I'm not sure what to make of this rather odd proposal, but it's not wholly unimaginable I suppose. What's in it for the BBC? Well, many people think that the BBC needs to have ITV Regional News in existance to justify its spending on regional news production too. Competition is good and healthy. Also, there are some BBC regions that are woefully underfunded compared to the ITV region they compete with (currently). The BBC in the Channel Islands competes with Channel Television. Admittedly
both
are small operations, but many islanders are apparently totally unaware that the BBC makes a sub-opt of Spotlight for the islands at all. At least Channel offer a full half hour of news and sport a night and even gamely continue to offer their daily Puffins Pla(i)ce birthdays slot!
Take the current arrangements for Cambridge - the BBC offer a sub-opt with minimal resources. Big stories from the west of the East region are taken pan-regionally by Look East, levaing the Close-Up sections with cats up trees and the latest NHS figures. A similar situation exists in Oxford, but at least the sub-opt is at the start of the programme, so that top stories in the North and South are transmitted at the start of the programme and to their relevant audiences. None of the BBC sub-opts are particularly well resourced, but currently compete with far better resourced ITV regions.
Perhaps if this sharing of resources goes ahead, the BBC will end up with access to pooled Sat-Trucks and pooled crews ... and ITV Regions will continue to exist ... at least for the short term...
Interesting. Let's see what the official word is on all of this tomorrow...
Take the current arrangements for Cambridge - the BBC offer a sub-opt with minimal resources. Big stories from the west of the East region are taken pan-regionally by Look East, levaing the Close-Up sections with cats up trees and the latest NHS figures. A similar situation exists in Oxford, but at least the sub-opt is at the start of the programme, so that top stories in the North and South are transmitted at the start of the programme and to their relevant audiences. None of the BBC sub-opts are particularly well resourced, but currently compete with far better resourced ITV regions.
Comparing Oxford and Cambridge there are pros and cons to both approaches, and the two regions have very different histories.
Cambridge has always been part of the Look East patch - so the main Norwich presenters are well known, and the Norwich studio is bigger and better on-screen. Starting the show from Norwich means the familiar double-headed presentation team introduce the biggest stories, from a better studio (and not a broom cupboard), with better resources, with the sub-opt providing the in-depth local coverage of less important stories.
Oxford was not part of the South Today patch until the carving up of Newsroom South East, and thus splitting the show earlier makes more sense, as Oxford viewers have no historical South Today background, though the "start your programme in a broom cupboard" argument still has some validity. Also by concentrating the sub-regional fire power at the top of the programme, unless the sub-opt is much longer, you probably cover fewer sub-regional stories, as the top story and second story are both likely to be longer, leaving less time for more local shorter stories than a "Close Up" news roundup.
I can see good and bad in both approaches.
As to the BBC / ITV deal - I suspect the BBC is doing everything it can to avoid the govt top slicing the licence fee to fund PSB content on ITV - and regional news is probably the most PSB thing that ITV still does... By getting in first with an "aid in kind" offer the Beeb may be able to avoid a loss in revenue.
Presumably digital infrastructure for feeding video and audio, pooled coverage of more events, sharing of technology (ensuring BBC and ITV newsrooms are compatible and can feed easily between each other to share pooled content, and allowing ITV to spend less on developing new solutions?), and even of regional down-the-line studios (quite helpful that the BBC and ITV regional programmes are usually on at different times) could all be suggested?
So ITV are to call all the main local news programmes "Here and Now". The BBC may have used that title in the 90s, but "Here and Now" was the title of a magazine programme made by Associated-Rediffusion in the early 60s and, IIRC, of a news magazine programme screened by STV and introduced by, amongst others, the late Bill Tennant.
The Guardian article also mentions that the amount of non-news regional programming in England is to be cut to 30 minutes per week next year...and that Wales will have 3 hours. Where will that leave ITV Border's Scottish viewers? "ITV Border Scotland" currently carries Scottish-interest programming which isn't screened south of the Border, including Scottish clubs playing in European football competitions, Scottish club rugby coverage and some Scottish-interest documentaries. It sounds as if we're going to be left with no access to Scottish programmes and a six minute South of Scotland opt-out from a thirty minute news programme dominated by news from Tyneside. That is utterly unacceptable.
So ITV are to call all the main local news programmes "Here and Now".
I think you may have misunderstood/misstyped there, it's not the news programmes that are having the name "Here and Now", but the current affairs programmes (similar to the BBC's Inside Out).
Just a thought, but if ITV plc. Continue, can Ofcom just pull the plug and bring back bidding and also ban ITV plc. from owning freeview space too?
Could they ban them from owning Freeview space though? ITV have a share in Freeview so I would think nothing could actually stop them gaining space? And if such a proposal was made then they could find a loophole and buy space anyway.
Just a thought, but if ITV plc. Continue, can Ofcom just pull the plug and bring back bidding and also ban ITV plc. from owning freeview space too?
Could they ban them from owning Freeview space though? ITV have a share in Freeview so I would think nothing could actually stop them gaining space? And if such a proposal was made then they could find a loophole and buy space anyway.
For as long as ITV has it's "Channel 3" Licence and is paying up to Ofcom every year, then it is entitled to it's space, ie it's precious spectrum on the C3/C4 MUX. Don't forget ITV also own SDN so I'd guess they'd have some control on that and don't forget the ITV2+1 slot on the NGW MUX.
Although I doubt ITV ever losing DTT space, the only way that would happen is if ITV handed back their Licence to Ofcom and also didn't pay the money for the space.