The Ongoing Decline in Local Media: ITV Cuts

south west | media and culture | news report Tuesday September 30, 2008 22:51 by MediaWatch - SouthWestWatch

SouthWestWatch - Grabbing the News With Both Hands! From the MediaWatch dept.

Well, we did say - local news is in trouble as ad revenues flee online. ITV is stuck not only fighting the BBC, Channel 4 or Sky for audience share, but Google, YouTube, Facebook and even this august site. Tough times are ahead, and while the workers may be eager, is the management up to the fight? Or is the old way just coming to an end?

So the axe has fallen, and we at SouthWestWatch are sorry for those who are going to loose their jobs;

"Broadcaster ITV is set to announce the extent of job losses in its Bristol newsroom....The plans would mean ITV's local TV news coverage would stretch from Cheltenham to Land's End....Tim Lezard from the National Union of Journalists condemned the plans. He said: "How can you have a local news service that covers Tewkesbury in the north to Penzance in the south? It's an absolute nonsense. It takes longer to drive from Land's End to Moreton-In-Marsh than it does from London to Carlisle, and no-one would ever countenance having a news patch that covered that area. So why do they do it down here?""

Here, here Tim! Remember what we said in our last post? It is true localism that counts in media and covering the whole of the South West in one broadcast is not going to be local at all - it seems to MediaWatch that the management are fighting a rearguard battle - and loosing. When is comes to news we are (rightly) demanding more and a say too. The top-down model of media is gone. We are all the media now (though the quality varies!) Here is what one media blogger reported on ITV's struggle with new technology

"Beleaguered British broadcaster ITV is peddling fast to catch up with the rest of the digital world by announcing a deal this morning with Bebo to show its ITV2 programming on the social network. The move comes as ITV struggles with a decline in global content revenues and Michael Grade is increasingly waking up to online as the new distribution channel, but anything ITV has produced in terms of its online video player thus far lags so far behind rival BBC’s iPlayer."
http://givememedia.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/itv-plugs-i...-ice/

Despite the digital and online revolution in media, ITV still looks to X-factor and football for its bread-and-butter; thus 'Beleaguered' is a good word. It has been looking to cut back its obligation to do news so it can focus on the bits that make it more money - and Ofcom has agreed to let it.

Don't expect the troubles of the local media to end here - this is just the start.

More SouthWestWatch articles;

Red Faces at the Evening Post & The Decline of the Local Press
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/688859

Nuclear Power - Full of Wind?
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/688931