A Victory For The Grocers

The BBC have been told to shelf their plans for reviving the fledgling regional news market with an investment of £68m.
This news must be music to the ears of the giant corporations who now run the diminishing news outlets across the UK.
Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, said in making his decision: “We recognise the negative impact that the local video proposition could have on commercial media services which are valued by the public and are already under pressure,”
What I want to know is – why is he pandering to the regional grocers who have continually cut costs, ripping out staff jobs down to the most skeletal of structures and where local and regional papers rely on work experience kids to fill in the otherwise vast gaps?
Constantly regional journalists are told there are to be further job cuts as they are forced to write more and more stories each day, whilst trying to get to grips with new technology and the fabled “24 hour newsroom”.
Don’t even bother thinking there might be funding for training – there isn’t (so much so City University have decided to scrap their Postgrad Diploma in favour of an MA so that they can make sure the students are trained – because the organisations certainly won’t help).
These enormous regional companies want to squeeze a profit out of everything they can, putting in absolutely no investment – and then claim they are a “local” company – which somehow makes it all better.
If the BBC did invest £68m into regional news it may have made the grocers sit up and take notice. Instead they can sit back safe in the knowledge their fledgling papers will continue to maintain their monopolies.
I do agree with the argument that the BBC should sort out the problems they face in the output they already have before going off on regional jollies. But here was a chance for regional newspapers and outlets – many of whom used to have the respect and the voice of authority for their readers – to improve, make some investments (whether they like it or not) and give local and regional journalists the chance to do the very best job that they can.
Lets hope Roy Greenslade is right when he says that the BBC will be back if regional newspapers don’t sort themselves out. Although on past form the BBC will probably be back sooner than we think.

Oh, and in completely unrelated news (ahem) Trinity Mirror have decided, on the back of 1,200 redundancies this year, to put a pay freeze on all staff next year.