Ride Captain Ride

Michael Hedges May 1, 2009

There is mounting recognition across the UK media spectrum that regional television news production in competition with the BBC has hit the financial wall. The UKs private sector media has, largely, been operated like an automobile on ice in a tunnel driven at high speed by a drunk on a suicide mission. The solution, they say, is jet fuel.

Speaking at the Voice of the Listener and Viewer (VLV) spring conference (April 30), ITV Executive Chairman Michael Grade gave a big thumbs up to the idea of funding regional television news in the UK from the broadcast license fee. Originating local news has been part of ITV license remit since the network was formed to bring private sector competition to the BBC. Mr. Grade has made clear that regional news production has become an unbearable cost – not profit – center.

The gauntlet was thrown down earlier this week (April 28) when media regulator OFCOM chief executive Ed Richards called ITV’s role in local and regional television news production “unsustainable.”  Richards is leading an ambitious plan to revitalize UK media in the digital era, which has been staggered by current economics. He has been quite keen to seize a substantial part of the broadcast license fee, dedicated to the BBC, to shore up other sectors of UK media.

“If we want to retain nations and regions news beyond the BBC we need to act,” said Richards at a Westminster conference on local media. “The current system may be particularly hard hit by the recession, but it is also unsustainable even under a benign economic climate. Unless we act soon, a diverse supply of high quality news provision will slip away. It is as simple as that.” 

Almost immediately after Richards suggested “an independently funded consortia” provide local and regional television news, STV, the Scottish ITV affiliate, volunteered. And Guardian Media Group followed. There is, apparently, no shortage of willing participants, willing to accept some of that license fee cash. 

The BBC is hardly standing by while its poorer commercial cousins circle the feeding trough. Creation of the dual system – the BBC on one side, commercial broadcasters on the other – was intended to foster balance, competition, goodness, light. The BBC has organized itself, flights of fancy noted, to produce as much as it can with the funding it has while the commercial sector kept borrowing against the future. That future arrived 18 months ago when ad spending started to slide. The BBC’s Mark Thompson has made clear his protectiveness of the license fee revenue while stating a willingness to ‘share’.

Regional newspaper publishers, struggling like the commercial broadcasters, have never been pleased with the idea of BBC produced regional websites. Commercial radio broadcasters have kept a steady drumbeat for privatizing BBC Radio 1… or Radio 2…or anything while steadily eliminating locally originated programming as too expensive. And the market shares and circulations continue to tumble for private sector media.

Even without jet fuel downhill is always faster.