another of TrinityMirror’s finest – this time to www.journalism.co.uk.

“It’s going to seriously distort the market place the fact the BBC are ploughing extra millions upon millions of pounds of licence fee payers’ money into an area that we feel is already well served,” Neil Benson, editorial director for Trinity Mirror’s regional titles, told Journalism.co.uk.

Those ‘millions and millions’ amount to – according to the report in Ariel – £68 million over five years. Just over £12 million a year. For 120 camera ‘teams’ to go out and bolt fresh video content into the BBC’s 60 local websites.

OK, one or two cards on the table. Having spent my Friday night chewing fat with a senior BBC producer in the White Horse, Chedgrave, I would strongly suspect that for ‘teams’ read one bright, young BBC thing with a hand-held camera. Teams of make-up artists, boom men, best boys and gaffers there won’t be.

After all, the BBC already have the Trust after them for their last year’s digital over-spend; how many teeth they have compared to a full-on AGM of indignant shareholders is another matter, but someone, somewhere looks set to be held to account – http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/29/bbc.digitalmedia – so you strongly suspect that that £68 mill over five years is a ‘moveable feast’. Downwards.

But, as the man from Archant points out, it is still £68 million that the regional Press industry doesn’t have. Apparently.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had £68 million in the regional press to spread amongst us?” said Ian Davies, director of business development for Archant.

He has, it seems, spotted a competitor looming on the horizon for all those local, video eye-balls that Archant thought they’d have to themselves.

“It is providing a level of competition that is significantly more robust for local newspapers trying to put multimedia on their sites…”

Cos, funnily enough, Archant may just fear that a TV corporation of the BBC’s ilk might be able to produce a better video product for the local news market than a regional newspaper group. And, after all, where on earth could the regional Press ever hope to find £68 million? Over five years.

No idea.

http://www.archant.co.uk/news_article.aspx?aid=75

http://www.trinitymirror.com/tm_headline=trinity-mirror-plc-br-2007-preliminary-results%26method=full%26objectid=20530489%26siteid=111046-name_page.html

http://www.johnstonpress.co.uk/jpplc/uploads/homepageicons/files/JPStrategyCardFinalApr08.pdf

Now, clearly, ‘operating profits’ can high a multitude of under-lying costs, write-downs and everything else. So let’s not go too far down the ‘Look at your operating profits…’ line.

Instead, look at the money that is still – even now with all the challenges and new competitors that they face – still being channelled shareholders’ way. Can we find £68 million over five-years in there, somewhere? Probably…

Chances of any one of those boys getting up at an AGM and saying: ‘Look people, we need to invest in our medium and long-term future… so we’re not doing a dividend this year…’

The reality is that dividends are still flooding out of these companies like there is no tomorrow; or maybe, that’s because they know, newsprint-wise there may be no tomorrow… So, in part it’s a question of priorities. Who we looking after here?

But there’s another interesting point here. And one that I know of more than most; because I’ve walked the content share walk; I’ve talked that talk. With both the BBC and ITVLocal. And the conversations you have there are fascinating and – for a potential nationwide roll-out network like MFW – very encouraging.

Because there’s the deal. Rather than provincial newspaper groups pretending to be a TV company and the BBC pretending to be a print/text company, you link; you co-operate; you share.

“This latest development, Davies said, undermined initial suggestions made by the BBC that local titles could benefit from its local online plans even sharing some content.

“They will allow us to link to the output they have created, but not allow us to take the raw material to do other stuff with. I don’t regard that as cooperation.

“The only way that cooperation will happen is if they get more out of us than we will out of them and that doesn’t seem to be a recipe for future growth of our titles online.”

Now clearly I’m not privvy to the conversations that Archant have had with the Eastern flank of the BBCLocal arm – cos you have to presume that any discussions would have been Norfolk/Suffolk centric.

I am, however, privvy to the conversations that I’ve had with that same regional wing; and subject to the full approval process going through, I know that they are conversations I can return to in about nine months. With, the suggestion being, that they are likely to prove fruitful.

As, in fairness, they have always been with ITVLocal.com. Or, at least, the Anglia branch.

Why? Because MFW doesn’t do geography. And the provincial Press still do.

I can sit there and do some sums for a potential content share out of MK Dons, Southend United, Peterborough United – over and above that out of Norwich City, Ipswich Town and Colchester United – and me and the BBC know that’s one deal; one conversation; one 24/7 rolling feed.

Over-lay the existing patch-work quilt of provincial Press circulation areas in the East Anglia region and to share written football content includes – potentially – at least three of their number (Archant, Johnston Press and Newsquest) with content serviced by two morning papers, five ‘evening’ papers and one free weekly… all of whom will have their existing print ‘audience’ to bear in mind. That and their print press deadlines.

Now I suspect – correction, I know – there is a strong willingness among those TV types to supplement their video offerings with someone else’s ’sticky’ words; after all you can’t do video/audio in an office setting.

Their issue is far more of a practical nature; how you actually deliver a content share deal with a provincial Press industry that is so fractured in deadline time and circulation space; so inelegantly organised for their network needs; the two pieces of that digital jigsaw don’t fit.

The geography doesn’t work. Just as Mr Shirky said… �