Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 65)
WEDNESDAY 4 JULY 2007
Mr Mark Wood and Mr Jonathan Munro
Q60 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
I think this question may be connected to the one you have just
been answering. I just wanted to ask you a bit about regional
news and regional news gathering. Do you think that regional news
will be more or less affected than national news by the digital
switchover? Just generally, I think you said earlier that you
do not supply ITV's regional news; am I right in thinking that?
Mr Wood: That is correct.
Q61 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
What is your perspective on regional news gathering at the moment
and how it will go in the future?
Mr Munro: I will take the latter point first,
on regional news gathering. Our perspective on it is that we have
to be able to news gather across the UK in any village where any
story happens. Potentially that story might be a Soham; no-one
had ever heard of the village beforehand but it suddenly became
a massive story. Having what we would call regional reach is crucial.
It is crucial to reach those stories and it is also crucial that
when we are doing stories that we discussion earlier—Health
Service provision, GP surgeries or whatever—that we do not
always have London voices, that some of the patients we discuss
those issues with might be from a constituency outside London.
We need to be able to reach the hospital and GP in Sutton Coldfield,
for example, to do that story just as easily as we can reach St
Thomas's over the river from here. For that part of the world
Central News (which is the ITV brand carrier in the Midlands)
is a very, very important programme. It gives the region a sense
of identity, it gives regional viewers a sense of what is happening
slightly outside their orbit but nonetheless within their hinterland
(to mix my metaphors) in their region. I think they are very important
and ITV is built on a regional structure; it was founded on a
regional structure. We fervently hope that the role of regional
news carries on and continues to attract audiences in years to
come. As a network news provider, having that infrastructure out
there around the UK is really, really important to us.
Q62 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
In terms of how that will be affected by the digital switchover
and also by the disaggregation as it were of all the news gathering?
Mr Wood: We cannot answer that really because
it is an ITV question. What I would say is that I think ITV will
be making comments about this. It is going to be a challenge for
ITV. Regional news is a very heavy cost infrastructure for them
and it does not generate the advertising returns. They have raised
the issue a couple of times saying that when digital switchover
comes along they will not be able to support that infrastructure
in its current form and I think they are trying to engage in discussion
with OFCOM about how it might change. ITV is very committed to
its public service obligations. News channels and regional news
are up against the BBC which, of course, is offering its content
free and unfortunately does quite a good job. If it did a bad
job it would make life a lot easier for us all but it does make
the market place quite tricky in this country. You cannot run
a news channel in competition with BBC here because the market
is so small.
Q63 Chairman:
You have been very patient and we are way over time now. One last
question I have was that you referred earlier to the contract
between ITN and ITV, is that contract in the public domain?
Mr Wood: We have agreed to the terms of the
contract running until the end of 2012. It is a confidential commercial
contract but it will be seen by OFCOM as part of their regulatory
role.
Q64 Chairman:
We might negotiate with you about whether it could be seen by
this Committee?
Mr Wood: I am sure that would be open to discussion,
yes.
Q65 Chairman:
I think you missed your vocation in politics! Thank you very much.
It has been a fascinating session. I think there may be other
questions which we might like to ask you about so perhaps we can
put those on paper to you and send them to you.
Mr Wood: Please do, and thank you for some very
challenging and interesting questions. I think we are all looking
at some of the same issues here and I would be very happy to answer
any further questions and I am sure Jonathan would also be happy
to do so.
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