大象传媒

Scotland's five major daily newspapers, and a bunch of local weeklies, have declared themselves to be in the television business. They're bidding as part of the consortia that want to provide the Channel 3 half hour of news for Scotland's central belt and north.

Other consortia are going after a franchise for TV news in the south of Scotland, teaming up the Daily Record with the Dumfries and Galloway Standard and the independent TV company that already produces GMTV news bulletins for Scotland.

That's because the model for local commercial news since the 1950s is broken - or so ITV plc says. The "licence to print money" no longer applies.

With audiences fracturing to other stations or going online, STV, formerly Scottish Television, says it can only continue to fulfil that part of its franchise commitment if it is funded to do so.

Its confidence in the future can't have been helped by TV audiences when the bells tolled at New Year. 大象传媒1 took 63% of the audience share, while STV only managed 9%, even falling behind 大象传媒2 (with Jools Holland's Hootenanny) for the first time anyone can remember. It's not a comfortable time to be in commercial television.

So why have the bosses at the Scotsman (Johnston Press), The Herald (Newsquest), Dundee Courier and Press and Journal (both DC Thomson) today announced they're joining forces with Tinopolis, the independent production company behind 大象传媒's Question Time, to replace the current 6pm offering on STV?

And why is it in competition with ITN, the London news broadcaster behind News at Ten in league alongside STV and Bauer Radio stations, which include Clyde, Forth, Tay and Northsound?

One reason is that the newspapers' commercial business model is also broken. They are trying to make the move online, while preserving the printed word.

But compared with London-based competitors, they've left it late and they're trying to do it cheaply.

The strategy also fits with newspapers' moves to put more audio-visual content on their websites. And while the newspaper industry complains the 大象传媒 is using its dominant and privileged role in news media to encroach on online markets, the print news media is becoming ever more convergent across airwaves and online platforms.

Innovative

Clearly, this is getting close to home, so let's state the obvious: the 大象传媒 has an interest in all this.

It also has a declared aim of co-operating with commercial broadcasters and print publishers, providing some of the news footage that will go into this new style of commercial news.

The Government's pilot scheme, in Scotland, Wales and north-east England is aimed at driving new ideas into newscasting, seeing if there are ways of getting to a more local level, drawing on newspapers' strength in journalist numbers at local level, and being innovative by working across online and broadcast.

That north-east English trial is largely because the attempt to put together Tyne, Tees and Border news under ITV plc management has been particularly unhappy, leaving the south of Scotland with a much depleted service recorded from Gateshead an hour before it is broadcast.

Advertising

The pilots are being set up in something of a rush, with bids in by last Wednesday, a shortlist next week, beginning a dialogue on what can be provided and how much subsidy it might take, a preferred bidder by late March and then the service running from summer this year.

Why the rush? Perhaps it's because there's an election looming, and Labour either wants to offer something to three of its heartland areas.

Or because it can see how sceptical the Conservatives sound, so Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw wants to embed the idea before it can be blocked by an incoming Tory administration.

That haste has left a lot of questions around the idea of consorting newspaper, radio and TV companies.

Funding, for instance. There are various ways of funding this if it rolls out beyond the three pilot areas; a share of spectrum funds flowing to the government from mobile operators, direct funding from UK or devolved governments or by a levy on broadband, such as the one already proposed by the Government to fund its continued roll-out.

The pilots are to be funded with around 拢20 million annually from the 拢130 million surplus taken from the programme of digital switchover from analogue TV signals.

But it's not clear how much money each consortia will want, or need, and they don't know how much they should bid for.

The process involves dialogue, so it's only when Whitehall's Department of Culture, Media and Sport sees the proposals and talks over them that they can discuss how much subsidy there might be.

But what about advertising? If STV isn't part of the winning consortium, how will it share out the revenue from advertising in and around the 6pm news - if at all?

Indeed, if STV isn't part of the winning consortium, will there be much point left to it?

Sexism and Ageism

And what if there are benefits to be had from subsidised TV operations, potentially feeding back into private media companies and newspapers - if, for instance, TV reporters do the work that newspaper reporters would otherwise be doing, because they are publicly funded to do so?

Wouldn't that be an unfair advantage for some newspapers over others?

Looked at from the journalists' point of view, if the publishers of the papers in Scotland's four main cities are collaborating, couldn't that be the thin end of a shared newsroom and cost-cutting drive?

Then there's regulation. Newspapers come under the Press Complaints Commission, a voluntary code often seen as toothless. That applies too to their audio-visual online content.

But commercial broadcasters are regulated by Ofcom, which has legal teeth, clear regulatory guidelines, and penalties at its disposal. So what happens to election coverage, for instance?

If the Daily Record continues to pursue a pro-Labour line editorially, and it is putting that into its audio-visual online content, who is ensuring that the broadcast content is free of that political bias? The same campaign report could be subject to two different regulators.

And if these consortia are really going to be innovative, how about the people they employ?

The Herald's editorial today criticises the 大象传媒 for its failure to hire older women newsreaders. "As a public service broadcaster which prides itself on reflecting the diversity of its audience, the 大象传媒, in consistently denying both sexism and ageism, has simply not grasped the reality that in all other areas of life, dynamic women in their fifties and 颅sixties are running businesses, schools, hospitals or local authorities".

Can we therefore take it that a TV news consortium including The Herald will put that right? Judging by the newspaper's current personnel, I wouldn't bank on it.