I went to the Local TV Summit in Glasgow on Friday September 9th. On the
platform were Jeremy Hunt MP, Julie Craik from Fife Screen / Tay Screen,
Brian Keating from UR TV (Helensburgh) and Greg Bensberg, Ofcom’s Director
of Broadcasting and Clearance. The session was chaired by Charles McGhee.
The session was broadly positive although there were serious concerns
expressed about the geographical gaps in planned provision for Scotland from
an SNP MP and others.
Jeremy Hunt opened the session by sharing his positive vision of local TV in
every city, town and village – delivered on DTT in the centres of population
where the transmitters are available, and (by 2015 at any rate) on IPTV for
everywhere else.
Dave Rushton from the Institute for Local TV was one of those with concerns
– while IPTV is widely seen as the panacea for rural areas, even when
available it will not have sufficient capacity at peak times – rural 2mg
broadband delivered down a copper wire will slow right down once a
significant number of people tune in to the local news at a particular time
for example. While there is a general belief that we moving away from
scheduled viewing to a VOD world, again this is in part contradicted by the
experience of operators like UR TV whose viewers tune in regularly on a
daily basis to catch up with local events.
How long will many people have to wait for the 2mg anyway? Even in
Somerset (an area that has been one of the successful bidders to the
government’s broadband offer) the coverage to be delivered will not be
universal.
If local and community TV is public service TV (which Jeremy Hunt says it
is) then surely it needs to be universally available.
Helensburgh is where John Logie Baird came from and UR TV launched there on
the 85th anniversary of the first practical demonstration of TV – originally
delivered from a bedroom in Glasgow’s Central Hotel. One time Apple
employee Brian Keating described the success and strength of this all-online
service that employs four full time professionals and engages numerous
volunteers. For him he sees aggregating online content predicated on local
rather than personal criteria (as with Facebook) as the next logical step
for the internet.. They have developed a mobile app through which it’s not
only possible to view content but also to record material for the channel.
Their team is making significant progress with attracting advertising and
the channel is currently covering its cost. They are keen to exploit the
potential of syndicating advertising across multiple locations. I spoke to
him briefly about the similar moves afoot in community radio. He made the
point that to attract advertisers it’s important to present well, to look
and feel like TV on the net, rather than just the internet. UR TV intends
to integrate with DTT when it becomes available. The station represents one
of the two distinct models for local online TV – in which a core team of
professionals generate the content assisted by volunteers. The other model
is training led (e.g. MON TV) with individual and groups of volunteers
making most of the content.
Julie Craik spoke wittily about the local TV experiments past and present in
Dundee, about the Scottish Parliament supported plans for a Digital TV
Network, about concerns for rural areas and widening the digital divide
between the haves and have-nots.
Greg Bensberg described Ofcom’s way forward working with DCMS to licence the
first twenty stations by next summer. He said significantly that he is
interested to hear any bright ideas for how services might reach more than
the stated likely 65 areas – through which the coverage achieved will be
around 60% of the UK population.
I picked up on this for ULTV urging Ofcom and government to look more
closely at how greater reach might be achieved – through working with the
Digital TV Group and in particular by choosing not to create a single muxco
to handle all transmission but rather to allow transmission to be organised
via an approved list of suppliers thus giving local operators far greater
flexibility in terms of siting (whether on one of the designated masts or
elsewhere) – and through having greater control, accruing greater revenue
opportunities down the line. It didn’t feel appropriate to say this at the
session but separating infrastructure from operation sounds ominously like
National Rail 2.0!
I also made the point that the new framework needs to guard against single
owners buying up numbers of stations and attempting to run them remotely –
as happened in the 90’s, leading to bankruptcy and permanent closure of
services.
I know the points I made have been made by colleagues at the other summits,
I know they and others will be made at the London session also. It was
helpful for me to have made it to Sheffield last week for the local TV forum
where a lot of these debates were aired. You can get the flavour of the
Sheffield event online at
http://www.youtube.com/ynuktv#p/c/4B6E7B90CFD51D62/0/omNWH8qLhCs
