The BBC is set to beef up its local online news coverage in a move which could reopen a bitter row with regional press publishers.
In a letter to Culture Secretary Maria Miller last week, Newspaper Society president Adrian Jeakings urged the government to curb BBC “competition” and encouraged the corporation to commission more content from the local press.
However a BBC Trust report published today reveals that the corporation is already working on plans to bolster its ‘local offer.’
The Trust report identifies local news coverage as a relative weakness in its output and highlights the need for improvement as a key action point.
It says: “One area for improvement is the provision of local content, particularly local news.
“The Trust’s Audience Councils, as well our audience research and public consultation, suggested that BBC Online’s local offer is not as strong as its UK and international and international news.
“For instance, local news stories are not updated frequently and news coverage is not particularly comprehensive in most localities.
“In addition, BBC local sites are organised around regions or counties which are perceived as being too large to be locally relevant.
“We have discussed these challenges and the barriers to improvement with BBC management. It has plans to plans to improve the local online offer both technically and editorially.
“We support these plans and have asked for them to be developed and implemented speedily, as we believe that they will go some way to addressing this issue without changing the local footprint of the BBC.”
An action point set out in the report states: “We recognise that BBC Online’s local sites, and news coverage in particular, are important to the service’s delivery of public purposes.
“BBC management should develop and implement initiatives to improve the local offer, alongside broader actions to improve navigation and personalisation. We will assess progress and consider whether any further action is required.”
Five years ago the BBC was involved in a protracted row with the regional press over plans to bolster its websites by a huge expansion of local video.
The £68m proposal was eventually scrapped after a fierce lobbying campaign by the Newspaper Society, which represents regional press publishers.
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Just what the local press needs; a publicly-funded, better resourced competitor which is free, and doesn’t depend on shrinking ad revenues
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I agree with davy gravy. But also, as this will clearly cost extra money, just when and where are some proper cost savings going to be made at the BBC?
What has happened until now is as soon as a proposal is made public, there’s a bit of a protest – and the corporation promptly announces it won’t make that cut. (for instance closing a couple of the hardly listened to DAB stations, sharing some daytime local radio programmes etc).
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Will the Beeb’s “paywall”….(sorry,license fee.) be increased to help pay for this,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
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So, more time devoted to reading and cribbing from local newspapers then.
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@Rob….Well if that’s what they have been doing it would explain why the service is considered not good enough.
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Here we go again…
The BBC commisions some research which, surprise, surprise, concludes that more BBC is needed. The questions it asked were self-serving – it asked its audience councils about its own services, not whether other services already did the same thing.
So, once again, public money being used to put the public out of work. Brilliant.
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I’ll hold the final nail while Aunty Beeb applies the hammer
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Why doesn’t the BBC stick to doing what it does best? Actually, what is that these days? Corporate jollies, I suppose.
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