At some stage in the future, some bright spark will sit back and pen a history of these wretched times.
Whatever title said tome works under, there ought to be a whole chapter devoted to the subject of the BBC and their dastardly plans to send 68 little video camera crews out into the provincial wilds – all at the expense of us, the good TV licence-fee payer.
‘Crews’ is probably the wrong word; it’ll be one smart, 20-something and a hand-held digital camera.
Whatever. The fact of the matter remains that if Emily Bell is right in her belief that the apocalypse is all-but upon us then – for all-too many a traditional media apologist – there’s not so much four riders of said apocalypse, but 68…
Upon their gravestones will be carved the names of their victims – the Stamford Mercury, the Daventry Chronicle, etc, etc… all of whom were laid waste by one, BBC video journalist walking the streets of small provincial towns and cities across the UK.
Of course, said out-riders of the night have yet to sally forth from their MailBox fastness; even now, these plans are still only in the pipeline. The BBC Trust have yet to seal the fate of the whole provincial newspaper and radio industry combined by arming one journalist per 850,000 of the population with one video camera.
Joining the good fight this week came both the Tory Party and the commercial radio lobby… as championed by Bauer’s Radio guy; one of the world’s largest privately-owned media conglomerate left on its knees by the threat of a BBC Local video ‘team’ arriving in Great Yarmouth one afternoon.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=42332&c=1
and…
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=42318
Clearly neither the desperate cyclical downturn has nothing to do with Bauer wondering where the revenue model was for its radio propositions; nor the fact that the web enables everyone to make their own entertainment these days; what has the Apple iPod ever done for Bauer Media (Radio)…
But read the piece with Jeremy Hunt and while he makes some spot on points about the future of news being local – if not hyper-local – as ahead of regional, the suggestion that Archant might have either the will or the wherewithal to invest in ITV Anglia (or whatever’s left of it…) seems to fly in the face of the current realities.
Newspaper groups the western world over are in full lock-down mode; hunkering themselves down in the Fort Dunlops of this world as a nuclear winter threatens to descend.
But here we go…
‘The Conservative government would relax media ownership rules to allow local newspaper groups to buy stakes in TV stations in their area, Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said today.
‘In a speech on public service broadcasting at London School of Economics today Hunt said that the lack of local TV in Britain is the biggest single failing of the British broadcasting industry, and that the current debate about regional news “misses the point”.
‘He said: “A Conservative government will encourage the creation of local TV stations by ensuring media ownership rules do not prevent local newspaper groups from investing in local television in their area….’
That would be an interesting conversation to hear. Local newspaper owner goes to local bank manager and asks for some extra cash to invest in a local TV station… ‘We want to raise £50 million to buy a stake in ITV Anglia, that OK..?
‘Yeh, no worries…
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