[Community Television] BBC Local TV trials launched

[Ian Fergusson]

(From BBC's Ariel online)
You are currently looking at 18 Mar 2005 13:24 - Daily news 

Local tv news trials launched
The BBC is to pilot a new local television news service, designed to
serve individual cities and counties around the UK. 
The trials will start in September 2005 in five different areas of the
West Midlands.
Speaking at a CBI event in Birmingham, Mark Thompson announced that the
pilot scheme would create different kinds of local television news on
broadband and satellite tv, on cable and mobile phones.
The pilots will run in Herefordshire and Worcestershire; Stoke and
Staffordshire; Shropshire; Coventry and Warwickshire; and the BBC WM
editorial area, including Birmingham. 
The director general said: 'They will be as local as our radio services,
serving individual cities, conurbations and counties.'
A rolling interactive service running on satellite tv will be available
at fixed points within each hour, accessed via the red button. 
The same sequences of up to ten minutes' duration will also be available
'on demand' via the web, broadband tv and possibly mobile phones.
Thompson added: 'Our aim is to create a new model of local television,
centred on news, information and community partnerships and we will work
with public, private and voluntary sector partners to build and sustain
the pilot service. 
'We will also aim to use our viewers' own contributions in new ways, and
one producer in each area will work exclusively on developing networks
of local contributors and community correspondents.'
For the past three years nations and regions has been working
increasingly with the latest video cameras and computer editing systems,
enabling more journalists to go out on the road and cover more stories
for regional news output.
'The potential of this new technology can now be harnessed', said
Thompson. 'We'll put small teams of journalists into each area to record
many more stories - and we'll be able to use them all.'
If the trials work out and governors give the green light, the BBC hopes
to introduce around 60 similar services across the UK as a key part of
its Out of London strategy.
This strategy was first outlined in Building Public Value, the BBC's
manifesto for the next Charter period, published in June 2004.



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