[cma-l] From Media Guardian

[jaqui devereux]

Dear all - below is not necessarily bad news...
Jeremy Hunt's plan for new national TV network likely to be delayed

Proposed 'spine' unlikely to launch before local services, despite more than
50 expressions of interest



The new national network is a key part of Jeremy Hunt's local TV plan.
Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian

The launch of a new national TV network, a key plank of culture
secretary Jeremy
Hunt <http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/jeremy-hunt>'s plan for a new
generation of local services, is likely to be delayed and may even be
scrapped.

Licensing of a new network to provide a national "spine" for the local
TV<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/local-tv>services was due to begin
in earnest next month, to be followed by the
issuing of local licences in summer 2012.

However, MediaGuardian.co.uk <http://mediaguardian.co.uk/> understands this
is now likely to be delayed until after the local services launch and may be
abandoned altogether.

More than 50 "expressions of interest" were received by Hunt's Department
for Culture, Media and Sport by the 1 March deadline for bidders to run the
new national TV network, with would-be operators currently awaiting
government proposals for a formal bidding process due to be published in
June.

But the scale of difficulty posed by legislating to force Freeview, Sky and
Virgin to make channel slot 106 available on their electronic programme
guides for the new network, along with the cost of guaranteeing the
necessary national spectrum have, according to well-placed sources with
direct knowledge of DCMS deliberations, led to a major change in thinking.

Extensive lobbying by would-be local operators, fearful of being dominated
by a commercial national network operator with its own priorities and
anxious to get started, is also understood to have influenced the
government's thinking.

"Jeremy Hunt was very impressed on his recent tour of the country with
people really committed to local media who just wanted his help to do their
own thing ... the whole idea began to feel rather too 'top down', it just
didn't feel right for Jeremy's taste," said one source. "There is no doubt
they [the DCMS] are backing off the national spine idea," added another.

A DCMS spokeswoman said: "The DCMS recently consulted on the local media
action plan. Ministers are currently considering a range of responses and we
intend to publish proposals for next steps to deliver local TV in the
summer."

Following a specially commissioned report from merchant banker Nicholas
Shott, Hunt's local media action plan, launched in
January<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/19/jeremy-hunt-new-television-channel?INTCMP=SRCH>,
specified the licensing of a "national spine" ahead of the local services
that it was imagined would hang off it.

Offered the prospect of free national spectrum and guaranteed 106 EPG
placing also prescribed in Hunt's published plan the opportunity to start
what amounts to a new national network on such favourable terms attracted
considerable commercial interest.

However, the risks posed by Hunt's initial plan that the commercial
network's interests would tend to dominate, leading over time to reduced
support for the local TV services that would depend on it, as happened with
ITV was flagged up in the Shott report, which led many observers to question
Hunt's initial approach.

Now, rather than licensing a network operator for the national spine first,
this is now expected to take a back seat to the licensing of local operators
based around the use of local geographically interleaved DTT spectrum.

Any network to supply shared programming and help sell advertising
nationally would only emerge afterwards and be controlled by the local
operators.

This will come as a major blow to prospective network operators, which have
been developing business plans and raising investment cash on the assumption
that the DCMS would follow through with the published plan.

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-- 
Jaqui Devereux
Director, Community Media Association
0114 279 5219

--
Community Media Association
http://www.commedia.org.uk

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