Who wants local news?

Who wants local news?

Both BBC and ITV (except in the smallest franchises) trot out half a dozen semi-regional stories - often including one featured to some degree on the national news.

Local reporters are miles away from the majority of their audience and the pot shot selection of items is typically both bland and repeated in three bulletins.

A local news crew can cover only a few stories - but seem to make a daily outside broadcast in the evening bulletin as a matter of course. Often this is just a reporter standing in front of a road or building where some news happened earlier today. Is this make-work or a training scheme?

I really don't see any value in making ITV do it when Sky would never bother.

If we have to have it then have the BBC do it well, rather than badly on ITV as well.

How do we make it more local? Perhaps go the Me-Tube route and have a citizen phone-cam half-hour for really local perspective.

No party wants to be seen to either destroy the BBC or take it under political control (Imagine the news from the Dept of Media, Culture & Sport...)

But the broadcast industry is changing in this post-digital download age and like the newspaper industry it is a case of adapt or die.

No party is going to have the guts to abolish the licence fee AND replace it with a guaranteed income from general taxation (and without independent funding the political reins will be in the minister's hand every year). This is why the licence fee has stayed with us so long - lack of a better alternative.

Peeling it off for this and that risks a death of a thousand cuts.

Whatever we do with the supposedly "spare" funds after the digital switch over is complete, spreading that cash among commercial companies will line shareholders pockets instead of enriching our programme mix.

It takes money to invest in FM, Colour, or HD, but that comes back many fold in the long run.

Even if you don't watch or listen to it the BBC is an integral part of this countries cultural environment.