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Lord Carter's Digital Britain report, published yesterday, confirmed the move to divert a small part of the BBC's licence fee away from the broadcaster for the first time ever. This will be utilised to relieve ITV of the burden of producing regional news and fund local news consortia.
The move, widely predicted and discussed over recent months, is set to see companies such as Ten Alps bidding to provide local news coverage and thus working to "progressively relieve" the embattled independent broadcaster of the costs of its current service. About £130m of the licence fee, set aside to support the digital switchover, will be diverted to the consortia, which, following on from a public consultation, will pilot three schemes in Wales, Scotland and a yet to be decided English region. The 238-page report said of these proposed new providers: "Consortia are likely to be able to produce news more cost-effectively than existing channel three licensees using assets designed for a different era. "The result could be a greater investment in journalism, newsgathering and multimedia distribution and syndication than today, enhancing the quality of news in the nations, regionally and locally." Another hot industry topic - particularly with regards to the North West - addressed in the report was that of the effect of council funded publications on the ailing regional press industry.  Lord Carter Lord Carter asked the Audit Commission to "make recommendations on best practice and if restraints should be placed on local authority activity in this field". The report went on: "While local authority information sheets can serve a useful purpose for local residents and businesses, they will inevitably not be as rigorous in holding local institutions to account as independent local media." In other areas of the long-awaited document Carter outlined the government's objective to provide universal access to a minimum 2Mb broadband connection - a standard that he called the 'floor' rather than the 'ceiling' and a "technological minimum wage". It was also outlined that Channel 4 would not be forced to merge with Five, but would receive financial assistance to create a joint entity with BBC Worldwide and provide "a solid commitment to children's content, with priority given to older children - the area of greatest market failure." In the radio arena the government outlined ambitious plans to switch from analogue to digital broadcasting by the end of 2015, with the vacant FM spectrum given over to small local commercial and community stations. All car radio sets sold in the UK by the close of 2013 must be digital.
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