[Community Television] [Community Media Association] BBC to Pilot Local News ServiceAccessed via the Red Button

[Chris Hewson]

BBC to Pilot Local News Service Accessed via the Red Button

--Will also be Offered On-Demand on the Web, IPTV and Mobiles

Speaking at a Confederation of British Industry (CBI) lunch in Birmingham 
earlier this month, BBC director-general, Mark Thompson, revealed that the 
Corporation is planning to launch an interactive local news service that 
will provide coverage of issues and events impacting individual UK cities 
and counties. A trial of the service will begin in September in five areas 
of the British Midlands: Herefordshire and Worcestershire; Stoke and 
Staffordshire; Shropshire; Coventry and Warwickshire; and Birmingham and the 
rest of the region that receives local programming from the BBC's West 
Midlands unit. The service will initially be offered on the Sky satellite 
platform: its regularly updated 10-minute news bulletins will be available 
at fixed times within each hour and will be accessed by pressing the red 
button. They will also be offered on a true on-demand basis on the Internet, 
broadband TV and mobile phones.

According to Thompson, the BBC hopes that local community organizations and 
even individual viewers will play a key role in generating content for the 
service: "Our aim is to create a new model of local television, centered on 
news, information and community partnerships and we will work with public, 
private and voluntary sector partners to build and sustain the pilot 
service," he told attendees at the CBI lunch. "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." If the trial proves successful, the BBC says that, pending 
approval from the BBC Governors, it will launch 60 similar interactive news 
services across the UK. The new services are part of the BBC's "Out of 
London" strategy, which is intended to counter the dominance that London has 
over the UK's cultural life by moving BBC departments to other regions of 
the UK and creating more programming that reflects the interests of those 
regions.

Source: ITVT Newsletter (Issue 5.95 Part 3 | March 30, 2005 ) 


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