Don't make the BBC bail out the busted flush that is local TV
|
Version 0 of 1. Why should the BBC offer a helping hand to loss-making local TV channels? And why should Ofcom relax its programming regulations for the channels? According to Jeff Henry, chief executive of Archant, which owns Mustard TV, “the model of local TV has to be re-examined in a way that allows fledgling operations the chance to actually grow.” Any genuine re-examination of the business model would, in fact, recommend closure and the termination of an experiment that should never have happened in the first place. The whole silly idea, floated by a single government minister as his Big Idea for media, was a busted flush from the start. Forcing the BBC to extend the three-year term in which it must buy content from local TV owners will make no difference (and it is also an unfair imposition on the corporation anyway). Pressuring Ofcom into tinkering with local TV’s public service requirements undermines one of the justifications by the then culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, for the launching of such stations. Henry also argues that the cost of a satellite uplink is prohibitive and he probably has a point there. But that’s a side issue. The substantive point here is that commercial local TV broadcast through television sets was a non-starter. It was a mistake and has cost its investors dear. Newspaper publishers, like the Norwich-based Archant, who felt it necessary to protect their markets by bidding for the licences have since been deluged in red ink. As Henry said with masterly understatement when revealing that Archant took a £657,000 hit last year on Mustard TV: “The route to profitability at the moment is very challenged.” His company, like so many others, was fooled by Hunt’s boyish enthusiasm for his flawed project: hey everyone, let’s start a TV station, show people weather maps and scenes of road closures and then make loadsa money. Here’s Hunt, now the health secretary, answering his critics in June last year: “All these local TV stations will be a success... There will be some that go bust; that is the nature of things.” No, Jeremy, it is in the nature of things that all of them will go bust because they cannot attract audiences large enough to warrant spending by advertisers. That was always going to be the case and you were warned of it at the time. You ignored the reality of an online future. So the current culture minister, John Whittingdale, must beware adding yet more to the BBC’s woes by increasing its commitment to local TV. The project is simply not worth bailing out and licence fee payers should not have to support stations so few people are watching. |