As Lee Waters over at the Bevan Foundation blog noted BBC is cutting its live coverage of Welsh Politics in favour of more commercial activities to raise money on S4C2. It’s the latest bad news following ITV decision to cuts funding and adding more to the ever shrinking welsh media at a time when more scrutiny in needed.
In this climate any new ideas on broadcasting can be maintained should be looked at and Roger Parry the media entrepreneur whose report has written a report for the Conservatives on low cost local regional TV, the sort they have in the USA. It’s an attempt to clip the BBC’s wings in terms of local delivery and get ITV off the hook in terms of providing news, current affairs and political coverage in the regions, the only drawback is there is no reference to Wales in the report . It talks of the 81 city based stations covering four fifths of the UK, the final fifth is of course Wales. If even the media magnets think Wales is a lost cause then what hope is there for the future of broadcasting in Wales.
Back to the proposals reported last week by Roger Parry that a future Conservative Government would replace regional news bulletins with 81 city based TV Stations covering news, current affairs and politics as well as cooking and gardening programmes. The report is a response to the Government proposals in Digital Britain to top slice the BBC licence fee and giving it to ITV to make up for the shortfall in advertising revenue they are suffering, it hasn’t gone down all that well and according to Tory Culture Spokesman Jeremy Hunt he says it would prop up an outdated model of broadcasting into the 21 Century.
The battle lines for the future of the UK Media have been drawn but the outlook for Wales’s broadcasters now and in the future is grim indeed.
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4 comments:
what about people run media ,they do it in other parts of Europe.I think they have it in parts of Cardiff.
There is money around to do that.I think the Scarman Trust at were involved with it some point
The media we have doesn't have to be run by the government or big business
Lets think a bit laterally on this one.
interesting post and some good points Valleys Mam but where does the money come from to start these ventures up because once they are set up they can be run quite cheaply.
Let's get real. Television is so 20th century. It does not serve Wales well. One problem is UK 'balance' laws. Most UK news is trivial, narrow and turgid. I get more from France 24 or Al Jazeera than the failing BBC.
The future for Wales is multi-media via mobile devices and in your face partisan politics. Look at the US news scene for example.
I'm sure City based TV stations could have some success, but it is at the Welsh level that the real problem lies. People will always want to know about their own square mile and media will therefore meet that need. The difficulty is going to be binding together our funny little country.
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