BBC Plans Could Seriously Impact UK Regional Newspaper Journalism. What next?

They must have been sombre meetings; exchanges between regional editors and their umbrella body, The Press Association. If the BBC goes ahead by introducing hyperlocal TV stations effectively almost at town, even street level, the consequence for the local newspaper industry would be dire.

Advertising revenue, whatever newspapers could get then would disappear. Why would advertisers pay to keep afloat a newspaper, when a ten ton gorilla in the BBC was providing news for free and have a greater footprint.

The lobbying from newspapers was being stepped up to Ofcom, the media regulatory body, as well as the BBC Trust which decided what was in the best interest of the BBC. The drama would play out in the Press Gazette providing regular updates.

But there was another approach, more daring, but one in which foresight was called upon. The world has entered into digital and multimedia. That was 2005, yet history is about to repeat itself.

Back then websites and rich media were becoming common place. A decade earlier cable ruled and despite cable programmers proclaiming how they would be the next permanent uber kid on the block that euphoria fizzled.

Channel One cable TV which I worked for, and Mirror TV and its life-size bunny hadn’t delivered for all sorts of reasons — one of them being commercial contract deals. In digital, could newspapers’ forecasting match that of the BBC, convinced as I was, that 256k modems would soon transform to 8m/bit which online was the transmission rate for video without all the buffering. In other words what if local newspapers took on the complex task of creating video.

It was radical and could they pull it off?

The call I received was as interesting as it was pressing and would lead to a meeting at a Malaysian restaurant off Victoria station. I had chicken satays. I met with Tony Johnston Press Associations new Head of Training who offered a proposition to me, recommended to him, by their new MD Asha Oberoi.

Asha says you can train journalists? Uhuh! I’d already spoken to Asha whom in her confident bon vive mode put it as: “ it’s a piece of cake David”. What training hundreds of journalists?

At the table Tony re-asked the question. Could you train our regional newspaper journalists into becoming video journalist? Sure, I said, reeling of previous work across Channel 4 News as one of their producers/ videojournalists, training African journalists on the continent, and being one of the first VJs in the UK at Channel One.

I’m not sure Tony was convinced, but we’d give it a go by coming up to the Press Association’s base in the Georgian market town of Howden, East Yorkshire. Meanwhile, behind the scenes there was a sense of panic or could that be re-strategising? The BBC Trust were to make a decision. But the way it was being played out at least in the receiving of news was this. The feeling that the BBC wouldn’t budge. It had set aside £68M and if it were even to shuffle, it would just about be enough to lower the temperature for local newspapers. We waited.

Meanwhile at Howden, a mild rush of panic leading to potential disaster would drop. Eight journalists had assembled from the Liverpool Echo, Hull Daily Mail and Press Association. What was supposed to be three weeks training was dealt a blow. Mid afternoon Tony called me into his office. There seated was Paul Hartley’s Hull’s deputy editor (and father of the house) talking for his colleagues.

The Hull Daily Mail, Paul told us, was going live in 10 days time. When he left the room, Tony understandably was nervous. This was PA’s pilot contract, so it had to succeed and what was thought to be a 21 day course was now eight days. Could I do it? Could I train them?

Yep sure, I replied. What followed was bootcamp everyday and to ensure the journalists understood the dynamics of video, a real-as-live murder case would be re-opened.

That’s the film of how they did below. I address the BBC’s plans in the introduction. And in the credits some news of the newspapers’ accomplishments.

A couple of years in, 100s of newspaper journalists now trained, the BBC made an announcement.

The BBC Trust ruled in 2008 that the BBC’s plans to go hyperlocal using video was to be abandoned. It was deemed an unsuitable use of license fee money for the network’s 65 local news websites. The Trust acknowledged it trample on commercial regional newspaper’s attempts to be viable, making use of online.

More recently, 2002, the BBC has announced plans to change the face of local radio by merging output, and as Dr Liam McCarthy writes they local newspapers have been slow to realise how the BBC’s plans is a threat similar to that in 2005. Dr McCarthy writes of the BBC’s current plans.

It would be easy to be dismissive of the threat to local journalism as crocodile tears, but there has been a dramatic decline in the number of local newspapers — between 2009 and 2019 320 local titles closed. This is bad news for journalists and local communities and there is an understandable fear that an over dominant BBC presence could distort the market further. As the managing Editor of BBC Radio Leicester in the 1990s I remember looking enviously at the Leicester Mercury newsroom which at its height employed over a hundred journalists — today it’s about a tenth of that and its former statement headquarters is now split into offices for rent

Today, there is no BBC Trust to safeguard the BBC’s and public’s interests weighed up against regional commercial enterprise. The promise back then reported in the Press Gazette is a pyrhric one for regional newspapers.

The BBC boss behind its rejected local online video proposal has reassured the regional press that the corporation has no intention of providing ‘hyperlocal’ news at postcode level.

Ofcom appears impotent in the face of multi-pronged decision making manifesting itself in MPs broadcasting news, or it sanctioning the BBC.

Videojournalism too is no longer the key to unlock this dual. Where regional newspapers go from here is anybody’s guess, but the impact of the BBC were it to go ahead would be sizeable and untowards for local journalism, let alone local radio.