The UK’s Department for Culture, Media & Sport has picked a rather small bunch of media folk to tell it who should run its three independently-funded multimedia news consortia (IFNC) pilots…
- Richard Hooper, former Ofcom dep chair and Informa chair (panel chair)
- Val Atkinson, ex BBC Scotland news and current affairs head, and a career board member
- Fru Hazlitt, ex GCap and Virgin Radio CEO, ex Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) UK MD
- Glyn Mathias, ex BBC Wales politics editor, currently Ofcom’s Wales committee member
- William Perrin, who’s trying to build the Talk About Local citizen access project
- Marc Reeves, who just quit as Birmingham Post editor
That’s not many people to deliberate over the future of UK nations-and-regions digital news provision.
The pilot IFNCs in Wales, Scotland and an English region comprising Tyne Tees/Borders are being established on the recommendation of last summer’s Digital Britain white paper to fill the gap in commercial news provision after ITV (LSE: ITV) likely backs away from 2012.
The paper’s emphasis was on multimedia consortia, so has attracted a range of strange bedfellows in to unusual regional JVs that will use the web as well as TV and newspapers. They will get unspent digital TV switchover scheme money that some bidders are estimating at about £6.5 million each.
Some background on the panelists…
— Hooper is a senior director at Yell, which is trying to survive the local classifieds downturn.
— Hazlitt is a director of Betfair.
— Mathias used to work for one of the bidders, ITN.
— Perrin and Reeves appear to represent the hyperlocal crowd, but their recent projects have been focused on London, Herefordshire and West Midlands rather than the pilot regions.
Using the panel’s advice, the DCMS wants to pick pilot winners by March. Whether the IFNCs go nationwide may depend on whether the Digital Economy Bill, containing the necessary legislative changes, can be passed before the coming general election.