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Regional editors slam BBC plans to invest £68m in local websites video

Regional newspaper publishers have slammed plans for a huge investment in local online video announced by the BBC.

The ire of local publishers has been caught by BBC management proposals for a five-year £68 million investment across its network of 60 local websites.

The plans will be put to the BBC Trust next month and if approved they will lead to the creation of 150 new camera teams to create an additional 20 minutes of daily news footage for each website, according to a report in the corporation's internal Ariel magazine.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, representatives of several major regional newspaper publishers said the plans showed a disregard for their industry and its achievements online.

"It is providing a level of competition that is significantly more robust for local newspapers trying to put multimedia on their sites," said Ian Davies, director of business development for Archant.

"Wouldn't it be nice if we all had £68 million in the regional press to spread amongst us?"

This latest development, Davies said, undermined initial suggestions made by the BBC that local titles could benefit from its local online plans even sharing some content.

"They will allow us to link to the output they have created, but not allow us to take the raw material to do other stuff with. I don't regard that as cooperation.

"The only way that cooperation will happen is if they get more out of us than we will out of them and that doesn't seem to be a recipe for future growth of our titles online."

Santha Rasaiah, PERA director of the Newspaper Society, told Journalism.co.uk that the latest proposals reassert ongoing concerns the regional press has over the BBC's local online plans and that the plans didn't add anything 'distinctive' to regional video journalism.

"The BBC is coming into this area with the benefit of its public funds, with the benefit of cross promotion of its activities, and how that can affect audience and the commercial basis for newspaper companies continues to be of immense concern to us," she said.

A spokesperson from the BBC told Journalism.co.uk the plans, if approved, would fill a gap in the corporation's current local offering online.

"If approved, our proposal to put new video onto our existing local BBC websites will directly contribute to the public purpose of the BBC by better reflecting the nations, regions and communities of the UK and by contributing to the purposes of sustaining citizenship and civil society," she said.

Giving evidence to the House of Lords communications committee on Tuesday, Sly Bailey, chief executive of Trinity Mirror, said the BBC's plans for local coverage online could damage the opportunities of the web for the regional newspaper industry.

"It's going to seriously distort the market place the fact the BBC are ploughing extra millions upon millions of pounds of licence fee payers' money into an area that we feel is already well served," Neil Benson, editorial director for Trinity Mirror's regional titles, told Journalism.co.uk.

"We've had various olive branches offered [by the BBC], but none of them with any sort of detailed proposals behind them. It just felt as it they were tokens offered to keep the regional press quiet."

Tags (click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed):
bbc | trinity mirror | archant | newspapers | sly bailey | neil benson | ian davies |

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