<div class="gmail_quote"><div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="EN-GB"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Dear all - below is not necessarily bad news...</font> <br>
</span></p><h1>Jeremy Hunt's plan for new national TV network likely to be delayed</h1><p>Proposed 'spine' unlikely to launch before local services, despite more than 50 expressions of interest</p><p> </p><p>
The new national network is a key part of Jeremy Hunt's local TV plan. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian</p>
<p>The launch of a new national TV network, a key plank of culture secretary <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/jeremy-hunt" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Jeremy Hunt" target="_blank">Jeremy Hunt</a>'s plan for a new generation of local services, is likely to be delayed and may even be scrapped.</p>
<p>Licensing of a new network to provide a national "spine" for the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/local-tv" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Local TV" target="_blank">local TV</a> services was due to begin in earnest next month, to be followed by the issuing of local licences in summer 2012.</p>
<p>However, <a href="http://mediaguardian.co.uk/" target="_blank">MediaGuardian.co.uk</a> understands this is now likely to be delayed until after the local services launch and may be abandoned altogether.</p><p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>Following a specially commissioned report from merchant banker Nicholas Shott, Hunt's local media action plan, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/19/jeremy-hunt-new-television-channel?INTCMP=SRCH" title="launched in January" target="_blank">launched in January</a>, specified the licensing of a "national spine" ahead of the local services that it was imagined would hang off it.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Any network to supply shared programming and help sell advertising nationally would only emerge afterwards and be controlled by the local operators.</p><p>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.</p>
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