Robert Beveridge: Here’s the local news, and it’s not looking good

The new television franchises are wrong for Scotland, BBC and the viewers, says Robert Beveridge

The decision by Ofcom to award the local television franchises for Edinburgh and Glasgow to consortia in which STV takes the lead uncovers yet more flaws in UK government media policy.

Edinburgh TV (ETV) and Glasgow TV (GTV) are supposed to start by October as new Freeview channels, offering city news, some sport and community input. But what will be broadcast or be available online that we do not already have?

STV says the new provision will be “innovative” and “complement existing broadcast, online and mobile services”. How? And why should BBC licence fee-payers also give money to STV to produce and broadcast this news when we already have Reporting Scotland and STV’s News at Six.

The licence fee-payer is being asked to pay for content which might end up being shown not only on the new ETV or GTV but also on the BBC and perhaps STV websites. The BBC will be able to select from available material produced by licensees to meet its editorial needs.

There may indeed be new channels with local content, but what the BBC agreed with the UK government was to “acquire news content from licensed local TV providers”. It is not evident, however, how value for money is achieved by taking BBC money, giving it to a competitor such as STV even if in a consortium, and then buying back and broadcasting the news obtained in this daft way.

How does this provide real choice and plurality which is one of the stated aims of the policy? How will we know when we are watching BBC news per se? Or content produced by ETV? The BBC and STV already share some facilities in the interests of efficiency – studios and the like. Quite what would happen if something happened in the Highlands and due to bad mobile reception preventing immediate on-air delivery, there was a race between BBC and STV staff to get to the studio first to broadcast has not yet been answered.

It is not always easy to square competition with partnership. So how would BBC Scotland and these two consortia sort out – on the ground – who would get the cherries in news terms? How will ETV or GTV differ from STV? What will happen to the existing provision of STV local on their website? And to the staff? Will content or news from ETV and GTV be badged differently, and how?

In the interests of efficiency, will STV also put their content on the new channel? Will newsworthy material from ETV also end up on Reporting Scotland? UK media policy under former culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and his successor, Maria Miller, looks like a dog’s breakfast. Even the argument that we need local TV requires unpacking.

Some years ago, the BBC had to withdraw its ideas for “My Local Now” in which BBC Scotland journalists were to upload to the BBC website, video and audio stories which were of local interest but could not reach the threshold for inclusion in Reporting Scotland. The initiative ran into opposition at the market impact assessment stage of the BBC Trust Public Value Test.

Essentially, newspaper owners asserted that the development of online local news would constitute a form of unfair competition for newspapers which were facing their own challenges in the digital revolution and the need to develop income streams from online content. The BBC Trust recognised the force of the argument, and withdrew the proposal.

But these new services do not have to undergo a public value test. Why not? After all, this is a new service broadly under the auspices of the BBC, or at least funded by the licence fee-payer, so why not a public service test to ascertain demand and also determine the market impact assessment?

Where the BBC Trust was wrong was in agreeing to a licence fee settlement with Hunt because the BBC sacrificed some of its independence. It allowed Hunt to dictate that there should be – in effect – top slicing of the licence fee and that he could determine where the money should go: to his vanity project of local television.

The report commissioned by his department was far from sanguine about the commercial viability of local television. The market had not delivered local TV and so despite the Conservative rhetoric of the importance of the market and at a time of cuts, Hunt chose to spend the public’s money on this. And once you start allowing politicians to tell the BBC how to spend its money, you are on a very slippery slope indeed.

This is further back-door privatisation of one of the most, if not the most, successful and global organisations ever produced in the UK. For many people abroad, the BBC is Britain. It is one thing for the BBC to be required to buy in comedy or drama from independent producers, quite another for the BBC’s high reputation for news to be treated in this fashion.

Moreover, previous attempts at local TV across the UK have failed, and we have to ask: apart from licence fee money, why should this differ in Scotland? And what will happen when the money runs out?

In the future, will the BBC again be asked to fund its competitors? Is this value for money? Is this fair to the licence fee-payer outside Edinburgh or Glasgow who have an interest in how their money is spent?

I wish these consortia well and have no doubt that they might eventually produce some quality content. It is good to see that Edinburgh will get its own television station, but many would have wished for public money to be used for parts of Scotland less well served than Glasgow already is, such as the Borders.

However, overall, the complex and contradictory aspects of this ill-conceived media policy cannot be good for Scotland, for the BBC or especially for licence fee-payers.

• Robert Beveridge is visiting professor at the University of Sassari, Italy. He is a tutor at the Scottish Media Academy and was previously a board member of the Voice of the Listener and Viewer organisation.