Online Journalism News

BBC offers £800,000 video fund to local news providers

The BBC has proposed an £800,000 fund for sourcing local video news from external providers, as part of plans to expand its local video service online.

Proposals for the service, which have entered into a public consultation period today, have previously been criticised by regional newspaper groups, who said the plans create unfair levels of competition for newspaper websites.

An outline of the plans submitted to the BBC Trust suggest the corporation would set-up an annual fund to pay for local video news content from external producers.

This fund would rise to £800,000 by 2012/3, the BBC Executive's service description said.

In addition the BBC would make its own local video content available to embed on other local news and community websites subject to 'fair, reasonable and non-discriminating terms'.

Links to external news sites and from BBC local video stories to related stories on other local news sites would also be a feature of the service.

Local media could also benefit from 'informal' training from the BBC on video shooting and editing offered to non-BBC news providers, publishers and radio stations as part of the plans.

Despite this olive branch, the Newspaper Society has slammed the plan.

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