@Society of Editors: Mark Thompson: BBC may pay for local newspaper content

Posted by Martin Stabe on 6 November 2006 at 12:59
Tags: BBC, Journalism, Online, Society of Editors

The BBC may purchase content from regional newspapers as part of its plans for “ultralocal” television news, director general Mark Thompson told the Society of Editors conference in Glasgow.

Thompson was defending the BBC against the suggestion that it is having an undue distortion on new media market in the UK.

Thompson says the digital disruption being experienced even in countries that don’t have a major PSB in their new media markets: “This digital disruption is haveing its effect in all markets in teh devloped world, including those markets where ther is no equivalent o fht eBBC. Falling audience to traditional broadcast media, falling sales of newspapers, the shift towards web-based advertising from traditional media, the challenge of persuadign user of the web to pay for content, especially text-based content: these trends are all jhust as visible — indeed more visible — in the US than they are here.”

The economics don’t support the idea that the BBC is having an adverse effect on the UK media markets, he says.

The West Midlands local TV trial, which worries so many regional newspapers, will be subject of a market impact assessment.

“There is no evidnce, either in the West Midlands trial or more generally, that web usage in the field of local information is substitutional in the way that some forms of conventional media are,” he says. Websites don’t substitute newspapers the way free papers, for example, do, he argues.

In the same way that the BBC wants to reach out more to web sites outide the corporation, Thompson says the corporation wants to work with, not against, local newspapers in the region where it is trying local television journalism, he says.

The BBC may even pay for local newspapers’ materials, he suggests.

Pressed for details in the Q&A, Thompson said some of the newsgathering the BBC would need in its local video journlaism might be contracted from local newspapers. The local TV is actually not “ultralocal”, but actually a much larger area than most regional newspapers.

The BBC might want exclusive video material, but Thompson says he could imagine that such material might be pooled.

The back story is here, here, and here.