Will ‘Live, Local, Breaking’ stack up in the UK?
Jeremy Hunt’s vision to have ultra local television news could be a vision that is flawed from the get-go.
Jeremy Hunt’s vision to have ultra local television news could be a vision that is flawed from the get-go.
The Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt revealed yesterday 20 towns and cities throughout the UK that will have new local TV from next year onwards subject to consultations and consideration from OFCOM.
There is a clear argument that more local news is needed in the UK. On Monday, the local news at 6.30pm on BBC One attracted 6.4 million viewers, the most watched non-soap programme on any channel. This highlights that local news in its current form still attracts a healthy audience.
A majority of existing local news programmes on the BBC and ITV struggle to fill 30 minute slots with news, so how would having a channel dedicated to local news for a particular county, let alone a region, going to generate enough money to succeed.
Regional news and television worked well in the UK until it was generally discontinued to form a national ITV1 brand by ITV Plc and a continuation to erode localness by merging regional news even further, such as the downscaling of ITV Border for Cumbria and its service being placed within the North East region with news provided by ITV Tyne Tees.
The Culture Secretary has ruled out creating a network spine for the new channels, fearing it would just become another ITV.
In America, the three main networks broadcast to the nation through affiliates. The network only supply a breakfast programme, limited daytime and prime-time line-up. This means the affiliate fills the time with local news. A lot of the time the news is repetitive, with what could be considered ‘small stories’ being given due prominence to fill time.
There is also a fixation with ‘flashy’ graphics and musical stings to grab the viewer. The storm that hit the UK last week, with winds in excess of 100mph in Scotland is a case in point of the differences in news style. If that was hitting America, local affiliates would have ‘Live, Local, Breaking’ rolling coverage with reporters and cameras in all positions, breaking into daytime shows. Here however, we are subject to a live webcam on STV website and full report at 6pm.
If we had a number of local TV stations would we go onto devalue news, would viewers tune into watch a storm develop. I believe that the current set-up of local news in the UK works well.
“The best place for local news is on ITV, Ofcom firstly need to allow the channel to show more adverts after 6pm, so that the news slots can be fully advertised (there is a quota of how many can be shown currently, and of course ITV rightly put most out after 7pm to bring in the best revenue) and secondly the regional content should not be controlled, produced or scheduled by ITV. They deliberately put the network on a downward path locally and that sabotage can’t be allowed again. The perfect ITV needs to look no further than UTV, the ITV broadcaster in Northern Ireland.
“Basically Hunt’s concerns the new network with a national spine would be another ITV is a rather good point he makes as actually you don’t need ‘another ITV’ when you already have one that works well when greed isn’t allowed to damage the local side of the network.” Says Mike Watkins, ATV Today Media Editor.
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