BBC Local Video Proposal

BBC Local Video

Distinctiveness Analysis

10th April 2008

Distinctiveness Analysis – 10th April 2008

Executive Summary The BBC proposes to develop the BBC Local (formerly “Where I Live”) sections of bbc.co.uk with the addition of bespoke video content. There will be 65 BBC Local sites across the UK. The sites will provide local news, sport, weather, travel information and local feature content including key BBC genres like local history, local nature, arts and culture.

The service will contain bespoke video summaries and individual stories with a maximum of 20 minutes per day of new stories by the time BBC Local Video is fully launched in 2012/13. A dedicated team of video journalists will gather news from across the local area. A Community Producer will be employed to assist members of the local community with video production.

The BBC conducted a trial across six areas in the West Midlands between December 2005 and August 2006 to help inform development of the BBC’s local audiovisual news proposals. Although the BBC Local Video proposals differ from the trial primarily in terms of proposed delivery platform, the content broadcast in the trial is representative of proposed BBC Local Video content.

The aim of this research was to assess the distinctiveness of the BBC proposition compared to other local video news services currently available online. Video material available over seven days from the BBC trial was analysed against a detailed set of measurable indicators which reflected six broad categories (quantity of provision, production values, editorial approach, geographic scope, user generated content, video advertising and in-video links and use of externally sourced data) and compared to video material available over a similar period on thirteen alternative sites: nine local newspaper websites with video news, and four broadcaster sites with local news online. (These sites were selected to ensure that the BBC proposition was being compared to sites that contained the most advanced local video online and other selection criteria – such as area type, geographical factors and – in the case of newspaper sites – ownership). In total approximately thirty hours of content was viewed. A further 120 local newspaper sites were also examined against seven high level metrics.

This research did not assess the regulatory dimensions in which the content is created, which is clearly an area of distinctiveness for the BBC. The BBC Charter and Agreement ensure the BBC exists to serve the public interest, including providing accurate and impartial news. The BBC Trust’s supervision of BBC news output for accuracy and impartiality imposes far stricter regulatory obligations on the BBC than exist for any other UK news providers. This framework, the subject of recent studies by the BBC1 and by Ofcom2 was beyond the study of this remit.

The analysis shows that the BBC service is likely to be most distinctive on the following criteria:

1 For example, From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century, BBC Trust, 2007 2 For example, New News Future News, Ofcom, 2007

· The fact that the BBC service will be UK-wide · The geographical areas targeted by the BBC proposition, which are larger than those targeted by local newspapers (in the majority of cases) and smaller than those targeted by broadcasters’ sites (with the exception of Manchester). The BBC proposes to introduce a new level of local video newsgathering · The BBC’s plans to partner with other local media providers · Its plans to provide assistance with production of UGC · That the proposition involves production of bespoke content with high production quality, high visual appeal that exhibits in-depth journalism These factors and others are discussed in more detail below.

Geographic scope The BBC proposes to provide a universal service for the whole of the UK, with a new tier of local video newsgathering serving licence fee payers in 60 areas. The BBC proposition will serve considerably bigger areas than the “ultra-local” areas served by the majority of local newspapers. In some cases, for example in major cities or in the case of regional newspapers, the same geographic area may be targeted.

The target area is the same for Manchester Evening News, Channel M and the BBC proposition, both in terms of target population and the area across which newsgathering occurs.

STV and UTV offer newsgathering only at regional level. Videos on the ITV Local website are organised at a comparable level of granularity (67 “Go Local” areas) to the BBC proposition, however ITV Local does not gather news at such a local level. The BBC’s commitment to newsgathering at the local level is distinctive from these broadcaster services.

Third party relationships The BBC’s commitment to working with other providers – providing links to other local media providers around the video content, offering content for embedding on other sites (subject to appropriate terms and conditions) and acquiring content from other providers – is likely to be a source of distinctiveness. The BBC trial material, for example, included a run down of local newspaper headlines. Rarely, the non-BBC sites show externally sourced footage, but none of the sites analysed showed evidence of active ‘partnerships’.

Assisting with the creation of UGC The BBC proposition is the only one of the sites analysed to offer assistance in video production to the community. Extensive support and screen access will be made available to individuals and communities. Though other sites have facilities for uploading and archiving UGC, none go into the community to help create high quality video. Assisting the creation of video content within the community will contribute to the BBC’s public purpose regarding the promotion of education and learning and media literacy remit.

Advertising All of the BBC Local sites will be free from advertising, including the video packages. The alternative sites are ad-funded and have display and/or classified advertising, including in space immediately surrounding the video frame (with the exception of Channel M). The analysis shows that in-video advertising is currently rare across all sites analysed. Only ITV Local, Belfast Telegraph and UTV have advertising or sponsors’ messages within the video. At launch, the BBC’s lack of in-video advertising is unlikely to be a source of distinctiveness from the majority of sites. If consumption of local video is sufficient in the future, commercial sites may add advertising to their videos. The BBC’s lack of advertising may become a future source of distinctiveness.

Production values The BBC performs well in terms of production values, particularly against the local newspapers. This was one of the stated aims for the BBC local trial. The BBC material has the highest number of cuts per minute, and the largest percentage of packages with complex post production (see Figure 1 and Figure 2 respectively). Its media mix (specifically the use of music and animated graphics) is also a source of distinctiveness. Some other providers are experimenting with better production techniques, e.g. the Manchester Evening News and The Yorkshire Post, and this is something that is likely to improve over time, as production facility availability and video journalist experience increases.

Figure 1: Number of cuts per minute for each of the services

Cuts per minute Number 14 of cuts 12 11.8 11.6

10 9.4 8.0 8 7.5 7.3 6.86.8 6 5.4 5.1 4 3.8 3.0 2 1.6 1.0

0 r ss s st rial M ian V T s id el w raph Pre UTV ST Po ily Mail n g er e an e Herald M ir BBC h Daily Ch ing Ne t Tele T n cal rksh Manchesten s r o Hull Da Liverpool Echo Yo ste Newbury Today Eve Belfa ITV L Ea South Wales Argu

Figure 2: Complexity of the post production of stories for each of the service

Complexity of post production of stories

11% 8% 18% 17% 14% 13% 17% 20% 33% 50% 65% 60% Complex 53% 67% 81% Intermediate 67% 100% 100% Simple 80% 87% 83% 80% 67% 50% 40% 35% 29% 16% 22% 6% 11% n s o ld er ail idia a M t r el TV Ech Post Press n STV U e n ily M ol ily l Me nches o hir BBC Triala he Her a p s T Cha M rk n Da Loc ning News ast Telegraph iver o r e lf Hull Da V Newbury Today L Y T Ev Be aste I South Wales Argu E

Editorial approach The topics covered by all local news providers’ video tend to be broadly similar; all cover local politics, crime and social issues. The analysis showed that local newspaper video generally displayed a lower ‘depth’ of journalism than the BBC trial material. In contrast, the broadcasters’ video tends to exhibit more in-depth journalism, higher than or comparable to the BBC trial. It must be noted that the broadcasters’ video content was recycled from television news bulletins and was not created for the website.

The BBC intends to produce in-depth video journalism, displayed to some extent by the trial material (14% of stories were high depth).

Figure 3: Depth of coverage by each of the service Depth of coverage

14% 12% 11% 8% 14% 36% 31% 27% 33% 36%

86% High 73% 100% 100%100%100%100%100% 36% 44% Medium 86% Low 61% 56%56%

28% 25% 13% 14% r n V e o ss T h st e STV l M idia day o r U e r Argus o P P n chest T l Ec n n y ire BBC Trial l Me oo a The Herald ur p sh Cha Ma r Daily oc rk n th Wales Hull Daily Mail er EveningV NewsL Newb Live Yo t IT Belfast Telegraph Sou Eas

Quantity of output Local newspapers analysed tend to produce around five minutes of video content per day (with occasional exceptions). The broadcasters upload more content, taking video from half hour TV bulletins. The BBC proposes a maximum of 20 minutes of new video stories per area per day by the time the site is fully launched in 2012/13. An average of 6:36 was produced each day during the trial. This sits between the quantity produced by broadcasters and newspapers.

All of the local newspaper video is made exclusively for the website. None of the broadcasters’ video was bespoke.

The quantity of bespoke content underpins the BBC’s editorial approach of providing a range and breadth of journalism, with frequently updated content across each area.

Other criteria There are a number of criteria on which the BBC’s proposal was not found to be distinctive, for example, the number of locations and number of interviews are fairly similar among all the services and so not sources of distinctiveness.

Summary Most of the sites analysed fell into two broad categories: those that recycled previously broadcast video content of high production values and high visual appeal, with in-depth journalism, and those that created bespoke video specifically for the website, which tended to have lower production values, visual appeal and depth of journalism displayed within the video. Generally local newspaper video was in the latter category, while broadcasters’ online video was in the former.

An exception is the Manchester Evening News which produces bespoke material of high production quality, high visual appeal and high journalistic depth; however, it does so infrequently. The BBC proposition is likely to be distinctive in that it offers video with high production values, high visual appeal and in-depth journalism, bespoke for the BBC Local site. This content is also produced on a regular basis.

When considered in isolation, the indicators do not distinguish the different services analysed. When a series of factors are combined – high production values, high visual appeal and in-depth journalism along with the creation of bespoke content – the BBC appears to be distinctive from the sites analysed.

In addition to the combined factors discussed, the BBC Local Video proposition is distinctive in the granularity of newsgathering across the whole of the UK.

Introduction The BBC is proposing to launch a local video news offering, to be delivered via IP protocol in 2009, subject to approval from the BBC Trust. As part of the BBC Management’s Public Value Test application for the Local Video proposition, Human Capital was asked to perform a high level analysis of the BBC local trial video output and compare it to existing and potential future alternative local video providers.

The Terms of Reference for the project state that the analysis should assess the distinctiveness of the BBC’s proposed offering against other propositions in this environment and likely developments there, including current and possible local newspaper services, ITV’s local proposition and other UK local broadband services. The analysis should consider content, audiences, quality and other contributory factors to distinctiveness.

The approach taken in the analysis was to compare the BBC’s local video news offering, as presented within the proposition and during the West Midlands pilot conducted between December 2005 and August 2006, with local video news services currently available online. Websites affiliated with local newspapers and broadcasters, including local Restricted Service Licence (RSL) television channels, were considered.

It was decided that the analysis should focus on the most advanced of the available local video online. The sites should be from each of the four nations and there should be at least one site to represent each of four area types: metropolitan; urban; mixed; rural3. For the local newspaper websites, there should be a representative from each of five main newspaper groups and the newspapers should have a range of circulation figures. Figure 4 shows the sites that were analysed.

3 Area type classifications are based on the proportion of people living in urban areas (which differs by nation but effectively means conurbations of 10,000+). Metropolitan areas have greater than or equal to 95% of the population living in urban areas; Urban areas have between 70% and 90% of the population living in urban areas; Mixed areas have between 40% and 70%; Rural areas are defined as having less than 40% of the population in urban areas. These market types are the same as those defined in the Market Impact Assessment

Figure 4: The services analysed as part of the distinctiveness analysis, the ownership, location and area type, and the approximate target population

Approx. Title Ownership Location Area type population

ITV Local –Meridian ITV South Mixed 5.9m #

STV STV Scotland Mixed 4.2m #

UTV UTV Ulster Mixed 1.4m # Greater Channel M Guardian Media Group Manchester Metropolitan 3.9m *

The Herald Newsquest Glasgow Metropolitan 4.2m *

South Wales Argus Newsquest Newport Mixed 449,870 *

Belfast Telegraph Independent News and Media N.I. Belfast Metropolitan 214,200 #

Newbury Today Newbury Weekly News Group Newbury Mixed 286,042 *

Manchester Evening News Guardian Media Group Manchester Metropolitan 3.9m * Hull and Hull Daily Mail Mail News and Media / Northcliffe East Riding Urban 486,538 *

Liverpool Echo Trinity Mirror Liverpool Metropolitan 1.2m *

Yorkshire Post Johnston Press Leeds Urban 4.2m *

Eastern Daily Press Archant Norfolk Rural 1.2m *

* Source: JICREG: Demographic profile of the target area (15+) –January 2008 # Source: ONS population (16+) –mid-2006

For the BBC and the other sites, seven days of output were analysed. For some of the less frequently updated sites additional days were analysed to ensure that we had viewed an appropriate amount of content. In total approximately 30 hours of content was viewed.

In addition to the detailed analysis of the existing online video provision, we considered the prospects for likely future services, particularly with reference to the local newspaper groups and ITV Local.

We also conducted an overview analysis of 120 local newspaper offerings which represents 10% of all local newspaper websites in the UK.

Analysis

Analytical Framework The BBC and non-BBC providers were analysed within a framework (Figure 5) that considered three main proxies for the quality of video output: quantity of provision; production values and editorial approach. Also considered was the sites’ approach to user generated content and sharing of video material, and the presence of in-video advertising and links. Other information, including the geographic coverage of the service, was also collected.

The criteria were chosen in order to describe each of the services and to bring out differences between them. Not all of the categories represent sources of BBC distinctiveness. Categories will not necessarily differentiate between services if considered individually, for example “story mix and topics covered” does little to differentiate the video providers. But when it is considered in conjunction with depth of coverage, differences become apparent e.g. BBC political coverage tends to be in- depth and made specifically for the online local news service.

Figure 5: The framework used for the analysis

Comparator Detail Ownership Service area Information Potential population covered Type # new minutes per day # new stories per day Average length of stories Quantity of provision Frequency of update Format - bulletin or packages Video - bespoke or recycled Minutes in / out of studio # locations # people interviews # stories in which own video used / total mins Production values Media mix - text, stills, audio, video, graphics Cuts per minute Post production Overall assessment of visual appeal Story mix and topics covered (politics, social issues, human interest, crime, sport, weather, community) Editorial approach Local democracy Depth of coverage How much? User Generated Content What is it? Description What assistance provided to produce / moderate? Advertising In video advertising In video links Third Party Relationships Externally sourced video - description Externally sourced video - length Dates analysed

Information Service area and potential population describe the geographic scope of the site; type refers to the four area types defined above; metropolitan, urban, mixed and rural.

Quantity of Provision The criteria describing the quantity of provision give an indication of the scale of the service.

Production Values An assessment of production values was made based on eight criteria. When considered in combination, they give an indication of the sophistication of production. A large number of cuts, many locations, a number of interviews and several layers of different media types (e.g. music, graphics, text overlay) show that production and video editing has taken place resulting in an intricate video package.

Further to this, the number of minutes spent out of the studio, combined with the number of locations, gives an indication of the level of local newsgathering and of journalism. The number of people interviews shows the level of local involvement.

In total, the eight criteria are indicative of the quality of the video production. The majority could be measured or recorded objectively but some of them (post production and overall assessment of visual appeal) were rather more subjective and required definition.

Post production was thought to be a proxy for the sophistication of the service and was judged on a three point scale; simple, intermediate, complex. Allocation was based on the following definitions: · Simple: story is studio based with live/recorded voiceover, still photographs or video footage · Intermediate: story includes shots of the relevant location, interviews or a piece to camera from a relevant location or simple text on screen · Complex: story is presented with advanced editing techniques e.g. animated graphics or text, colour alterations including colour fades / highlights and black & white, speed changes, or several layers of content such as audio track, music track, video footage and text overlay

An overall assessment of the visual appeal was also considered to be an important factor contributing to the audiences’ enjoyment and was assessed with the following classification as a guide: · Low: the video piece is simple comprising a reporter to camera. Cuts to still photos were also considered to be of low visual appeal. There may be shots that are out of focus or that have poor colouring or lighting · Medium: the colour, lighting and production of the video will be brighter and feel more professional. The stills and video that are used to illustrate the story will be visually interesting · High: the video is bright and colourful with a professional feel. There may be a dedicated studio set. Animated graphics, colour effects and speed changes will add visual interest

Editorial Approach

The topic covered within the video piece was recorded. Promoting local democracy is a key concern of the BBC and so was considered carefully during the analysis. The video was judged to have promoted local democracy if it featured any of the following: · Dedicating air-time to local MPs, Councillors or representatives from local authorities and institutions · Presenting two sides of an issue or debate using local voices · Providing a direct link between constituents and Members of Parliament for example through question and answer sessions “Local democracy” is not synonymous with “politics”; a story that concerns national politics or simply reports the election of a local authority or government representative would not be recorded as promoting local democracy. Similarly, a social issues story that included an interview with a representative of local government would promote local democracy without being classified as politics.

It was anticipated that there would be a distinction between the depths of coverage displayed by the various local providers. The depth of coverage was analysed using the classification below. · Low – simple reporting of facts and telling a story · Medium – report includes interviews with local people · High – report provides wider context e.g. legality, history, facts & statistics, interviews with an expert

User Generated Content The presence of User Generated Content (UGC) – both within video packages and as stand alone video – was recorded and described. Details regarding the facilities available through the site, particularly with regard to UGC production, were also recorded. The BBC proposes to provide Community Producers who will work with the local community to develop digital skills. This was expected to be one of the most distinctive parts of the BBC proposition and something that required special consideration during the analysis.

Advertising It was hypothesised that there may be advertisements within video packages so any examples of these were recorded.

Third party relationships The presence of links and any third party video was recorded. This was to show the extent of partnerships between local content providers.

The Boundaries of the Analysis As BBC management’s Local Video Public Value Test application is only examining the costs and benefits of making available bespoke video, the BBC Local (formerly “Where I Live”) pages in which the videos appear are outside of the scope of this analysis. Our analysis therefore is restricted to the video packages provided by six BBC trial offers and thirteen non-BBC local content providers. In some of the criteria

listed above, this is an important distinction, e.g. Depth of Coverage refers only to the depth exhibited within the video package and is not a comment on the wider publication. Advertising outside of the video frame was ignored for the purposes of this analysis. Similarly links to alternative local content providers (an indication of local partnerships) were only considered if they appeared within the video package.

This research did not assess the regulatory dimensions in which the content is created, which is clearly an area of distinctiveness for the BBC. The BBC Charter and Agreement ensure the BBC exists to serve the public interest, including providing accurate and impartial news. The overseeing of BBC news output for accuracy and impartiality by the BBC Trust imposes far stricter regulatory obligations on the BBC than exist for any other UK news providers. This framework, the subject of recent studies by the BBC1 and Ofcom2, was beyond the study of this remit.

BBC Local Video The BBC proposes to develop the BBC Local (formerly “Where I Live”) sections of bbc.co.uk with the addition of bespoke video content. There will be 60 BBC Local areas, covering England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The five Welsh sites will be available in both English and Welsh, giving a total of 65 sites. The sites will provide local news, sport, weather, travel information and local feature content including key BBC genres like local history, local nature, arts and culture. The video content will be accessed via the BBC Local (formerly “Where I Live”) sites. A dedicated team of video journalists will be employed across the UK – approximately six per area. The BBC intends to spend approximately £23m p.a. once the sites are fully rolled out in 2012/13.

A trial was conducted across six areas in the West Midlands between December 2005 and August 2006, see Figure 6. The trial material was created for a combination broadcast and broadband service. At the time of the trial, the proposition was for video material to be broadcast on digital TV platforms as well as being uploaded onto the local websites within bbc.co.uk. On digital TV, one ten minute bulletin was broadcast to each region every hour. Each bulletin was composed of a number of individual video packages. The aggregated bulletins could also be viewed via broadband, in addition to twelve of the disaggregated, constituent video packages.

The proposition has been revised and is now for a broadband-only service, available to view through the BBC Local (formerly “Where I Live”) sites. Despite the change to the proposed delivery platform (on demand over Internet Protocol (IP) via bbc.co.uk) and presentation method (individual packages only), the proposed video content and the details regarding its production and editorial are defined in the same way. As a result, the trial material is considered to be representative of the new offering.

A detailed analysis was undertaken covering seven days of output from all six of the trial locations. We looked at the following aspects of the offering: quantity of provision, production values, editorial approach, geographic scope and user generated content.

Figure 6: Key information about the West Midlands trial areas

Trial services Population (k) Birmingham 1,203 Black Country 1,082 Coventry & Warwickshire 837 Hereford & Worcester 728 Shropshire 451 Staffordshire 1,059

Quantity of Provision By the time BBC Local Video is fully launched in 2012/13, the BBC plans to create up to 20 minutes of bespoke new video stories each day for each of 60 local areas.

Significantly less content will be produced at the time of the launch (in 2009) but the quantity will increase over time. The 2006 West Midlands trial produced video content comparable to that proposed for the launch of the broadband offering – 6:36 minutes per day on average, 4.2 new stories each day, each with an average length of 1:35 minutes. New content was uploaded to the site throughout the day, as soon as editing and post-production was complete. The new content for each day was uploaded before 7pm.

In the trial, content was presented in bulletin form, or as news packages accessed on demand. The content included packages, summaries and clips of interviews or pictures4. The revised proposition will also have packages, summaries and clips. Our analysis considered each constituent package individually, to fit with the terms of the BBC Local Video proposal.

Content from other BBC news bulletins, which are currently broadcast on BBC TV channels, may also be uploaded (where geographically relevant).

Production Values Production values were generally high throughout the trial. There was an average of 11.8 cuts per minute, indicating a substantial amount of editing. A wide range of media tools were used to illustrate and add visual interest to the stories: still photos, animation, graphics, video and on-screen text.

The post production of the trial video material was generally ambitious. Of the 175 stories broadcast across the sampled week, 0 were simple, 62 were intermediate and 113 were complex; i.e. 65% of the stories had “complex” production values.

The overall visual appeal of the trial material was judged to be generally high with 84% of the trial video pieces rated as having high appeal. Only 16% of the trial material was rated as having medium visual appeal and none of the trial pieces were considered to have low visual appeal.

One of the aims of the trial was to produce video outside of the usual studio environment. This meant that the majority ran without a lead presenter or anchor: the stories were presented or narrated by the video journalists, often at the scene of the story5: a total of 403 locations outside the studio were used (an average of 1.16 per story). It also meant that the stories typically comprised mostly outside video: for all six services across the week, the average time spent within the studio (including filming around the studio) was 25 seconds per day. Out of studio video accounted for an average of 9:24 minutes per day, or 96 per cent of broadcast time. Interviews with

4 Packages are composed of a number of smaller pieces of video – clips – that are edited together. Clips are the raw pictures e.g. of a location or an interview. Summaries are miniature news bulletins that are a combination of packages and clips. In the trial, summaries were often News In Brief sequences (NIBs) which reported a number of headlines in quick succession within a short sequence 5 A traditional studio-based presentation was also experimented with during the trial period in the Coventry and Warwickshire region. For this reason, Coventry & Warwickshire recorded an unusually large amount in studio during the week analysed. This region was chosen because one of the video journalists had suffered an injury that confined her to the studio! This presentation style was considered less successful than the out-of-studio format and less fitting with the original aims of the trial

a wide range of people featured strongly, with an average just over 9 interviews per day.

Almost all of the video material was created especially for the local trials, but occasionally video was sourced from elsewhere, including regional news bulletins, BBC Sport and Match of the Day.

Editorial Approach The stated ambition for the trial was to create an accessible tone while covering the full range of serious and some lighter news stories. In the week analysed the stories covered a range of subjects from politics to weather, with the largest single subject category being social issues such as health, education, environment and entertainment, see Figure 7.

Figure 7: BBC local trial material: story mix and topics covered

BBC Trial Story Mix 60% 53% 50%

40%

30% 25%

% of stories of % 20%

10%10% 10% 3% 0% Local interest*WeatherPoliticsSportCrime

* Local interest combines the categories: social issues, human interest and local news

10% of the videos discussed political issues and 14% supported local democracy. One of the features in the Shropshire trial was a weekly question and answer session between local individuals and a Member of Parliament. In this way the BBC’s trial helped to sustain citizenship and civil society.

The trials addressed some serious local issues, such as coverage of local elections and the local impact of the debate regarding the availability of the breast cancer treatment drug Herceptin. Although some of the stories were covered in great depth (14% were classified as being high), the majority were intermediate (73%). A further 14% of stories were low in terms of depth of coverage and included the “News In Brief” sequences – a series of short video packages presented by an in-studio anchor. The rapid presentation style necessitated low depth of coverage. Other examples of trial material with low depth included “Vicar’s world cup song”; and “Liz’ll fix it”; full length packages which tended to be fairly light in both subject and tone.

The BBC’s local offering, as part of the wider BBC, would have access to the BBC’s regional, national and global news teams, which could give them the opportunity to develop local perspectives on wider stories.

Geographic Scope In the trial each location targeted populations between 1.2m and 452,000 (in Birmingham and Shropshire respectively). The Birmingham trial covered the metropolitan areas of Birmingham and Solihull. The Black Country offering covered urban areas of Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall. The Shropshire, Hereford & Worcestershire, and Staffordshire trials targeted rural areas while the Coventry and Warwickshire trial targeted a mixed area.

It is proposed that BBC Local Video will be created in 60 areas across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each local site will target an average population of 928,000 adults. This varies from 7.5 million in London to under 100,000 in each of Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey and some of the Welsh sites, see Figure 8.

This represents a new level of video newsgathering for the BBC. Currently news gathering occurs at the international, national and regional levels. With BBC Local Video, the BBC introduces newsgathering of increased relevance to the local communities.

Figure 8: Table showing the geographic areas proposed for BBC Local Video across the UK

Population Area Local Video News BBC Region ITV Region (000s) Type London London London 7,459 Metro Manchester North West Granada 2,545 Metro Glasgow and West Scotland Scotland 2,209 Urban Hampshire South Meridian 1,817 Urban Liverpool / Merseyside North West Granada 1,670 Urban Essex East London 1,656 Mixed Herts + Beds East London 1,639 Urban Kent South East London 1,626 Mixed Sussex South/South East Meridian 1,524 Mixed Lancashire North West Granada 1,448 Urban Cardiff and South East – English Wales Wales 1,295 Urban South Yorkshire Yorkshire Yorkshire 1,283 Urban Birmingham West Midlands Central 1,203 Metro Edinburgh and East Scotland Scotland 1,170 Urban Newcastle / Tyne North East Tyne Tees 1,111 Urban Devon South West West Country 1,110 Mixed Black Country West Midlands Central 1,082 Metro Bradford Yorkshire Yorkshire 1,079 Urban Surrey South/South East Meridian 1,075 Urban Staffordshire West Midlands Central 1,059 Urban Leeds Yorkshire Yorkshire 1,055 Urban

Population Area Local Video News BBC Region ITV Region (000s) Type Nottinghamshire East Midlands Central 1,048 Urban Derby East Midlands Central 985 Mixed Leicestershire East Midlands Central 949 Urban Humberside East Yorks & Lincs Yorkshire 902 Mixed Belfast and East Northern Ireland Ulster 831 Urban Bristol West West 829 Urban Norfolk East/East Yorks & Lincs Anglia 827 Rural Warwickshire West Midlands Central 823 Urban Berkshire South London 805 Urban North Yorkshire Yorkshire Yorkshire 778 Rural Tees North East Tyne Tees 768 Urban Cambridgeshire East Anglia 745 Rural Foyle and West Northern Ireland Ulster 735 Mixed Hereford and Worcester West Midlands Central 728 Mixed Somerset South West/West West 715 Rural Buckinghamshire East Central 705 Mixed Dorset South West Country 700 Mixed Suffolk East Anglia 693 Rural Cheshire North West Granada 685 Mixed East Midlands/East Lincolnshire Yorkshire 684 Rural Yorks & Lincs Tayside and Central Scotland Scotland 682 Mixed Wear North East Tyne Tees 664 Mixed Northampton East/East Midlands Central 658 Mixed Wiltshire South/West West 633 Mixed Oxfordshire South Central 629 Mixed North East and Northern Isles Scotland Scotland 576 Mixed Gloucestershire West Midlands/West West 575 Mixed Cornwall South West West Country 523 Rural South West Wales – English Wales Wales 507 Mixed Cumbria North East Border 496 Rural Shropshire West Midlands Central 451 Mixed North East Wales – English Wales Wales 321 Rural South of Scotland Scotland Border 259 Rural Highlands and Islands Scotland Scotland 243 Rural South West Wales – Welsh Wales Wales 151 Mixed North West Wales – Welsh Wales Wales 151 Rural

Population Area Local Video News BBC Region ITV Region (000s) Type Mid-Wales – English Wales Wales 147 Rural Cardiff and South East – Welsh Wales Wales 128 Urban North East Wales – Welsh Wales Wales 113 Rural North West Wales – English Wales Wales 93 Rural Jersey Channel I Channel 88 Rural Isle of Man North West Border 76 Rural Mid-Wales – Welsh Wales Wales 63 Rural Guernsey Channel I Channel 62 Rural

Assisted User Generated Content The BBC has made long-standing use of User Generated Content (UGC); citizen news gathering, in the form of photos and blogs, is selected and hosted across bbc.co.uk. The BBC Local Video proposal aims to develop UGC further by working with the local population to develop digital skills and facilitate the production of high quality video content. According to the proposal each of the 60 areas will be served by a team of video journalists and, in addition, a Community Producer dedicated to assisting local video production. Through this new offering, the BBC will further deliver its Public Purposes of promoting education and learning, and stimulating creativity and cultural excellence.

During the West Midlands trial, the BBC community production teams operated to great effect: there was an average of 8.5 “Viewer Videos” made and shown each week on each local offering.

Many other websites have facilities for uploading and archiving UGC. In addition, the BBC Local Video approach to UGC will add value by assisting the production of user generated video.

Advertising In line with UK BBC policy, BBC Local Video or the wider BBC Local websites will not generate any revenue for the BBC or any other party.

Third party relationships The BBC Local Video proposition states a commitment to developing relationships with other local media providers. Links to other providers will appear on the BBC Local pages, and relevant links will surround each video article. This will facilitate plurality of news consumption for BBC Local Video and the wider BBC Local website audiences. The BBC will acquire video content from local publishers and make its content available to other local groups for embedding on alternative websites. During the trial a run down of local newspaper headlines was presented: an example of local partnerships.

Local newspapers compared to BBC Local Video The majority of local newspapers have successfully moved online and publish local news on an affiliated website. Of the 1,303 regional newspapers in circulation just 201 are yet to develop an online presence6. Many local newspaper groups have expressed intent to provide local video news online, but in practice very few have developed substantial offerings.

A basic analysis of 120 local newspaper sites (those with names beginning with ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘M’; an arbitrarily chosen sample that represents close to 10% of all local newspaper sites in the UK) was carried out to assess the level of advancement of local video news on local newspaper sites across the UK. Seven metrics were chosen to grade the sites, those being (in rough order of levels of sophistication): 1. Presence of any local news video (e.g. Andover Advertiser) 2. Evidence of video newsgathering e.g. clips filmed at a relevant location (e.g. Mansfield Chronicle Advertiser) 3. A wide variety of editorial content (e.g. Mid-Sussex Citizen) 4. Either 10 minutes or 5 packages uploaded to the site per week (e.g. Brighton Argus Lite) 5. Medium to high levels of post-production (e.g. Bristol Evening Post) 6. Medium to high levels of visual appeal (e.g. Blackpool Gazette) 7. Presence of regular bulletins (e.g. Bucks Herald)

Figure 9: Chart showing levels of advancement of local newspaper websites

~5 to 10 services

~30 to 40 services 7 ~25 to 30 services 6 ~30 to 40 services 5 ~50 to 60 services 4 ~200 services 3 ~10 to 20 services 2

1 ~750 services

Online video0 advancement score 01002003004005006007008009001000 1100 More Number of local newspaper sites advanced video content Basic video content No video content

The results (see Figure 9) show that a majority of sites do not have any video content e.g. Melton Times and Buxton Advertiser (approximately 750 local newspaper sites). About a third of the sites have a basic video news offering, which is infrequently

6 Annual Regional Press Survey 2006, 30th August 2007

updated (ranging from a couple of times per week, to less than once a month) and is generally of low or inconsistent editorial, production and visual standard. Less than a tenth of local newspaper sites had regularly updated sophisticated video news, based on these metrics.

A more detailed analysis was performed on the video output available to view over a period of at least one week on nine local newspaper websites: · Belfast Telegraph · Manchester Evening News · Newbury Today · Hull Daily Mail · Yorkshire Post · Liverpool Echo · South Wales Argus · Eastern Daily Press site – EDP 24 · The Herald

The results of the analyses can be found in Figure 17 to Figure 25 in Appendix 2.

The video content on newspaper sites varies significantly in terms of the production values, visual appeal, depth of journalism, and quantity of output, the frequency with which it is updated and the content covered. Many of the Johnston Press sites and those in the Newsquest “thisis…” network have short video news bulletins. Reporters read headlines to a camera in the newsroom; stories are illustrated with shots of the newspaper copy or of still photographs taken from a relevant location. In this type of news bulletin, no additional newsgathering is evidenced – the story and photography is taken from the newspaper.

Some local newspaper packages or bulletins include video footage from a related location, interviews and on some occasions archive or 3rd party video. This indicates the presence of a video journalist and facilities for editing and post production.

Quantity of Provision Of the sites analysed, the most basic (in terms of video provision) have a small number of short videos, and are updated intermittently. The South Wales Argus typically uploads one new video per week, with each video being between 1:00 and 2:30 minutes long. The Eastern Daily Press was not updated at all during the five week period between 7th February and 18th March 2008. Many of the Johnston Press websites (Yorkshire Evening Post and West Sussex County Times) have longer videos – up to 5 minutes in length – but these are infrequently updated – on average, once every two days.

This contrasts with more sites such as Newbury Today, which posts a two to three minute video news bulletin every weekday, and has developed their video news offering further.

All the local newspapers’ video content is bespoke – made specifically for the website.

Local newspaper sites in our analysis generally upload video intermittently and generally have low volumes of video production. This differentiates local newspaper video from the BBC offering, which would be updated daily. During the trial the BBC consistently produced an average of 6:36 minutes of new content each day.

An exceptional local newspaper is the Manchester Evening News; up to nine video packages may appear each day, with an average length of just over two minutes. This site is less distinctive from the BBC proposition in terms of the quantity of video provision and frequency of update but it must be noted that it relies heavily on its affiliation to local TV station Channel M for the video content with just 11% of packages being independently produced by the newspaper.

Production Values The production values of the video also vary considerably. Video pieces that consist of a reporter reading to camera in a newsroom with still photos used to illustrate the stories (see Figure 10) were considered to be rather basic – they exhibit low post production (as defined above), with no locations or interviews. They also tend to have low overall visual appeal, limited mix of media and a low number of cuts per minute.

Figure 10: Screen grab of the Newbury Today 1pm bulletin

Videos on the South Wales Argus have intermediate production values. The video is clear and in focus which contributes to intermediate visual appeal. Footage and interviews are filmed from a relevant location indicating the occurrence of video

newsgathering. The video news bulletins on the Belfast Telegraph site have high visual appeal (see Figure 11). Bulletins consist of a presenter to camera in a bespoke studio with sophisticated background animation adding visual interest. Each story is narrated by the presenter, and still or video material is used as illustration.

Figure 11: Screen grab of a Belfast Telegraph bulletin

The BBC is committed to high video production values, which is a source of distinctiveness from the majority of local newspapers. Generally, local newspapers perform lower in all measured aspects of video production value: BBC trial video had an average of 11.8 cuts per minute compared with a range of 0 to 8.0 for the local newspapers (Hull Daily Mail is exceptional with 11.6 cuts per minute); complex post production is rare on local newspaper sites, occurring only with Manchester Evening News (11% of stories) and The Herald in Glasgow (17% of stories) whereas the West Midlands trial had 65% of stories with complex post production; visual appeal of the

video is high for a minority of local newspaper sites: Belfast Telegraph (100% of output), Manchester Evening News (83% of packages).

Editorial Approach Local newspaper video content tends to focus on social issues and human interest. Across all local newspaper services, 45% of video stories report local issues (social issues, human interest and community), see Figure 12. The analysis shows that 66% of the video news output for the South Wales Argus concerned politics but it must be remembered that this analysis is based on a very small sample size since only three videos were uploaded during the 12 day period of analysis. The Belfast Telegraph and UTV have a high percentage of national political stories due to the political history in this region.

Figure 12: Chart showing editorial mix of stories

Story mix Number of stories 1293304 48 19 125177 40 502 17 10 35 analysed

3% 6% 8% Weather 16% 11% 10% 25% 24% 0% 17% 18% 10% 33% 7% 11% 38% 33% Sport 39%15% 10% 15% 13% 60% Crime 3% 17% 85% 15% 13% Local 10% 61% 90% interest 40% 37% 76% 53% 49% 67% 43% 20% 67% Politics 35% 50% 22%22% 17% 20% 10% 14% 13% 10% 9% 6%

l r il t a s h V d y V n o s i te l M a s s r u p T s a a T ia l h o g a s r d c e T r r U w S d e M P r e e o i E A g e r n y P C h H T l l e e c N e n i r B s l y a a o i ly e e n g e r M o h i B l h D T a n h u l p s a a i T a C l r k t M n b l r D s c u e W e w v o n a o i r f v e L H Y th l L e e E N t u V s o B T I a S E

Health, education, politics and crime are the local issues that are covered by all providers of local news, so the BBC is unlikely to be distinctive in terms of the story mix covered.

An area where the BBC is distinctive versus local newspaper video is in the depth of coverage. The depth of journalism displayed in the majority of local newspaper video within the analysis is lower than that shown during the BBC trial. There is little evidence of additional investigation; reporters describe the event or story. There are exceptions; in general, sites which upload story packages, as opposed to bulletin style news reporting, have slightly more in-depth coverage of the stories. The Yorkshire Post showed greater depth of coverage in a video package by following a restoration project over a number of months; the Essex News site (a combined venture between the Echo, Southend News and Basildon News) gathered video evidence regarding a crime. Only one site showed several cases of high journalistic depth in video – Manchester Evening News scored highly in terms of depth of coverage with 11% of stories rated “high” compared to 13% of stories within the BBC trial (the high depth material was sourced from affiliated broadcaster Channel M).

Geographic Scope There are over one thousand local newspapers in circulation in the UK with an average target population for each of approximately 230,7007. Circulation figures for the nine local newspapers analysed range between 24,000 and 110,000. This ultra- local targeting is typical of local newspapers, which tend to target a particular city.

Trinity Mirror recently launched a series of 16 “hyper-local” sites in Teesside, providing local news, sport & events information to areas defined by postcode. This may be indicative of a move by local newspapers towards an even smaller local focus.

The BBC Local Video proposition is for 60 local areas across the UK. This equates to a target adult population of 928,000 per area which is larger than the “ultra-local” (or “hyper-local”) service provided by newspapers. The size of the target population distinguishes BBC Local Video from local newspaper offerings. BBC Local Video would introduce a new level of video newsgathering, less focussed than the “ultra- local” or “hyper-local” newspaper sites, but more focussed than existing BBC regional news.

Assisted User Generated Content Use of User Generated Content within the news videos was rare for the local newspapers analysed. Some of the sites have pages where users can upload or send in their own video footage, but this was not obviously used or edited by the newspaper sites in their news footage. It was generally displayed unedited in a “Your Videos” (or equivalent) section of the site. None of the sites offered production assistance to help members of the community create high quality video packages.

The BBC’s community producers will be a source of distinctiveness.

Advertising All of the analysed local newspapers are ad-funded and their websites contain display and classified advertising space. The presence of advertising within video packages was rare; only the Belfast Telegraph had a short message from a sponsor.

Third Party Relationships None of the local newspaper sites analysed showed any evidence of active partnerships with other local media providers in the community.

7 Source: JICREG, October 2007 average target audiences for regional press

Broadcasters Online The online local offerings of four commercial broadcasters were considered during this analysis; ITV Local, STV, UTV and Channel M, and were compared to the BBC trial and proposition.

Our analysis found that there was a broad distinction between the video content available on local newspaper sites and that available on websites that are affiliated with broadcasters.

The online video news provided by broadcasters is recycled from programmes that have been broadcast on linear television. These videos exhibit higher production values than those produced by local newspapers. Broadcasters also upload a much greater quantity of online video content; broadcast programmes are uploaded in their entirety, packages that combine to produce 30 minute or hour long programmes are separated and made available to view individually.

The videos produced by broadcasters show ample evidence of in-depth journalistic investigation. Packages frequently had several interviews with industry experts, representatives from local authorities and councils as well as with local people. There was evidence of video newsgathering on location and often the historical or legal setting was explained. Statistics and facts were also presented. This is all indicative of high depth of journalism. BBC trial content also showed evidence of high journalistic depth.

All the content available online is primarily made available through traditional broadcast television channels. After being broadcast on television, the video is made available to view via the website. On the contrary, the BBC’s local video content was (and will be) bespoke.

The cost of broadcasting has led television companies to target larger populations than those targeted by local newspapers. With the exception of Channel M, the broadcasters’ newsgathering areas are roughly equivalent to UK nations or regions and are much larger than those proposed by the BBC.

ITV Local A table detailing the analysis can be found in Figure 26, Appendix 2.

ITV has eleven macro-regions across England and Wales. Some of the regions are further sub-divided (e.g. Meridian sub-divides into South, South East and Thames Valley) to create seventeen regions and sub-regions. The website is also divided into 67 “Go Local” areas across England and Wales, each one covering an area approximately equivalent to a UK county. Bespoke content is broadcast on TV to the seventeen regions and sub-regions each day and then uploaded to ITVLocal.com.

and 20 minutes long respectively. All four of these bulletins are uploaded to the appropriate sections of the ITV Local website. A total of 117 minutes of video can be viewed on each ITV Local region each day, see Figure 13.

Figure 13: Table showing the content available on ITV Local each day Average Total output time ITV Local area Type of video duration across all regions

Macro regions (11) Early morning bulletin 2:20 25:40

11am bulletin 5:30 93:30

Lunch bulletin 6:30 110:30 Sub regions (17) Evening bulletin 20:00 340:00

Local to you 6:53 116:58

686:38

The constituent stories from the ITV bulletins are also separated and uploaded to one of the 67 “Go Local” sections of the ITV Local site. This means that a single video package may be viewed in three different ways: in a bulletin on the traditional broadcast television programme; in a bulletin on the ITV Local regional page and as an individual video piece on the “Go Local” section of the ITV Local site. Despite the granular organisation of the ITV Local site, newsgathering only occurs at the regional level. The BBC will gather news at the local level and so will provide a more local, as opposed to regional, perspective. There will also be a more even distribution of coverage across the region in the BBC proposition (whereas in the ITV service, a high proportion of news will be of relevance to the largest city in the region). This is distinctive from ITV.

Although there is significant volume of video available on ITV Local, none of it is produced specifically for the broadband service8. It is all recycled material, previously broadcast linearly on television. This is in contrast with BBC Local Video which proposes to produce bespoke video content, on top of the current national and regional television news.

The bulletins on ITV Local are in the style of traditional television news in which a studio based anchor leads the viewer through news stories, introducing relevant video packages when appropriate. The result is that there is a roughly even split between time spent in and out-of-studio. In contrast, BBC trial material was largely filmed out-of-studio (96% of minutes were out of studio).

8 Very occasionally ITV Local contains additional material. While television bulletins will only contain edited highlights of interviews or press conferences, the full footage may be made available on ITVlocal.com. This is rare and only occurred in 5 of the 442 stories analysed. We do not consider this content to be produced specifically for ITVLocal.com

The content on ITV Local has high production values; 18% of content exhibits complex post production, compared to 65% of BBC trial material. All of the video has high visual appeal, compared to 84% of BBC Local Video. The BBC and ITV are of similar quality; production values are not considered to be a source of distinctiveness in this case.

A full range of editorial topics are covered on ITV Local (9% of stories concern politics, compared with 10% for BBC Local Video). The video frequently covers local democracy issues; interviews with MPs and other institutional representatives occur in 7% of the stories analysed. Editorial values are not important in setting the BBC proposition apart from ITV Local.

Advertising on the website surrounds the video frame but is not contained within the video pieces; sponsors for sport and weather appear as they do in the broadcast version of the bulletin. Clearly the BBC proposition will not include sponsors’ messages within the video pieces and this distinguishes the offering from ITV Local.

ITV produces news bulletins for regions in England and Wales. The BBC proposition covers the whole of the UK, which is an important distinguishing factor.

The combination of all ITV Local sites currently reaches approximately 350 thousand unique users per month across the UK (see Figure 14 below).

Figure 14: ITV Local unique users and page views (source: Nielsen Netratings)

450 6000

400 5000 350

300 4000

250 3000 200

150 2000 Page Views (000s) Views Page Unique Users (000s) Users Unique 100 1000 50

0 0 Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 08

ITVLocal.com scores highly in our analysis in terms of production values and editorial approach. Within these categories, the BBC is distinctive because of the complexity of its post production (65% of BBC trial material was complex compared to just 18% on ITV Local), its commitment to local democracy (7% of ITV’s stories compared to 14% of BBC’s) and the out-of-studio presentation style.

The main thing that distinguishes the BBC proposition from ITV Local is the granularity of the newsgathering. Videos on the ITV Local website are organised into

67 “Go Local” areas, but ITV Local’s newsgathering occurs at the much less granular regional level. The provision of newsgathering at the local level causes BBC Local Video to be distinctive from ITV Local.

The BBC proposition is distinctive from ITV Local in that it includes community video production assistance. ITV Local makes use of UGC – both in video packages and in a dedicated section on the site – but does not provide production assistance. This is in line with the BBC purposes of promoting education and learning and stimulating creativity and cultural excellence.

The BBC proposition is also distinctive in that it involves creating additional content, specifically for the BBC Local sites, rather than simply recycling made-for-television content.

Channel M Detail of the analysis can be found in Figure 27 in Appendix 2.

Channel M is a commercial Restricted Service Licence (RSL) television channel for Manchester. It is owned by Guardian Media Group (GMG), which is in turn owned by the Scott Trust. Within GMG, the channel is run by the wholly owned subsidiary, MEN Media, the regional newspaper division responsible for the Manchester Evening News.

The channel is dependent upon advertising revenue and on loans from MEN Media. At September 2007, Channel M had received a total of £8.4m9 from GMG. In the financial years ending in April 2007 and April 2006, the channel had operating loss of £3.9m and £1.5m on revenue of £2.3m and £776,000 respectively. In the financial year ending in April 2007, Channel M spent £1.8m on wages and salaries of 73 employees.

The television service broadcasts six hours of news each day on its linear television channel (half an hour of this is a repeat of an earlier bulletin). An average of 17:30 minutes is uploaded to the website each day. This is composed of an average of 7 packages of 2:30 minutes on average. This is highly variable – up to 17 packages may be added in one day or none at all. The BBC trial was different to this; the daily average volume uploaded to the site was significantly lower (6:36), but uploading was consistent, occurring even at weekends.

The video content is accessed through the “News” section of the Channel M site. The twelve most recent packages are available at any one time in this section. The news packages can also be accessed via the Channel M News programme tab which gives access to the 100 most recent packages. The packages can also be viewed as part of the broadcast television news programmes (in these aggregated programmes packages are linked by an in-studio anchor).

The content on Channel M has high production values. Journalists frequently experiment with presentation styles and a variety of post-production techniques. The

9 Channel M Report and Accounts 2007. Source: Companies House

result is that video content generally has high visual appeal (100%, compared to 84% of BBC trial material). Channel M displays complex post production (14%, compared to 65% of BBC trial material), with colour enhancement, speed alterations and graphics contributing to the story and forms packages with many cuts per minute (9.4 compared to 11.8 for BBC trial material). The outcome is that production values are similar for Channel M and the BBC proposition, though the BBC is more likely to exhibit complex post production.

The editorial approach is serious, a full range of editorial topics are covered (6% of stories concern politics) and the depth of coverage is frequently high (12% of stories). This is not dissimilar to BBC trial material, with 10% of stories concerning politics and 14% of stories considered high in terms of depth of coverage. The link between Channel M and the local community is strong, thus videos frequently cover local democracy issues. Interviews with MPs and other institutional representatives are common, occurring in 18% of the stories analysed. Again this is similar to BBC trial material in which local democracy issues were promoted in 14% of stories. The criteria considered within editorial approach are very similar for both Channel M and BBC Local Video.

There is no evidence of display advertising on the site, either within video packages or surrounding the video frame. This is comparable to the BBC proposal. Significant amounts of classified advertising appear on the Channel M site but they are organised within appropriate sections of the site, away from the video material.

Greater Manchester’s population10, and thus the target audience for Channel M is 2.5m11. BBC Local Video for the BBC Local Manchester website proposes to target the same Greater Manchester population (2.5 million).

Channel M scores highly in this analysis. For almost all of the criteria within the post production and editorial values categories, Channel M content is comparable to BBC trial material. The geographic scope is the same and there is no advertising in the video or video news pages on either site. The BBC proposition is only distinctive because content was / will be refreshed daily while currently Channel M updates are relatively sporadic; bespoke content is to be created for the BBC proposition while Channel M recycles broadcast material; complex post production was more common with BBC trial material than with Channel M; the BBC proposition provides help to assist video production within the community, something that is not offered by Channel M.

10 Source: mid-2006 Population Estimates: Office for National Statistics, General Register Office for Scotland, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency 11 The channel expanded its audience by 30% between April and October 2006 (MEN 24th October 2006) to reach 316,000 viewers per week by October 2006 (Ipsos/Mori); a reach of 15.4% of adults in Greater Manchester (based on ONS mid-population 2006)

STV The full results of the analysis can be found in Figure 28, Appendix 2.

STV breaks down Scotland into four regions, but newsgathering only occurs across two broader regions: Central and North. Southern Scotland is covered by the Border region area of ITV and ITV Local online. In comparison, the BBC is proposing to gather news for six separate areas for Scotland. STV uploads weekday bulletins and packages which are taken from the bulletins, but are sometimes longer, unedited versions. As far as can be ascertained, all STV content has been originally made for television and not specifically for the website. The longer packages are edited to a lesser degree, but appear to have been recorded for television initially. BBC content will be created specifically for the website and made available daily.

As with other broadcasters’ online video news, there is a significant amount of on location newsgathering – in common with the BBC, the video packages are composed of video filmed on one or several locations.

Post production on STV is quite complex but not as many stories reach a complex level as in the BBC trial (12% of STV stories are complex; 65% of BBC stories). The BBC content’s cuts per minute in the trial also overtook that of STV (3.0 on STV compared to 11.8 on BBC trial material).

The story mix is similar for STV and BBC trial: 10% of stories concern politics on both. Local democracy is an important component for both the BBC and STV with 14% and 16% of stories respectively addressing these issues. STV video is typically high in journalistic depth (36% of stories). This is particularly true of sports stories which have interviews with local sports people. In comparison, the BBC trial was of lower depth with 14% of stories being classified as high depth.

Post production for BBC video is higher than for STV, as is cuts per minute. Editorial approach is fairly similar. The BBC proposal is distinctive because of the proposed target area – the BBC proposes to split Scotland into six areas while STV news gathers in just two regions. The BBC proposition is significantly more granular in terms of newsgathering. A further source of distinction is that the BBC produces content specifically for its broadband site, unlike STV which recycles broadcast material.

STV does not have any evidence of assisted UGC. The BBC’s proposition includes community assistance which is distinctive. STV video does not contain any advertising or sponsors’ messages, in common with the BBC trial.

UTV The in-depth analysis can be found in Figure 29, Appendix 2.

UTV covers the whole of Northern Ireland without splitting it into smaller regions. In comparison the BBC proposes to gather news in two regions within Northern Ireland therefore providing a more granular local offering.

One bulletin is posted on UTV each weekday, with an average length of 18:37; no additional material is posted. The BBC trial produced 6:36 minutes per day; the proposal would offer a maximum of 20 minutes of new video stories per day by 2012/13. Content is updated daily, including at weekends. Both bulletins and packages were (and will be) available on the BBC Local (formerly “Where I Live”) websites, so each news story is more accessible.

Across all production value categories BBC Local Video performs better than UTV. Although the post production is high on UTV (81% intermediate; 8% complex), it is not as high as in the BBC trial video (35% intermediate; 65% complex). Problems with the video upload and playback frequently cause errors and skips in video packages which are detrimental to the overall visual appeal – all UTV content is medium in terms of visual appeal while 84% of BBC video is high. Cuts per minute is significantly lower on UTV – 5.4 cuts per minute on average compared to 11.8 on BBC Local Video.

Due in part to the nature of Northern Ireland’s history there is quite a heavy concentration on politics in the bulletins with 22% of stories addressing these issues (compared to 10% for the BBC). For similar reasons, the level of stories which have an element of local democracy is rather high at 29% (BBC is 14%). 44% of stories on UTV have high depth of coverage compared to just 14% for the BBC. In terms of editorial approach, BBC Local Video and UTV are significantly different, but UTV online video bulletins are not bespoke and are created with linear television in mind.

The video content available on UTV tends to have a more national focus, rather than local. This is where BBC Local Video is most distinctive because of the more granular, more local newsgathering proposition.

Within each UTV bulletin there is an advertisement between the news and the sport that is about 30s long. BBC video will be free of advertising. This is a source of distinction.

UTV does not make use of UGC within news packages, nor does it have dedicated UGC pages on the site. There are no facilities for assisting production within the community and no dedicated Community Producers. The BBC’s commitment to assisted community production is a source of distinction.

Comparison of the BBC offering with potential future offerings The rate of change in UK media markets is very rapid. At present the state of development of new media offerings by existing local media – in particular the regional press – varies widely. Therefore it is appropriate to consider not only those offers which are already available, but also those which may become available over the medium term, given these rapid changes. In doing so it is important not to confuse the exercise with the analysis of the potential market impact of the BBC’s proposition. In this Chapter, therefore, we discuss plausible outcomes based on current evidence and trends, without analysing economic or competitive effects in any detail.

The following sections take the dimensions of quantity of provision; production values; editorial approach; geographic scope; and opportunities for local participation in the form of BBC-assisted UGC in turn. Against each dimension, we consider how distinctive the BBC offering is likely to be over time.

Quantity of Provision The BBC Local Video proposal is for a maximum of 20 minutes of new video stories per day per area by 2012/13, and during the trial there was an average of 6:36 minutes of new content per day. Existing services range from around 30 new minutes per day on broadcaster sites such as STV, to around 3 minutes per day on bulletin- led newspaper sites, to less than 1 new minute per week on Eastern Daily Press and other similarly emergent newspaper broadband services.

Given the trends seen in the last two years, and the intentions expressed by local newspaper groups, one can surmise that local newspaper websites will continue to develop, or move to initiate, an online video news offering. In recent years, local newspapers have suffered dramatic declines in both classified advertising revenue and circulation, see Figure 15 below. Newspaper groups are being forced to explore new revenue opportunities and news delivery methods.

Figure 15: Regional newspapers sold per annum (m)

Regional newspaper sold per annum (m) 3,000

2,000

1,000

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

The internet represents an opportunity in both classified and display advertising but significant consumption is essential. The extent to which local newspapers increase the amount of video news from current levels depends on the extent to which that video news component of their (much broader) offerings drives consumers to use their service.

Other local information services – Google Local, UpMyStreet, county council information sites, local commercial radio stations – need to consider the same question. The start-up costs of an online video news service are very small, particularly if local newsgathering already takes place, and potential benefits could be significant. If local news is considered to be an important driver of traffic for local service sites, other broadband services may launch. Indeed, a minority of county councils are already experimenting with video information services online. Even for commercial providers whose current focus is outside of the media environment, there are potentially significant rewards.

The rapidity of development and the increasing granularity of ITV Local suggest that ITV has recognised the potential of a network of local online services. In little over a year, the service has transformed from a small-scale service for a single ITV macro- region (Meridian) to a nationwide service, organised into 67 “Go Local” areas, with daily updates, UGC and significant amounts of classified advertising. At present, this does not include any bespoke online content and currently there is no suggestion that it will.

Production Values The BBC trial was distinctive from other local video news currently available in that it presented more technically complex packages than alternatives. The extent to which other existing or potential services adopt these techniques in future depends, firstly, on the levels of investment into such services, and secondly, on how much of an audience driver high production-value local video news is to the more commercial components of a local offering.

There are two factors that will tend to drive up the production values of other services: the falling costs of technology (cameras, editing kit, etc.) and the spread of low cost video journalism skills. The latter will be accelerated by the BBC’s investment in local VJ skills if its proposal for local video news goes ahead.

Editorial Approach The BBC proposes to focus heavily on local democracy issues with a high depth of journalism. Looking forward, if the BBC’s editorial approach is seen to be more attractive to audiences, then it could be copied by other providers – it is likely that commercial players will converge on the editorial mix that drives the most traffic.

Geographic Scope The key dimensions on which the BBC offering is distinctive in terms of geographic scope are the degree of “localness” of the individual locations, and the scope of the proposal as a UK-wide offering.

How local is local? The BBC’s local areas are in most cases broader than those covered by local press. It seems likely that this focus on serving very local areas – having been described in a Newspaper Society report as the USP of the regional press – will continue, and so will continue to distinguish BBC Local Video from local press. An exception to this is larger metropolitan areas where the BBC is proposing a city-specific offering: London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, and Newcastle. These all have city-level press in addition to the proposed BBC offerings. The same may prove to be true in broader BBC Local Video areas that have a large town as the focal point. Geographic scope may cease to distinguish the BBC offering from ITV Local, if ITV continue to develop their “Go Local” service.

Local services offered nationally. The totality of the BBC proposition, comprising a series of local offerings across the whole of the UK, is unlikely to be replicated by local newspaper groups, unless they consolidated or cooperated to such a degree that a full national network of local services was created. The most likely candidate to provide local services across the whole UK would be ITV Local: as a national brand it would have an interest in its “Local” service being offered as widely as possible. As discussed above, its “Local” offering is at present a disaggregation of its regional news service. As a public company, the main factor determining whether it makes its Local services available all over the UK will be whether that creates value for shareholders. This in turn will depend on the share of the online listing and classified markets that ITV Local can secure – in these markets it will be taking share mainly from regional newspapers.

Assisted User Generated Content The BBC’s Viewer Videos are distinctive from user-generated content on other services – such as ITV Local – in that they are produced with the direct input of the BBC’s Local Video teams. As such they have a strong media literacy remit, in contrast with the “self-publishing” element predominant in other services which feature user-generated content. While the BBC offering could be imitated by other local media providers, there seems little incentive for them to do so: the likes of YouTube indicate there is no shortage of people keen to upload their own material; and the increasing sophistication of search engines such as Google will make it easier and easier for this content to be aggregated into fully “user made” local news sites. Examples of news services based wholly or heavily on “citizen journalism” include OhMyNews in South Korea and Wikinews based in the US. While both of these services focus primarily on text articles, members are experimenting with other media, including audio and video. At present it is rare for articles to be accompanied by video but the increasing availability of mobile video recording devices, including mobile phones, digital cameras and video cameras, makes the possible expansion to a video-focused service highly likely. Regardless, none of these services would consider assisted production, so it is likely that the BBC’s approach to UGC would endure as a source of distinctiveness.

Conclusions

Quantity of Provision · The BBC proposes to increase the quantity of video produced over time. By the time of full launch in 2012/13, a maximum of 20 minutes of bespoke new video stories will be produced per area per day. An average of 6 minutes and 36 seconds was produced during the trial. The quantity of bespoke video, that is frequently updated, underpins the BBC commitment to providing a range and breadth of journalism across the UK · This is distinct from the majority of local newspapers analysed which produce short bulletins or a small number of video packages. Within our analysis, even the newspapers with the most advanced video content produce five minutes of content per day only occasionally. The BBC will be updated daily, unlike most of the local newspaper sites within the analysis · This is also a source of distinctiveness from the existing broadcaster-affiliated local video services which recycle video initially created for broadcast. The BBC will produce bespoke video for the online offering

Production Values · Content produced by the BBC will have ambitious production, evidenced by a high number of cuts per minute, video newsgathering on location, many interviews, complex post production and high visual appeal · Our analysis showed that the majority of local newspaper videos have lower production values, including lower cuts per minute and post production, so currently this is a source of distinctiveness. Recent trends suggest that this is likely to change in the future. Ambitious plans for local video, and the falling cost of editing and production facilities suggest local newspapers will produce videos with increasingly high production values. This may cease to be a source of distinctiveness in the future · Overall visual appeal is high for all broadcasters considered in this analysis. All of the broadcasters exhibit some complex post production but the BBC has a far higher proportion of complex packages (the BBC was committed to complex post production during the trial). Overall the BBC performs slightly better than other broadcasters based on the framework and the video packages considered during the analysis but this is not an important source of distinctiveness between the BBC video offering and alternatives.

Editorial Approach · The BBC intends to cover a range of story types: from serious, hard-hitting issues to local interest pieces delivered with an informal tone. Most coverage will be deep, in line with existing BBC news. Local democracy will be promoted through e.g. in-depth coverage of local elections, interviews with local politicians and representatives · Local newspaper videos that were analysed cover a similar story mix, but generally score lower in terms of depth of journalism (based on the definitions

given above). In-depth coverage and promotion of local democracy were less common in the local newspaper video packages viewed. These are sources of distinctiveness for the BBC. If there is seen to be consumer demand, local newspapers may increase depth of coverage or promotion of local democracy within their video offering in order to attract website traffic · Local services that are affiliated with broadcast channels tend to be similar to the BBC in range of stories, level of local democracy, and depth of coverage (it must be noted that broadcasters’ video content was recycled from television news bulletins and was not created for the website). This is not an important source of distinctiveness between existing broadcaster content and the BBC proposition.

Geographic Scope · The BBC Local Video area will target an average population of 928,000, ranging from London with 7.5m to island populations of less than 100,000. BBC Local Video will add a new tier of local video newsgathering, of increased local relevance, to its current news provision. BBC Local Video will be universal and will cater for licence fee payers across the whole of the UK. · The target population is distinctive from the populations targeted by the 1,303 local newspapers currently in circulation whose average target population is 230,700. The granularity of the BBC population will be distinctive in most cases, apart from in major urban / metropolitan areas where the target populations will overlap. BBC Local Video is also distinctive in that it is universally available across the UK – currently not all local newspaper websites, and thus not all areas of the UK, have local video available online. This is likely to change in the future as local newspapers further develop their online presence · The current ITV Local offering is focused on eleven “macro” regions, and an additional six sub-regions, in England and Wales. Each of these targets an average of 2.1m adults. The STV and UTV websites provide for Scotland and Northern Ireland and target slightly smaller regions (with populations of approximately 1.5m). Newsgathering occurs at the regional level. The BBC will introduce a new tier of local newsgathering, more local than the regional newsgathering offered by ITV. This will be a source of distinctiveness from ITV. ITV Local is organised into 67 more granular “Go Local” sections which appear to be in development and would target an average of 649,000 adults. This may present a concern for on-going distinctiveness; should ITV decide to anchor newsgathering around these 67 local areas, distinctiveness in England and Wales will be diminished.

User Generated Content · The BBC plans for UGC include assisting viewers to produce their own high quality videos · Many other sites provide a location for uploading UGC but none of those analysed – broadcast or local newspaper – provide production assistance. This is an important source of distinctiveness for the BBC. It also contributes to the BBC’s public purpose regarding the promotion of education and

learning and its media literacy remit.

Lack of advertising and commercial influence · BBC Local Video and the wider BBC Local websites will be free from advertising · Although advertising commonly surrounds the video frame on the sites analysed, the video packages on both broadcaster and local newspaper websites rarely have in-video advertising and only occasionally have messages from a sponsor. ITV Local (within news bulletins) and Belfast Telegraph have in-video messages from commercial sponsors; UTV has an advert of the sort seen on linear television. The BBC proposition differs from these services due to a lack of in-video advertising. For the other services, lack of advertising within the video package is not a source of distinctiveness yet. If the size of local video news audiences increases, commercial providers may sell advertising space within the packages, in which case, the BBC’s commitment to remaining ad-free will become a source of distinctiveness.

Third party relationships · The BBC proposes to include links to other local news providers around the video frame, to offer content to third party publishers for embedding on other sites (subject to appropriate terms and conditions) and to purchase content where appropriate from other producers · Rarely, sites in the analysis showed externally sourced video, including from the BBC but there was no evidence of active partnerships. This is distinct from the BBC trial material (which includes, for example, a run down of local newspaper headlines) and proposition

Appendix 1

Tables describing the six BBC trial offerings The assessment of the BBC offer is based on content produced during the BBC’s West Midlands trial in 2006. The content was made by six separate teams of video journalists working in each of the six local areas that constitute the West Midlands region. These areas mapped exactly onto existing BBC local radio broadcast areas and the Where I Live website areas. The six areas have different characteristics – three were largely rural (Hereford and Worcester, Shropshire and Staffordshire), one was mixed (Coventry and Warwickshire), and two were metropolitan (Black Country and Birmingham, both of which have high percentages of the population living in urban areas). Notwithstanding these differences, the areas were of a similar level of geographic granularity, were given the same resources and produced a similar quantity of content. This content can be taken as a representative sample of the BBC’s planned Local video offer. The proposal for which the BBC is seeking approval has evolved from that trialled in the West Midlands in terms of distribution: plans are now for a predominantly broadband offer. However, the editorial proposition remains constant.

Figure 16 Table describing the six BBC West Midlands trial offerings

Trial BBC Rural 1,052,000 Staffordshire BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 7:30 new mins per per mins new 7:30 from Ranging day. 10:10 to 4:18 per stories new 4.6 ave on ranging day day per 6 to 3 from average on 1:38 new of Uploading daily occurs material day the throughout mini- and Packages - NIBs bulletins content bespoke All studio the in 4% story per average 1.0 story per average 1.3 stories of 100% BBC contained footage range have Packages Some mix. media of text, music, include graphics, animated video as well as stills per cuts 11.2 of Ave 3.41 from Range min. 21.7 to 31% simple, 0% 69% intermediate, complex 14% low, 0% 86% and medium, high Trial BBC Rural 452,000 Shopshire BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 1:32 average 1:32 new of Uploading daily occurs material day the throughout mini- and Packages - NIBs bulletins content bespoke All studio the in 0% story per average 1.2 story per average 1.4 stories of 100% BBC contained footage range have Packages Some mix. media of text, music, include graphics, animated video as well as stills per cuts 12.3 of Ave to 5.1 from Range min. 23.8 28% simple, 0% 72% intermediate, complex medium, 16% low, 0% high 84% and 6:22 new mins per per mins new 6:22 from Ranging day. 9:26 to 2:55 per stories new 4.1 ave on ranging day day per 6 to 2 from Trial BBC Rural 734,000 Hereford and and Hereford Worcestershire BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 1:36 average 1:36 mini- and Packages - NIBs bulletins content bespoke All studio the in 5% story per average 1.3 stories of 100% BBC contained footage 6:53 new mins per per mins new 6:53 from Ranging day. 9:10 to 2:49 per stories new 4.3 ave on ranging day day per 6 to 3 from new of Uploading daily occurs material day the throughout story per average 1.5 range have Packages Some mix. media of text, music, include graphics, animated video as well as stills per cuts 10.4 of Aver to 1.3 from Range min. 24.2 24% simple, 0% 76% intermediate, complex medium, 13% low, 0% high 87% and BBC Trial Mixed 837,000 Coventry and and Coventry Warwickshire BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 1:44 average 1:44 new of Uploading daily occurs material day the throughout mini- and Packages - NIBs bulletins content bespoke All studio the in 12% story per average 1.2 story per average 1.3 stories of 100% BBC contained footage range have Packages Some mix. media of text, music, include graphics, animated video as well as stills medium, 22% low, 0% high 78% and 6:29 new mins per day day per mins new 6:29 Ranging average. on 8:03 to 4:58 from per stories new 4.6 ave on ranging day day per 5 to 4 from per cuts 12.3 of Ave to 4.3 from Range min. 28.0 44% simple, 0% 56% intermediate, complex Trial BBC Urban 1,083,000 Black Country Black BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 5:44 new mins per per mins new 5:44 from Ranging day. 10:19 to 1:54 per stories new 3.6 ave on ranging day day per 6 to 2 from average 1:37 new of Uploading daily occurs material day the throughout mini- and Packages - NIBs bulletins content bespoke All studio the in 1% story per average 1.3 story per average 1.2 stories of 100% BBC contained footage range have Packages Some mix. media of text, music, include graphics, animated video as well as stills per cuts 11.6 of Ave to 6.0 from Range min. 18.3 38% simple, 0% 44% and intermediate complex medium, 19% low, 0% high 81% and BBC Trial 1,198,000 Birmingham Metropolitan BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 100% of stories stories of 100% BBC contained footage range have Packages Some mix. media of text, music, include graphics, animated video as well as stills per cuts 13.5 of Ave 6.6 from Range min. 19.6 to 41% simple, 0% and intermediate complex 59% 17% low, 0% 83% and medium, high 7:13 new mins per per mins new 7:13 from Ranging day. 12:09 to 3:04 per stories new 4.1 ave on ranging day day per 6 to 2 from average 1:42 new of Uploading daily occurs material day the throughout mini- and Packages - NIBs bulletins content bespoke All studio the in 2% story per average 1.5 story per average 0.9 BBC Mixed 928,000 6 channels) 6 Trial AVERAGE Trial BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC West Mids (ave of the Mids (avethe West of 4.2 stories per day on on day per stories 4.2 to 3 from ave ranging day per 5 average 1:35 mini- and Packages - NIBs bulletins content bespoke All the in 4% of Average studio story per average 1.5 story per average 0.9 stories of 100% BBC contained footage range have Packages Some mix. media of text, music, include graphics, animated video as well as stills per cuts 11.8 of Ave 1.25 from Range min. 28 to 35% simple. 0% 65% intermediate. music, (with complex interviews", "walking treatment, colour changes) speed medium, 16% low, 0% high 84% 6:36 new mins per day day per mins new 6:36 Ranging average. on 8:40 to 3:55 from new of Uploading daily occurs material day the throughout Detail Ownership area Service pop’n Potential covered Type minutes new # day per per stories new # day length Average stories of of Frequency update - bulletin Format packages or - bespoke Video recycled or out / in Minutes studio of locations # interviews # which in stories # footage own mins total / used - mix text, Media audio, stills, graphics video, minute per Cuts production Post Overall of assessment appeal visual Production Production values Comparator Service information of Quantity provision

Figure 16 cont: Table describing the six BBC West Midlands trial offerings Trial BBC Rural 1,052,000 Staffordshire BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 16% politics; 56% 56% politics; 16% 3% issues; social 2% interest; human 22% sport; 2% crime; weather stories of 16% local promote democracy 83% low; 14% high 3% medium; Staffordshire – wide UK Proposed 07:24 proposition BBC assisted includes create to production videos viewers’ Community each in producers region None and BBC to links 13% in sites external stories of with material Shared Sport BBC footage of 13s 27-28 2005, Dec 1-4 2006 Apr 02 and Mar BBC Trial Rural 452,000 Shopshire BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 6% politics; 43% social social 43% politics; 6% human 0% issues; crime; 19% interest; 26% sport; 6% weather 83% low; 10% high 7% medium; Shropshire – wide UK Proposed 08:00 proposition BBC assisted includes create to production videos viewers’ producers Community region each in None and BBC to links 24% in sites external stories of None 27-28 2005, Dec 1-4 2006 Apr 02 and Mar 24% of stories stories of 24% local promote democracy BBC Trial Rural 734,000 Hereford and and Hereford Worcestershire BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 9% politics; 46% social social 46% politics; 9% human 5% issues; crime; 4% interest; 26% sport; 11% weather stories of 10% local promote democracy 64% low; 16% high 20% medium; and Hereford Worcestershire – wide UK Proposed 05:17 proposition BBC assisted includes create to production videos viewers’ producers Community region each in None with material Shared Sport BBC links to BBC and and BBC to links 37% in sites external stories of footage of 40s 27-28 2005, Dec 1-4 2006 Apr 02 and Mar BBC Trial Mixed 837,000 Warwickshire Coventry and and Coventry BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 3% of stories promote promote stories of 3% democracy local 69% low; 25% high 6% medium; and Coventry Warwickshire – wide UK Proposed 01:45 proposition BBC assisted includes create to production videos viewers’ producers Community region each in None 8% politics; 40% social social 40% politics; 8% human 4% issues; crime; 0% interest; 31% sport; 17% weather and BBC to links 22% in sites external stories of None 27-28 2005, Dec 1-4 2006 Apr 02 and Mar Trial BBC Urban 1,083,000 Black Country Black BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 4% politics; 41% social social 41% politics; 4% human 7% issues; crime; 5% interest; 25% sport; 18% weather stories of 12% local promote democracy 64% low; 16% high 20% medium; Country Black – wide UK Proposed 03:10 proposition BBC assisted includes create to production videos viewers’ producers Community region each in None and BBC to links 20% in sites external stories of None 27-28 2005, Dec 1-4 2006 Apr 02 and Mar BBC Trial 1,198,000 Birmingham Metropolitan BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC 9% politics; 44% 44% politics; 9% 5% issues; social 6% interest; human sport; 10% crime; weather 26% stories of 17% local promote democracy 69% low; 10% high 21% medium; Birmingham – wide UK Proposed 05:18 proposition BBC assisted includes create to production videos viewers’ Community each in producers region None and BBC to links 21% in sites external stories of None 27-28 2005, Dec 1-4 2006 Apr 02 and Mar BBC Mixed 928,000 6 channels) 6 Trial AVERAGE Trial BBC West Midlands Midlands West BBC West Mids (ave of the Midsthe (ave of West Community producers producers Community region each in with material Shared Sport BBC 10% politics; 43% 43% politics; 10% 10% issues; social 3% interest; human 25% sport; 10% crime; weather stories of 14% local promote democracy 73% low; 13% high 14% medium; Midlands West – wide UK Proposed 04:08 proposition BBC assisted includes create to production videos viewers’ None and BBC to links 22% in sites external stories of on 30s of instances 2 average 27-28 2005, Dec 1-4 2006 Apr 02 and Mar Detail Local democracy Local of Depth coverage by covered Area service of Universality services of set # much: How ave. minutes, duration it? is What Description Assistance to provided produce? video In advertising links video In Externally – video sourced description Externally – video sourced length 2005, Dec 1-4 02 & Mar 27-28 2006 Apr Ownership area Service pop’n Potential covered Type and mix Story covered topics social (politics, human issues, crime, interest, weather, sport, community) Comparator Service information Editorial approach Geographic scope User Generated Content Advertising party Third relationships Dates analysed

Appendix 2

Tables comparing BBC and alternative providers For the BBC, six trial offerings were analysed as described in Appendix 1. For clarity when comparing to other services, we have combined the six offerings and describe only typical BBC West Midlands content.

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to Liverpool Echo Figure 17 Table comparing the Liverpool Echo with an average of the BBC trial output from the six offer areas Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Liverpool Echo Ownership BBC Trinity Mirror Service area Six locations in West Midlands Liverpool Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 436,100 covered Type Mixed Metropolitan # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 1:22 new minutes per day on day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 average. Ranging from 0:33 to 6:56 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 0.7 stories per day on average day ranging from 3 to 5 per day ranging from 0 to 3 per day Average length of 1:35 average 1:54 average Quantity of stories provision Uploading of new material occurs Uploading is irregular - average is Frequency of update daily throughout the day roughly once every other day Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Video - bespoke or All bespoke content All bespoke content recycled Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio All out of studio studio 1.5 average per story. Ranges # locations 1.5 average per story between 0 and 2 # people interviews 0.9 average per story 1 average per story # stories in which 100% of stories contained own 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / video; one also contained clip from video total mins BBC Three's "Trauma" Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. Packages have simple video with Production stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated basic text and out-of-vision audio values graphics graphics, stills as well as video Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. Average of 6.8 cuts per minute. Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 Range from <1 to 14.5 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% 80% simple. 20% intermediate due complex (with music, "walking Post production to text on screen, simple interviews interviews", colour treatment, speed and shots of location changes) 90% low (typically a simple video Overall assessment 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high with simple text overlay) 10% of visual appeal medium Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; 0% politics; 20% news; 20% social issues, 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% community; 30% human interest; human interest, sport; 25% weather 10% crime; 20% social interest Editorial crime, sport, approach weather, community) 14% of stories promote local 10% of stories promote local Local democracy democracy democracy Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high 100% low How much? 4:08 in total No UGC BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create n/a Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce n/a location / moderate?

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Liverpool Echo Advertising In video advertising None None Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None 22% of stories Third party Externally sourced BBC clip of local hospital in Shared material with BBC Sport relationships video – description "Trauma" Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average 3:32 of external content video – length Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March 2006 1-13 Feb 2008 analysed and 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to The Yorkshire Post Figure 18 Table comparing the Yorkshire Post with an average of the BBC trial output from the six areas Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial The Yorkshire Post Ownership BBC Johnston Press Service area Six locations in West Midlands Leeds Service Potential population information 928,000 (proposed average) 750,200 covered Type Mixed Urban # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 2:07 new minutes per day on day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 average. Ranging from 0 to 4:50 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 0.5 stories per day on average day ranging from 3 to 5 per day Average length of 1:35 average 2:30 average Quantity of stories provision Uploading of new material occurs Sporadically updated - roughly every Frequency of update daily throughout the day other day Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Video - bespoke or All bespoke content All bespoke content recycled 40% of stories out of studio; 60% in Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio studio (Sin Bin and Boot Room studio features) # locations 1.5 average per story 1.2 average per story. Usually 1 or 2 # people interviews 0.9 average per story 3 average per story # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / 100% of stories use own video video total mins Each package has a 5 second Production Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. graphic intro with music - clean values stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated video, often well cut with music, graphics graphics, stills as well as video voiceover, texts overlay, and on one occasion sound effects Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. Average of 1.6 cuts per minute. Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 Range 0 to 5.5 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% complex (with music, "walking 40% simple. 60% intermediate due Post production interviews", colour treatment, speed to graphics, music and text changes) Overall assessment 100% medium (clean and crisp 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high of visual appeal visuals, well cut and coordinated) Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; social issues, 0% politics; 20% social issues; 20% 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% human interest, crime; 60% sport Editorial sport; 25% weather crime, sport, approach weather, community) 14% of stories promote local 0% of stories promote local Local democracy democracy democracy Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high 100% low How much? 4:08 in total No UGC BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create n/a Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce n/a location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None None Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None 22% of stories Third party Externally sourced Shared material with BBC Sport None relationships video – description Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average None video – length

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial The Yorkshire Post Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and 10 - 16 Feb 2008 analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to Eastern Daily Press Figure 19 Table comparing the Eastern Daily Press with an average of the BBC trial output from the six offer areas Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Eastern Daily Press Ownership BBC Archant Service area Six locations in West Midlands Norfolk Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 832,400 covered Type Mixed Rural # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 1:35 new minutes per week on day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 average # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average Roughly one new story per week day ranging from 3 to 5 per day Average length of 1:35 average 1:35 on average Quantity of stories provision Uploading of new material occurs Updates are sporadic and infrequent Frequency of update daily throughout the day - roughly once per week Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Video - bespoke or All bespoke content All bespoke content recycled Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio All out of studio studio 1.3 average per story. Ranges # locations 1.5 average per story between 0 and 3 # people interviews 0.9 average per story 0.7 average per story # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / 33% of stories video total mins Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. Production Packages are simple stills, video stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated values and text graphics graphics, stills as well as video Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. Cuts per minute Average of 6.8 cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% 50% simple; 50% intermediate due complex (with music, "walking Post production to multiple locations and a well-cut interviews", colour treatment, speed interview changes) Overall assessment 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high 100% low of visual appeal Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; social issues, 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% 50% human interest; 50% crime human interest, sport; 25% weather Editorial crime, sport, approach weather, community) 14% of stories promote local 0% of stories promote local Local democracy democracy democracy Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high 100% low How much? 4:08 in total One clip BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create Slide show of photos Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce None location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None None Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None 22% of stories Third party Externally sourced Shared material with BBC Sport BBC content sourced from YouTube relationships video – description Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average 1:30 of external content video – length Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and 31 Jan - 14 Feb 2008 analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to the Manchester Evening News Figure 20 Table comparing the Manchester Evening News with an average of the BBC trial output from the six offer areas Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Manchester Evening News Ownership BBC GMG Service area Six locations in West Midlands Greater Manchester Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 2,553,800 covered Type Mixed Metropolitan # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 5:37 new minutes per day on day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 average. Ranging from 0 to 12:55 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 2.7 stories per day on average day ranging from 3 to 5 per day ranging from 0 to 7 per day Average length of 1:35 average 2:04 on average stories Quantity of Uploading of new material occurs Available video is usually updated provision Frequency of update daily throughout the day daily Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Largely recycled from Channel M Video - bespoke or All bespoke content with some additional bespoke recycled content Minutes in / out of 74% of stories out of studio, 16% in Average of 4% in the studio studio studio (traffic information) 1.5 average per story. Ranges # locations 1.5 average per story between 0 to 4 2.7 average per story. Ranges # people interviews 0.9 average per story between 0 to 8 # stories in which 11% of stories produced by M.E.N.; 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / 84% produced by Channel M; 5% video total mins BBC video Packages are typically in and out-of- Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. screen audio, with video in studio or Production stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated from relevant locations, with text and values graphics graphics, stills as well as video occasionally graphics Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. Average of 8.0 cuts per minute. Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 Range 0 to 20 cuts per minute 22% simple (reporter to camera); 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% 67% intermediate (from relevant complex (with music, "walking location i.e. newsgathering Post production interviews", colour treatment, speed capability, interviews, text); 11% changes) complex (graphics, video framing within screen and colour effects) Overall assessment 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high 11% low; 6% medium; 83% high of visual appeal Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; 17% politics; 22% social issues; social issues, 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% 11% travel; 11% crime; 39% human human interest, sport; 25% weather interest crime, sport, Editorial weather, community) approach 14% of stories promote local 44% of stories promote local Local democracy democracy democracy 56% are low; 33% are medium and 11% are high (including interviews Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high with experts, statistics and the story history) How much? 4:08 in total None BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create n/a Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce n/a location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None None Third party Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None relationships 22% of stories

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Manchester Evening News Externally sourced BBC Crimewatch video; video from Shared material with BBC Sport video – description Channel M Of 39:20 analysed; 29:26 was sourced directly from Channel M. Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average 1:52 was BBC content and the video – length remaining 8:02 was M.E.N. produced

Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and th st 15 - 21 Feb 2008 analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to Newbury Today Figure 21 Table comparing the Newbury Today with an average of the BBC trial output from the six offer areas Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Newbury Today Ownership BBC Newbury weekly news group Service area Six locations in West Midlands Newbury Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 24,000 covered Type Mixed Mixed 3:00 new minutes per day on # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on average. Ranging from 0 to 9:33. No day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 new content at weekends # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 4.5 stories per day. Ranging from 0 day ranging from 3 to 5 per day to 5 Average length of 1:35 average 0:25 on average Quantity of stories provision Bulletins are updated daily at 1pm Uploading of new material occurs Frequency of update on Monday to Friday. Package daily throughout the day update is sporadic Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Video - bespoke or All bespoke content All bespoke content recycled Minutes in / out of 94% of bulletin is in studio, 100% of Average of 4% in the studio studio packages are out of studio Less than one location per story # locations 1.5 average per story (average 0.7 per story) Less than one interview per story # people interviews 0.9 average per story (average 0.5 per story) # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC 12% of bulletins and 100% of own video used / video packages contained own video total mins Production Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. Packages are typically reporter-to- values stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated camera, in studio, with text overlay graphics graphics, stills as well as video and illustrative still photo Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. Average of 1.0 cuts per minute. Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 Range 0 to 1.3 cuts per minute 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% 67% simple (reporter to camera); complex (with music, "walking 33% intermediate (bulletin included Post production interviews", colour treatment, speed short video from on location changes) newsgathering and interviews) Overall assessment 100% low (very simple presentation, 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high of visual appeal low definition, no visual interest) Story mix and topics covered (politics, 13% politics; 23% social issues; 10% politics; 43% social issues; social issues, 23% human interest; 17% sport; 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% human interest, 13% crime; 3% traffic; 3% sport; 25% weather Editorial crime, sport, community approach weather, community) 14% of stories promote local 3% of stories promote local Local democracy democracy democracy Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high 100% low How much? 4:08 in total None BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create n/a Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce n/a location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None None Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None 22% of stories Third party Externally sourced Shared material with BBC Sport None relationships video – description Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average None video – length

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Newbury Today

Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and th nd 14 - 22 Feb 2008 analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to the Belfast Telegraph Figure 22 Table comparing the Belfast Telegraph with an average of the BBC trial output from the six offer areas Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Belfast Telegraph Ownership BBC Independent News and Media NI Service area Six locations in West Midlands Belfast Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 85,000 covered Type Mixed Metropolitan # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 11:23 new minutes per day on day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 average. Ranging from9:31 to 13:37 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 25.8 new stories per day on day ranging from 3 to 5 per day average. Ranging from 24 to 29 Average length of 26s on average. Ranging from 10s 1:35 average Quantity of stories to 1:13 provision Uploading of new material occurs Frequency of update Sporadic, Mon to Fri only daily throughout the day Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Video - bespoke or All bespoke content All bespoke content recycled Video from MacMillan Media used Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio for all but 1 story, 0:40 out, 56:18 in studio studio 0.008 average (only one story shows # locations 1.5 average per story evidence of on location newsgathering) # people interviews 0.9 average per story 0 # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / 1 story, 0:40 video total mins Production intro graphics on each bulletin, then Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. values reporter in studio speaking over stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated brought in video or to camera, text graphics graphics, stills as well as video overlays added and editing of video Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. Average of 7.5 cuts per minute. Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 Ranging from 0 to 18 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% 100% simple - editing of video, text complex (with music, "walking Post production overlay (intro is complex but reused interviews", colour treatment, speed for each bulletin) changes) Overall assessment 100% high – bright, professional, in 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high of visual appeal focus – of TV quality Story mix and topics covered (politics, 15% crime, 22% politics, 20% 10% politics; 43% social issues; social issues, human interest, 19% social issues, 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% human interest, 16% weather, 7% sport, 1% sport; 25% weather crime, sport, community Editorial weather, community) approach .05% involvement in story from local 14% of stories promote local Local democracy politicians (a lot of the politics is democracy national rather than local) Overall depth tends towards low, Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high only 14% include interviews How much? 4:08 in total None BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create n/a Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce n/a location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None Sponsors for weather and sport Third party Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None relationships 22% of stories Externally sourced Shared material with BBC Sport All video bar 40s video – description

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Belfast Telegraph Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average See above video – length Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and 18-22 Feb, 5 days analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to the South Wales Argus Figure 23 Table comparing the South Wales Argus with an average of the BBC trial output from the six offer areas Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial South Wales Argus Ownership BBC Newsquest Service area Six locations in West Midlands Newport Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 29,000 covered Type Mixed Mixed # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 0:30 new minutes per day. Ranging day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 from 0 to 2:25 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 0.25 new stories per day. Ranging day ranging from 3 to 5 per day from 0 to 1 Average length of 02:03 on average. Ranging from 1:35 average Quantity of stories 1:27 to 2:25 provision Uploading of new material occurs Frequency of update Sporadic daily throughout the day Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Video - bespoke or All bespoke content All bespoke content recycled Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio 6:09 out (100%) studio # locations 1.5 average per story 1 location per story # people interviews 0.9 average per story 6.3 per story # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / 3 stories (100%), total 6:09 video total mins Typical story involves on location Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. news gathering with simple shots stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated Production and basic text on screen (stills at graphics graphics, stills as well as video values beginning and end, overlay) Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. Average of 3.8 cuts per minute. Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 Ranging from 3.3 to 4.6 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% complex (with music, "walking 100% intermediate - on location Post production interviews", colour treatment, speed newsgathering, text on screen changes) Variable but overall medium - not Overall assessment 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high professional, but some good shots of visual appeal and in focus. 33% low 67% medium Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; social issues, 33% human interest, 67% local 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% human interest, politics sport; 25% weather crime, sport, Editorial weather, community) approach 14% of stories promote local 67% - locals voice disappointment Local democracy democracy over closure of leisure centre 100% medium - interviews with Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high locals but not with "experts", little background given How much? 4:08 in total None BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create n/a Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce n/a location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None None Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None 22% of stories Third party Externally sourced Shared material with BBC Sport None relationships video – description Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average None video – length

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial South Wales Argus Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and 14-25 Feb, 12 days analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to The Herald Figure 24 Table comparing the Glasgow Herald an average of the BBC trial output from the six offer areas Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial The Herald Ownership BBC Newsquest Service area Six locations in West Midlands Glasgow Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 80,000 covered Type Mixed Metropolitan # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on Average of 1:11 new minutes per day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 day. Ranging from 0 to 2:27 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 0.7 new stories per day. Ranging day ranging from 3 to 5 per day from 0 to 1 Average length of 01:41 on average. Ranging from 1:35 average Quantity of stories 0:30 to 2:27 provision Uploading of new material occurs Frequency of update Sporadic, Mon to Fri only daily throughout the day Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Video - bespoke or All bespoke content All bespoke content recycled Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio 9:24 out (100%) studio 1.3 locations average per story. # locations 1.5 average per story Ranging between 1 and 3 1.4 average per story. Ranging # people interviews 0.9 average per story between 0 and 5 # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / 6 stories, 9:24 video total mins A typical package has evidence of on location newsgathering, with Production Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. reporter present but off camera, and values stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated includes interviews with relevant graphics graphics, stills as well as video people. Text overlay is always present e.g. with location, some post prod complexity in 2 stories Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. Average of 7.3 cuts per minute. Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 Ranging from 1 to 15.8 Majority (67%) of stories have 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% intermediate post production, most complex (with music, "walking Post production are edited, some with fade, one interviews", colour treatment, speed includes speeded up video (complex changes) 17%) Overall assessment 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high 100% medium of visual appeal Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; social issues, 71% social issues, 14% human 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% human interest, interest, 14% politics sport; 25% weather crime, sport, Editorial weather, community) approach 14% of stories promote local Local democracy 0 democracy 86% medium - interview locals but not "experts", light background story Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high given. 14% low - no interviews, no background How much? 4:08 in total None BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create None Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce None location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None None

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial The Herald Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None 22% of stories Third party Externally sourced 3D graphic video of nuclear power Shared material with BBC Sport relationships video – description station Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average 0 video – length Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and 4-8 and 18-22 Feb, 10 days analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to the Hull Daily Mail Figure 25 Table comparing the Hull Daily Mail with an average of the output from the six BBC trial offerings

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Hull Daily Mail Ownership BBC Northcliffe Service area Six locations in West Midlands Hull and East Riding Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 60,000 covered Type Mixed Urban # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 1:33 new minutes per day on day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 average. Ranging from 1:11 to 8:58 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 2 new stories per day on average. day ranging from 3 to 5 per day Ranging from 0 to 11 Average length of 1:35 average 0:23 on average Quantity of stories provision Uploading of new material occurs Uploading is sporadic; on average Frequency of update daily throughout the day every other day Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Video - bespoke or All bespoke content All bespoke content recycled Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio All in studio studio 0.33 average per story. Ranges from # locations 1.5 average per story 0 to 1 # people interviews 0.9 average per story 0.1 per story. Ranging from 0 to 4 # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / 100% own video within studio video total mins Bulletin has animated/graphical Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. Production titles; clips and bulletins use text stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated values overlay, stills. Some clips have intro graphics graphics, stills as well as video graphics Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. Average of 11.6 cuts per minute. Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 Range between 8.9 and 14.7 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% 17% intermediate, 83% simple (but complex (with music, "walking Post production bulletins have intro and exit interviews", colour treatment, speed graphics) changes) Overall assessment 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high 100% low of visual appeal Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; 25% social issues, 13% crime, 38% social issues, 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% sport, 21% community, 4% human human interest, Editorial sport; 25% weather interest crime, sport, approach weather, community) 14% of stories promote local Local democracy No local democracy democracy Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high 100% low How much? 4:08 in total None BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create n/a Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce n/a location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None None Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None 22% of stories Third party Externally sourced Shared material with BBC Sport None relationships video – description Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average None video – length

Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and th th 15 - 26 Feb 2008 analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to ITV Local ITV Meridian was chosen as the region for analysis. Development of ITV Local began with trials of ITV Brighton and ITV Hastings, in the Meridian region, in 2005. We assume therefore that these are the most advanced sites. ITV Local Meridian is subdivided into three sub-regions: South, South East and Thames Valley sub- regions. In the analysis below we consider the content available for the Meridian region as a whole i.e. all three sub-regions.

Figure 26: Table comparing the average of the three ITV Local Meridian sub-regional services with an average of the output from the six BBC trial offerings

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial ITV Local Ownership BBC ITV Service area Six locations in West Midlands South and South East England Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 5.6 million covered Type Mixed Mixed (regional) # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 25:24 new per day. Ranging from day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 6:36 to 40:48 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 20.5 new stories per day. Ranging day ranging from 3 to 5 per day from 3 to 32 Average length of 01:14 on average. Ranging from 8s 1:35 average stories to 6:36 Quantity of Bulletins 4 times a day for 3 regions Uploading of new material occurs provision Frequency of update plus sporadic packages, 7 days a daily throughout the day week Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Content appears to have been Video - bespoke or All bespoke content recorded for TV broadcast and recycled recycled online Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio 297:16 out, 235:16 in studio # locations 1.5 average per story 1.1 per story # people interviews 0.9 average per story 0.8 per story # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / Nearly 100% of stories video total mins Three types of story: simple in which presenters speak over video or stills, Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. medium in which they visit a location stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated and interview 1-3 people, usually graphics graphics, stills as well as video locals, and high which are reports Production with their own titles, last about 5 values mins and include complex effects Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. 5.1 on average. Ranging from 0 to Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 30 Ranges from simple - speaking over GVs and stills, to intermediate - includes specially filmed shots of 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% location, to complex - animated complex (with music, "walking Post production graphics, special effects. interviews", colour treatment, speed Intermediate is by far the most changes) common but complex is not unusual at all. Simple 29%, intermediate 53%, complex 18% Overall assessment Looks good online, even in full 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high of visual appeal screen version Story mix and topics covered (politics, 15% crime, 21% social issues, 16% 10% politics; 43% social issues; Editorial social issues, human interest, 9% politics, 18% 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% approach human interest, weather & travel, 15% sport, 6% sport; 25% weather crime, sport, community weather, community)

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial ITV Local 7% of stories count as local democracy - interviews with MPs are 14% of stories promote local Local democracy not uncommon and stories often democracy give locals a chance to state their points of view 56% low (but using own video - Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high news in brief), 36% medium, 8% high How much? 4:08 in total 115 seconds BBC proposition includes BBC Video of events that are being What is it? User assisted production to create reported e.g. traffic jam, air Description Generated viewers’ videos ambulance Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce None location / moderate? Sponsor before weather on every Advertising In video advertising None bulletin Links to BBC and external sites in In video links 25 links given 22% of stories Mostly in sport, from BBC, Ch4, Third party Externally sourced other parts of ITV (championship Shared material with BBC Sport relationships video – description football, F1), some library pictures, coastguard video Externally sourced No more than 15 mins (2.8%) in total 2 instances of 30s on average video – length (mostly championship football) Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and 6-12 March, 7 days analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to Channel M Figure 27: Table comparing Channel M with an average of the output from the six BBC trial offerings

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial Channel M Ownership BBC GMG Service area Six locations in West Midlands Greater Manchester Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 2.6million covered Type Mixed Metropolitan # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 17:33 new minutes per day. Ranging day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 from 0 to 52:58 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 7.1 new stories per day. Ranging day ranging from 3 to 5 per day from 0 to 17 Average length of 2:30 on average. Ranging from 0:30 1:35 average stories to 23:59 Quantity of Uploading of new material occurs provision Frequency of update Sporadic daily throughout the day Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Content appears to have been Video - bespoke or All bespoke content recorded for TV broadcast and recycled recycled online Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio 8 mins in, 114:45 out studio # locations 1.5 average per story 1.5 average per story # people interviews 0.9 average per story 2.9 average per story # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / All own, 122:45 video total mins Typical story involves on location Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. newsgathering with several Production stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated interviews, text overlay and quite values graphics graphics, stills as well as video often sophisticated post production Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. 9.36 average. Ranging from 1.82 to Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 22.8 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% complex (with music, "walking 14% complex, 80% intermediate, 6% Post production interviews", colour treatment, speed simple changes) Overall assessment 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high 100% high of visual appeal Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; 6% politics, 32% social issues, 40% social issues, 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% human interest, 10% crime, 4% human interest, Editorial sport; 25% weather community, 8% sport crime, sport, approach weather, community) 14% of stories promote local Local democracy 18% have local democracy democracy Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high 12% high, 27% medium, 61% low How much? 4:08 in total None BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create None Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce None location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None None Links to BBC and external sites in In video links 4 links 22% of stories Third party Externally sourced Shared material with BBC Sport Some archive and CCTV video relationships video – description Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average 2 or 3 minutes across period video – length Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and 28th Feb - 4th March 2008 analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to STV Figure 28 Table comparing STV with an average of the output from the six BBC trial offerings

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial STV Ownership BBC STV Service area Six locations in West Midlands Scotland Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 4.5 million covered Type Mixed Mixed (national) # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 28:12 new per day. Ranging from day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 11:14 to 50:27 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 13.8 new stories per day. Ranging day ranging from 3 to 5 per day from 1 to 26 Average length of 1:48 on average. Ranging from 0:15 1:35 average stories to 23:59 Quantity of Uploading of new material occurs 2 bulletins plus packages Mon to Fri provision Frequency of update daily throughout the day plus packages at weekends Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Content appears to have been Video - bespoke or All bespoke content recorded for TV broadcast and recycled recycled online Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio 166:02 out, 59:37 in studio # locations 1.5 average per story 1 per story # people interviews 0.9 average per story 0.7 average per story # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC 125 - all own (bulletin and packages own video used / video taken from TV video) total mins As TV news, tends to start in studio then be passed an on location news- gatherer, although sometimes use Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. stills if not video. Many stories have stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated relevant location, text overlay Production graphics graphics, stills as well as video values common, large amounts of editing, packages are taken from bulletins but sometimes a bit longer Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. 3.0 on average. Ranging from 0 to Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 15 From simple to complex, but most of 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% the time intermediate – news- complex (with music, "walking gatherers are on location, text Post production interviews", colour treatment, speed overlay, nothing very fancy. 8% changes) simple, 80% intermediate, 12% complex Overall assessment 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high 100% high of visual appeal Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; 10% crime, 10% politics, 5% social social issues, 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% issues, 26% human interest, 4% human interest, sport; 25% weather community, 39% sport, 6% weather crime, sport, Editorial weather, community) approach 16% local democracy - involving people with local political issues 14% of stories promote local Local democracy such as school closures and democracy interviewing MPs or explaining the govt's argument Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high 28% low, 36% medium, 36% high How much? 4:08 in total None BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create n/a Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce n/a location / moderate? Advertising In video advertising None None

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial STV Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None 22% of stories Third party Externally sourced Some sport? but very difficult to Shared material with BBC Sport relationships video – description judge how much as not stated Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average None video – length Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and 18-25 Feb, 8 days analysed 02 Apr 2006

BBC West Midlands Trial compared to UTV Figure 29 Table comparing UTV with an average of the output from the six BBC trial offerings

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial UTV Ownership BBC UTV Service area Six locations in West Midlands Northern Ireland Information Potential population 928,000 (proposed average) 1.6 million covered Type Mixed Mixed (national) # new minutes per 6:36 new minutes per day on 18:37 new minutes per day. Ranging day average. Ranging from 3:55 to 8:40 from 3:30 to 23:25 # new stories per 4.2 stories per day on average 9.6 new stories per day. Ranging day ranging from 3 to 5 per day from 2 to 15 Average length of 1:56 on average. Ranging from 0:13 1:35 average stories to 5:10 Quantity of Uploading of new material occurs provision Frequency of update 1 per day, Mon to Fri daily throughout the day Format - bulletin or Packages and mini-bulletins - NIBs Packages packages Content appears to have been Video - bespoke or All bespoke content recorded for TV broadcast and recycled recycled online Minutes in / out of Average of 4% in the studio 74:07 out, 19:02 in studio # locations 1.5 average per story 1.4 average per story # people interviews 0.9 average per story 1.5 average per story # stories in which 100% of stories contained BBC own video used / 45, 74:07 video total mins As TV news (this is taken directly Media mix - text, Packages have range of media mix. from TV) - story begins with intro in Production stills, audio, video, Some include music, text, animated studio then moves to location with values graphics graphics, stills as well as video reporter, heavily edited with stills, interviews, text overlays Average of 11.8 cuts per minute. 5.36 on average. Ranging from 1 to Cuts per minute Range from 1.25 to 28 12 0% simple. 35% intermediate. 65% All ranges from story in studio with a complex (with music, "walking still to complex stories involving Post production interviews", colour treatment, speed graphics, maps, slow motion. 11% changes) simple, 81% intermediate, 8% high 100% medium. Poor quality Overall assessment 0% low, 16% medium, 84% high playback contributes to medium of visual appeal overall visual appeal Story mix and topics covered (politics, 10% politics; 43% social issues; social issues, 22% politics, 22% social issues, 3% 10% human interest; 3% crime; 10% human interest, community, 24% sport, 17% crime sport; 25% weather crime, sport, weather, community) Editorial 29% address local democracy (common on UTV) - mainly approach 14% of stories promote local Local democracy interviews with MPs, addressing democracy political issues such as education with locals and politicians Ranges from low 25% (just with a still in studio) to high 44% (special Depth of coverage 13% low; 73% medium; 14% high report with many interviews), leaving medium 31% How much? 4:08 in total None BBC proposition includes BBC What is it? User assisted production to create n/a Description Generated viewers’ videos Content What assistance Community producers in each provided to produce n/a location / moderate? Ad between news and sport in ever Advertising In video advertising None bulletin

Comparator Detail BBC West Midlands Trial UTV Links to BBC and external sites in In video links None 22% of stories Perhaps some sport Video but very Third party Externally sourced Shared material with BBC Sport difficult to judge how much as not relationships video – description stated Externally sourced 2 instances of 30s on average None video – length Dates 1-4 Dec 2005, 27-28 March2006 and 18-22 Feb, 5 days analysed 02 Apr 2006

Appendix 3

Alternative providers descriptions

Liverpool Echo The Liverpool Echo online video news is a separate offering to its text and pictures articles.

A new video package is put on the site almost daily, with 10 stories over the 14 day period analysed in February 2008 with none on some days and up to 3 on others. The average length of the packages is about 2 minutes and they are single story packages rather than multiple story bulletins.

The packages are generally quite simple in terms of media; containing simple video with occasional simple text and voiceovers. The post production is intermediate level with occasional interviews and text on screen. The packages are mostly filmed at a single location, never in a studio.

The content of the video is mostly quite simple, covering community and social issues or events, rather than politics or analysis. There is no user-generated content, but there was a clip containing BBC video from the BBC3 show “Trauma”.

Figure 30: Screen grab of Liverpool Echo

Yorkshire Post The Yorkshire Post online video news is embedded within its text and pictures articles.

A new video package is put on the site about every second day, with none on some

days and up to 2 on others. The average length of the packages is about 2:30 minutes and they are single story packages rather than multiple story bulletins.

Each package has a 5 second graphic intro with music. The video is clean, often well cut with music, voiceover, text overlay, and even on one occasion sound effects. The post production is intermediate to high level with well coordinated cuts with interviews and voice over video. The packages are mostly filmed at a single location (sometimes 2), never in a studio apart from the sports bulletins: The Sin Bin (rugby league) and The Boot Room (football).

The content of the video is mostly quite simple, covering community and social issues, crime or events, rather than politics or analysis.

There is no user-generated content, or externally sourced video.

Eastern Daily Press The EDP’s video news content comes alongside a text article concerning the same news story.

It is not a regularly updated service, with 6 news videos in January and 2 in February 2008. The videos consist of single news stories which are all filmed out of studio, as opposed to studio based bulletins with multiple stories.

The packages are quite short, averaging one and a half minutes. The quality of the videos varies significantly. Some packages are cut in a reasonably professional manner, cutting between two simultaneously filming cameras; others are very basic, with one being a picture slideshow with music. There was also an embedded YouTube package in February, which contained BBC video of a local hospital news story.

The subject content of the packages is not particularly sophisticated, mostly about local human interest or social stories. There was no evidence of user-generated content.

Manchester Evening News The Manchester Evening News sources the majority of its content from its sister venture; broadcaster Channel M. Only a small percentage of its videos are self- produced specifically for manchestereveningnews.co.uk. The result is that videos are of a very high production quality.

A great deal of content can be accessed in the video pages of the site. Almost 1,000 video packages are available to view in archives from seven months (Sep 2007 to March 2008). Updates usually occur daily with an average of 5:37 minutes of new content each day.

Since most of the content is sourced from Channel M, the production values and editorial approach is the same. In other words, levels of post production and visual appeal are high, a full range of topics are covered and local democracy is very often promoted. The subject matter of the video content tends to be social issues and local

democracy. Members of the community are often interviewed and there a number of locations feature in each video package.

Newbury Today The Newbury Today website is run in conjunction with the Newbury Weekly News. Video content is available both as bulletins and packages. Daily news bulletins are uploaded each weekday at 1pm. The bulletin is between one and a half and three minutes long (2:03 on average) and each contains five stories. Our analysis considered the five bulletins that were uploaded during the period 14th to 20th February 2008. Hundreds of archived video packages are also available to view on the site (825 are available on 13th March 2008) and can be accessed via the “Video News” or the “More video stories” buttons in the left hand menu. New packages are uploaded intermittently: there are up to three new packages per day and an average of six new video packages per week.

Bulletins consist of a reporter reading to camera and are recorded in a newsroom. Each story is illustrated by a still photo in the top left corner of the frame and occasionally by a video clip (Figure 31). In cases where a video piece is displayed, the reporter’s audio continues out-of-vision. During the week analysed five bulletins were uploaded to the site, telling a total of 25 stories. During four of these stories, the shot cut from the presenter to show a related video piece. In all but one of these video pieces, the audio stream remained with the out-of-vision reporter (one played interview footage).

Figure 31: The daily bulletin on Newbury Today.

The overall visual appeal of the bulletins is low. The bulletins consist of a reporter-to- camera and show little evidence of any editing or post-production. The definition and image quality is low, the colour balance is poor and the style feels rather amateur. The packages are better constructed: there is evidence of editing – a number of cuts between shots and in and out-of-vision shots – and there is an intermediate level of

post-production with interviews and text on screen. There is evidence of on location video newsgathering.

In all cases, the depth of coverage is low without supporting information or evidence of investigative journalism.

Belfast Telegraph The Belfast Telegraph is owned by Independent News and Media and covers the whole of Northern Ireland. It does not split the region into smaller sub-regions. The website offers four bulletins each weekday, breakfast, morning, lunch and evening. Each bulletin is 2m 30s to 3mins long. The stories within the bulletins tend to be short, often only 20s long (average 43s).

The bulletins take the format of a presenter in a studio speaking over video and stills. Extremely little of the video is filmed by the Belfast Telegraph itself, virtually all of it belongs to a third party. Thus the depth of coverage is low, as few interviews are shown and there is almost no on location video newsgathering.

The bulletin is introduced with professional looking titles, and the studio from which it is presented is of TV news studio quality in terms of appearance. All of the video is well edited. This has led to the Belfast Telegraph video having a high visual appeal.

As a consequence of covering Northern Ireland there is a high instance of politics in the story mix (this is also true for the other Northern Irish service, UTV).

South Wales Argus The South Wales Argus is a daily newspaper published in the city of Newport by Newsquest. There is a limited amount of video available on the site. The video content consists of packages that are uploaded sporadically. The average length of the packages is 2m 05s. Only a couple of videos are uploaded each week. All of the content is made by the newspaper and all of it shows on location newsgathering.

The subject matter of the video content tends to be social issues and local democracy. Often quite a few locals are interviewed in a “vox pop” style.

The post production quality of these packages is somewhat variable. All have text stills at the beginning of the package. Some include media such as text overlays, and are quite professionally shot, whereas others are simply made by interviewing people in a parking lot and then very simply editing together the interviews.

The visual appeal is as variable as the post production quality of the packages. The more professionally produced packages are pleasant to watch with clear shots and a steady camera. The “vox pop” clips are more shaky and less in focus.

The Herald The Herald is a national broadsheet newspaper published Monday to Saturday in Glasgow. There is a limited amount of video available on the site. About three videos are uploaded each week. Although the average length of stories is quite low (41s), the stories can often be over 2 minutes long. All of the content is made by the

newspaper and all of it is evidence of newsgathering on location.

The video content tends to focus on local interest stories e.g. Chinese New Year, the opening of a new casino.

The post production of the packages is enormously variable. In some instances the quality is complex, video has been speeded up and several locations are involved, with text overlay. In other instances the video simply consists of 10s of footage of a celebrity seen through a crowd. However, the former makes up the majority of the stories.

Due to the high post production values the visual appeal of most of the packages on The Herald is high.

Hull Daily Mail The Hull Daily Mail is one of the DMGT / Northcliffe regional newspapers and this site is part of the “thisis” network of 40 local newspaper websites.

Video bulletins and packages are uploaded to the site sporadically. The bulletins consist of a reporter reading to camera in a newsroom. Three headlines are described, with still photos of the Hull Daily Mail, or still photos from a relevant location as illustration. The production quality and visual appeal is low. Effort has been made to add visual interest through the use of animated title and linking sequences and zooming around still photos.

ITV Local ITV has eleven macro-regions across England and Wales. Some of the regions are further sub-divided (e.g. Meridian sub-divides into South, South East and Thames Valley) to create seventeen regions and sub-regions. Bespoke content is broadcast to the seventeen regions and sub-regions each day. The website is also divided into 67 “Go Local” areas across England and Wales, each one covering an area approximately equivalent to a UK county. At present, bespoke content is not produced for the “Go Local” sections.

The video frame appears on most pages of the site, with links to a selection of recent packages below and a scrolling bar linking to recent bulletins to the right. The video plays automatically upon arrival.

Figure 32 Screen grab of ITV Local

Each weekday an early morning bulletin is broadcast to the eleven ITV macro- regions, with an average length of 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Three additional bulletins are broadcast daily to seventeen regions and sub-regions. These bulletins are broadcast at 11am, 2pm and 6pm and are on average 6 minutes; 6 minutes and 20 minutes long respectively. All four of these bulletins are uploaded to the appropriate section of the ITV Local website. A total of 117 minutes of video can be viewed on each ITV Local region each day.

The constituent stories from the ITV bulletins are also separated and uploaded to the appropriate “Go Local” section of the ITV Local site. This means that a single video package may be viewed in three different ways: in a bulletin on the traditional broadcast television programme; in a bulletin on the ITV Local regional page and as an individual video piece on the “Go Local” section of the ITV Local site.

The bulletins on ITV Local are in the style of traditional broadcast news in which a studio based anchor leads the viewer through news stories, introducing relevant video packages when appropriate. The result is that there is a roughly even split between time spent in and out-of-studio.

The content on ITV Local is intended for broadcast and so is of high production quality; 18% of content exhibits complex production values, compared to 65% of trial material) and 100% has high visual appeal.

Editorial values are in line with ITV’s regional news bulletins. The result is that a full range of editorial topics are covered (9% of stories concern politics). In line with its broadcast news, the content available online frequently covers local democracy issues. Interviews with MPs and other institutional representatives are common, occurring in 7% of the stories analysed.

Advertising on the website surrounds the video frame but is not contained within the video pieces; sponsors for sport and weather appear as they do in the broadcast version of the bulletin.

Channel M Channel M is a local TV channel for Manchester that is available to view via broadcast television on Sky Digital satellite, Virgin Media and analogue terrestrial television in Greater Manchester, mid-Lancashire, and Cheshire, as well as via broadband on the Channel M website. All the material that is available to view online is taken from the broadcast output.

The site is divided into the following sections: · News · Sport · Lifestyle · Entertainment · Music · Homesearch · Jobs Mine · Talk

Each section contains packages from relevant broadcast programmes and some contain full programme length episodes. There are also links to programmes of each category, which gives the viewer access to additional packages and in some cases, episodes of the show. The Jobs Mine is an integrated cross-media classified advertising service; a collaboration between the Manchester Evening News, Channel M and 21 local newspapers. The Jobs Mine and Talk sections of the website are the only ones that do not contain any video footage; the Jobs Mine page consists of text descriptions of the available jobs while the Talk page gives links to a number of message boards – an attempt by Channel M to encourage interaction by members of the public.

The Sports section contains 12 recently broadcasted packages and programmes. In the week analysed, two packages taken from the Channel M news programme were uploaded, in addition to seven full length programmes, each between 24 and 47

minutes long. A total of 5 hours and 16 minutes of material is available in the sports section (12th March 2008)

The News section of the Channel M website contains the 15 most recent video packages which are individual stories that are taken from the television news bulletin. A typical video package consists of shots from at least one relevant location which is evidence of on location newsgathering, a piece-to-camera from a relevant location by a reporter and interviews with local people. The narrative is told by a single presenter with in and out of vision audio. Most packages will have some basic text overlay: for example an interviewee’s name will appear on the bottom of the screen. Some also contain still photos, archive footage or “general video” for illustrative purposes. Occasionally the packages include animation, more complex text, graphics or still photos. Sometimes these are externally sourced, for example an architect’s animated plans for a super casino or a British Geological Survey graph to illustrate an earthquake.

Direct navigation to the Channel M News programme page (via the list of programmes on the home page) gives the viewer access to a total of 100 most recent video packages (i.e. 85 additional packages).

Once per week, a full programme is uploaded to the news page: the rugby league programme Code XIII. This is a 24 minute fully edited and produced programme, of high (TV) quality, and it is uploaded to the News section of the site every Thursday.

All the packages are professionally assembled and of the high visual quality associated with broadcast news. The colour is vibrant and sound is clear. There is evidence of a large amount of editing – packages have an average of 9.4 shots per minute. The amount of post production is variable; in the week analysed there were 6% “simple” packages; 80% “intermediate” packages and 14% “complex” packages. Complex allocation arose from the presence of black and white video; changes in play speed; exciting cuts between shots; and framing of video content within a still, see Figure 33.

Figure 33: Channel M’s coverage of a story about a computer technician finding a government data disc hidden in a laptop. This is an example of complex post production.

The average length for the video news packages is 2:30 minutes. Over the course of the week analysed, thirty-three new packages were uploaded to the news site. The appearance of new material was erratic: on Thursday, seventeen new packages were added while on Friday there was no new material.

The coverage was generally classified as being of medium depth. A medium level of journalistic investigation was evidenced by the fact that most packages included at least one interview with a local resident. Classification as high in-depth was achieved if there was evidence of the reporter researching the wider context behind a story. 12% of Channel M’s packages were considered to be covered with high level of depth. Only 88% was considered to be shallow or intermediate coverage.

The story mix covered by Channel M is similar to a traditional broadcast news programme. 6% of the stories concern politics and 18% contain an element of local democracy.

There is a small team of video journalists (VJs): in the week analysed, five VJs produced material. The teams are clearly experimenting with presentation styles, using text and animation on screen, colour and speed changes to add interest to the video pieces. Reporters are making the best possible use of the available equipment – e.g. a VJ recorded the majority of his piece-to-camera with the camera in one location, and then flicked to an alternative angle for the remainder in order to simulate the presence of more than one camera. Although poorly executed, it is indicative of the ambition of VJ teams and of the service as a whole.

STV STV is the ITV franchise for Scotland. Each weekday three bulletins are broadcast for each of two regions, Central and North Scotland. Southern Scotland is covered by

the border region of ITV Local. The bulletins are initially shown on television then uploaded to the website. As with other TV bulletins, the programmes are studio based and use journalists in the field to expand on news stories. In addition to this, packages are posted online. The packages take the form of pieces of the bulletin edited down to only show the sections of the bulletin that take place out of studio, and also longer pieces which appear in the bulletins in a more edited form. The packages can be accessed by subject matter (e.g. politics, health), or by one of four regions. There is also a weekly politics programme which is taken from television and takes the form of discussion and debate around recent news items.

All of the available video content on STV.com is professionally produced, so the post production values and visual appeal tend to be high.

The story mix available directly reflects what is in the news, and is quite high on politics, this being a popular subject in a patriotic nation trying to gain some level of political independence. A significant number of local sports packages are posted on the STV website, over the week and during the weekend, which can often be rather long as they take the format of unedited interviews with sportsmen after games or press conferences. These interviews from the location show evidence of newsgathering.

The depth of coverage on STV video is good, as it is taken from television news which has the budget and expertise to seek out the story.

Figure 34 The Scotland Today bulletin on STV

UTV UTV is the ITV franchise for Northern Ireland. It covers the whole of Northern Ireland. One bulletin is posted on the news section of the website each weekday and lasts for an average of 18m 37s. No additional packages are posted. The bulletin is taken straight from the news broadcast on television at 6pm on weekdays. The service is not split into smaller sub-regions.

The video takes the typical format of television news, based in studio and moving to roving reporters to delve deeper into the story. The video news has the large budget of a television company behind it which means the story depth is good and there are a lot of opportunities for on location newsgathering. This also means that the post production values tend to be complex, and the stories use a wide range of media. However, the video has not been expertly posted online so that the picture is a bit small and grainy, and there are skips and hesitations in the video. There is also a gap halfway through every bulletin when the video timer restarts; it appears that the video has been carelessly edited. This diminishes what could otherwise have been a high visual appeal.

Due in part to the nature of Northern Ireland’s history there is quite a heavy concentration on politics in the bulletins.

Within each bulletin there is an advertisement between the news and the sport that is about 30s long.

Figure 35 The daily bulletin from UTV