Former Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves will help oversee the award of licences for a pilot TV news project, the Department for Culture Media and Sport announced today.
Marc joins five other senior media figures on the panel to decide which groups will be allowed to run the independently funded news consortia to provide regional news in Scotland, Wales and the Tyne Tees and Borders area of England.
Marc’s former employer Trinity Mirror has tabled a bid for each of the regions. The IFNCs were a commitment from the government’s Digital Britain report published in June last year.
Licences for the pilot projects will be handed out in March with the eventual aim of them taking over the running of all Channel 3 regional news services from 2013 when the ITV licence expires.
The panel will be chaired by Richard Hooper who is a former deputy chairman of Ofcom and was awarded a CBE in 2005 for services to the communications industry.
He said: “These three pilots will provide us with insights into new ways of providing multi-platform news in the nations, locally and in the regions.
“The winning news consortia will be encouraged to exploit the wide range of today’s convergent platforms – ITV/Channel 3, the internet, local commercial radio, community radio, local newspapers.
“The winning news consortia will also be seeking to build innovative business models for revenue generation.”
The rest of the panel is:
Spent 27 years at BBC Scotland and retired as deputy head of news and current affairs. She led the BBC Scotland team in negotiations with the Scottish Office on broadcasting arrangements for the Scottish Parliament.
Former chief executive of GCap Media plc and Virgin Radio. Prior to this, Fru spent a total of six years at search engine Yahoo! as European sales director and then MD of Yahoo! UK and Ireland.
Has a career lasting more than 30 years in journalism, working as political editor for ITN at Westminster and BBC Wales in Cardiff. He has spent the last two years as a member of Ofcom’s advisory committee for Wales.
Founder of ‘Talk about Local’, a public service project to bring an online voice to deprived communities in England. He was previously Tony Blair’s civil service policy advisor on technology, culture, media and sport.
Former editor of Channel 4 News Stewart Purvis will act as an advisor to the panel.
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