Out With A Bang

I guess as very much the new boy of the party, it’s rather beholden on me to add my thoughts regarding events of last Thursday and GMG’s Oxford Media Convention 2010.

And if the thoughts that follow initially appeared somewhat at odds and unconnected, apologies; I think there’s a link there somewhere.

Just.

Given the still-fledgling state of www.addiply.com, we opted not to book the Presidential Suite at The Randolph this year; instead it was a B&B in Summertown.

Was fine; a bus ride in. And for those who know their north Oxford, it was bang opposite BBC Oxford on Banbury Road. Could see the ‘B’ and the ‘B’, if not the ‘C’, from our bay window breakfast table.

We could also watch the BBC’s breakfast news; the ‘local’ opt-out featured stories from Lymington, Portsmouth and Southampton (x2).

Perhaps Oxford is one of those funny, UK cities that finds itself neither one thing nor the other… too west for BBC London, too east for BBC West, too north for BBC South.

Anyway, it was food for thought as we headed off to hear the BBC’s director of news Helen Boaden speak on the future of ‘local’ news provision on the day that Jeremy Hunt would repeat his implaccable opposition to OfCom’s vision of new independently financed news consortia… and, instead, to lay out his vision for a Britain populated by Birmingham-style city TV stations.

Birmingham, Alabama that is.

The very fact that he was last up on the day – to me, at least – spoke volumes.

It was his message that delegates would walk away with and on the IFNCs, his words would have sent a shudder down the spine of any poor soul in Wales, Scotland or the Tyne-Tees-Borders region feverishly trying to put the finishing touches to their final round proposals together.

“I know that many organisations in this room are involved in bidding for the pilot schemes that this Bill would make permanent,” said Hunt, with Trinity’s Sly Bailey earlier going out of her way to urge regulators and incoming Governments alike to give them a chance. Not to strangle the baby at birth.

The fact that all involved had a whiff of Auntie’s top sliced notes in their nostrils was not lost on Mr Hunt. But the Shadow Minister was not for turning.

“I don’t blame you: faced with the terrifying situation many of you are in, it is understandable you want to follow the money wherever it is, public or private.

“This is because we want to see the emergence of a radically different, improved and forward-looking local media sector…

What then followed was a kind of networked, individual city-based vision for local news… if memory serves, ‘Sheffield TV’ was the example he reached for.

“We will seek to lower the costs for new entrants to local TV even further by creating space for a new national network to provide prime time viewing for local TV affiliates.

“It will also mean – critically – that as in America advertising on local TV franchises can be sold nationally as well as locally.

Subsequent commentators have, quite correctly, pointed out the perils and pitfalls of those tasked to manage a LeedsTV and a BradfordTV as The Guardian reported the story subsequently…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/21/hunt-itv-news-replacement-pilots

…but the implication is clear. Wittingly or not, Hunt is demanding an elegant network of RightMove type-freedoms, not a new collection of extended silos; a network in which advertising can “critically… be sold nationally as well as locally.”

Which, for me, is interesting.

Because – I presume – what he’s looking for is, say, www.mycity.tv to pop out of the woodwork this summer.

www.mycity.tv/leeds

www.mycity.tv/sheffield

www.mycity.tv/oxford

I looked. It’s gone. But that I presume would be the theory.

A way, in short, for GMG’s own, much-maligned Channel M to reap the greater fruits on offer from a networked existence; not the ever-shrinking silo that is the Manchester Evening News trying to do TV.

Because part of that, back-of-fag-packet theory would involve finding an ad network that could serve richer media advertising sourced at both a national and a local level.

That, of course, we can do… the next few weeks of beta testing, permitting.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2010/01/08/can-we-join-the-dots-in-digital-britain-mine-a-small-pot-of-gold-at-the-end-of-the-local-rainbow-well-maybe-look-above-you/

But, as I say, this is all fag packet and beer mat stuff. Theory. Mere theory

Where, however, in practice that leaves all those good folk currently busting their corporate b*lls to get their final IFNCs proposals into shape is anyone’s guess; Stuart Purvis of OfCom is also likely to find his wings being brutally clipped should Cameron and Co head for No10 in little more than four months time.

Either way, it’s the Hunt vision that the Tories will be looking to make flesh this autumn. And the first one to a networked domain name might even be the winner…