Local TV… is Jeremy Hunt serious?

Raymond Snoddy says “local TV in the UK would be a very good thing and Jeremy Hunt is clearly serious about trying to establish it… It’s just that there might be fundamental economic reasons why this sector has not flourished, or even managed to establish itself at all in the UK…”

It is time for sceptics everywhere to acknowledge that Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is deadly serious about trying to establish up to 80 local television stations in this country.

Until now his interest has looked like a harmless affectation. Is it the result of a business trip to Alabama, perhaps where they have such stations? Or a politician in opposition seeking a telling apercus to mark out his territory?

Hunt’s speech to the Royal Television Society conference this week was only a few sentences old before no-one could have been in any doubt of  his seriousness.

Bill Gates, Newton and scientist Nicholas Carr were all cited in aid of a new grand theory, of global villages, opposite and equal reactions and rewired human brains, which all goes to prove that the time has come for local television. And the UK is the sick man, not just of Europe, but the world for having failed to develop such a thing.

Hunt concedes that one of the reasons why local TV might work in North America and Germany is the existence of extensive cable networks. And understandably, the internationally minded Culture Secretary is not at all interested in the sort of public subsidies they have in France and Spain.

But 8tv Catalonia, he insists, turns a profit as a stand-alone operation, LCM in Marseilles uses other television businesses to support its local broadcasting model and four of the six local stations in Sweden are run by local newspaper groups.

The trouble with us British media types is that obviously we are at the same time too centralised and much too parochial.  But Hunt himself should be a little sceptical about what people say to opinion pollsters. Eight out of 10 people say they consider local news important and seven out of 10 feel the “localness” of stories is more important than professional standards of production.  Right.

That goes well with surveys that say 99% of the public say they love to watch serious documentaries about the origins of the Palestinian conflict and simply despise intrusive, meretricious programmes such as Big Brother.

The Culture secretary should also be cautious about what he hears from specialist panels set up to inquire into the financial viability of his ideas.  The preliminary report from the panel led by senior Lazards merchant banker Nick Shott could hardly be clearer if you understand what is actually being said.

It is, says Shott “difficult to see a clear path to commercial viability of local TV.”  Shott, a former chief executive of the Sunday Correspondent, is a naturally polite and diplomatic man. Always has been.  So what his words actually mean is that this is a total business turkey and he would never in a million years advise an investment client to get into such a sector.

Still Shott is trying his very best and advises that it would be highly desirable to have a single channel number for all local services with a prominent place on the EPG.  But there again even with huge co-operation among local television businesses it would “still be a great challenge to build an audience from scratch and maintain it”.  A great challenge! Courageous even.

The ever-helpful and diplomatic Shott suggests finally that it might be wise for the Government to limit its short-term plans  to a “select number of local TV services” in major cities delivered by DTT.
If ever a Government was warned.

However, Hunt is clearly serious so we must be as well. Luckily his ambitions appear relatively modest.  “My vision is of a landscape of local TV services broadcasting for as little as one hour a day,” says Hunt.

Unfortunately it’s the word “broadcast” that threatens to leave the economics of the venture shot.  You can buy a hour of transmission time on satellite through Information TV but that gives Europe-wide not local coverage.  You can go online and then disappear without trace.

The one organisation that could make it happen, the BBC, has already ruled itself out of ultra-local TV under pressure from erm… politicians and local newspapers.  However, the BBC Trust has come up with hitherto unexpected levels of flexibility of late – so you never know.

STV has announced plans for a chain of local TV stations in Scotland using broadband.  Local newspapers have begun modest TV operations in a number of areas and there is nothing to stop these being expanded.

Indeed there is now a positive incentive courtesy of Hunt – the removal of most of the cross-media ownership regulations preventing local newspapers and commercial radio group “moving freely from platform to platform”.  This is a very positive development. Competition authorities have drawn media markets far too tightly in the past.  It could lead to newspaper groups taking over local radio stations.

The effect on the development of local TV?  Problematical.

Hunt’s other incentive is tying prominence on the front page of the EPG for commercial public service broadcasters to a commitment to more local TV.  It sounds like neither an effective enough carrot nor a big enough stick. At best it could produce a token effort accompanied by the lowest possible investment.

More local TV in the UK would be a very good thing and Jeremy Hunt is clearly serious about trying to establish it as part of David Cameron’s Big Society. Every minister must do his bit.  It’s just that there might be fundamental economic reasons why this sector has not flourished, or even managed to establish itself at all in the UK.

But it would be a real feather in his cap if Jeremy Hunt somehow managed to pull it off with the help of the ideas of Gates, Newton and Carr.

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