BBC's Local Video Plan: 68 Million For 10 Daily Bulletins, Live Streams, Mobile Too
This story was written by Robert Andrews.
The BBC Trust today published details of the BBC's local broadband "video journalism" proposal, which has so worried commercial regional publishers. The details here reveal the plan would require a 23 million annual budget by 2012/13, starting in 2009/10 for a total 68 million investment over the period - or 90 percent of its entire local spend, which is already due to come from above bbc.co.uk's baseline allocation. On average, each local operation would cost 350,000.
The project would cover 60 areas in the English language and five in Welsh, all mapped on to existing BBC Local regions. The BBC is targeting 3.2 million weekly hits (11 percent of UK households) by 2013/14. It says it will offer the majority of its branded news videos for syndication to local news sites and, indicating possible joint ventures with commercial rivals, it's promised an annual 800,000 fund by 2012/13 to buy in local news from those rivals. More on PCUK...
By Robert Andrews