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Issue 1, July 2002
Issue 2, October 2002
Issue 3, August 2005
CTVT-Newsletter
e-published & distributed by Community
TV Trust
____issue no.3_____
August 2005
SOUTHWARK.TV__WAR__VALUE OF LOCAL MEDIA
THIS ISSUE considers Community and Media
as partners in social and individual
regeneration ... with spice added by
BBC's ultra-local plans. CTVT warmly
welcomes likeminded readers in UK,
Ireland, Lithuania, Palestine, Nepal,
Indonesia, New Zealand, Brazil,
Argentina, Peru and America.
CTVT is offering opportunities for volunteering in
London, Cornwall, Myanmar and Palestine
... media training, project
facilitation, even English language
teaching to enable web surfing
and publishing ...
"WAR" 'RAPE' "TERRORISM" 'BALI'
UKRAINE CHECHNYA
IRELAND
LONDON BOMBINGS DEAD
BRAZILIAN
PHUKET SNIPER
VICTIM
GOVERNMENT WARNS: DON'T
TRAVEL
ANTHRAX
(remember that one ?)
SOHAM MILLIE SARAH
CJD
TRAUMA RISK
COCAINE PROSTITUTES SACKED
DEEP CUT SUICIDES
AUNTIE MORALS
BACKWARD
FLOODS EARTHQUAKE TRAGEDY
NOWHERE - SAFE - NOBODY
...
DO YOU BUY ALL THAT ?
CTVT argues for
positivity and in preparing its Negative News Report welcomes contributions
from all points of view.
Look out for web addresses & contact details.
________________________________________
For The Record
Current CTVT Activities
Southwark, London - negotiated with
Borough Education Department to launch a Borough-wide scheme
for multi-tiered local 'TV'
service. Visit the 500-page/50 partner
website at
www.southwark.tv
This project in particular
encapsulates CTVT's first dream that
hatched in 1997/8, to create a truly
local service integrating a number
of production pockets across a
given area ... Community Media
supported by Education contributes to local
life ... also plans for a series
of one-hour TV programmes for Community
Channel came to fruition - see
below.
St. Ives, Cornwall -
www.stives.tv
CTVT launched a website for the
communities of West Cornwall, ran a media training project
touching on three local
organisations - in Camborne, Penzance and St
Ives; and now is part of a group
planning a county-wide initiative under
the working title Cornwall
Community Media Partnership. Possible
links to Community Channel
productions ... see below. Ramallah,West Bank, Palestine -
proposal
to set up a community media project emulating Southwark.TV
with a mix of training and web
publishing via a bi-lingual Arabic/English
website. In the first instance
work created will be published on the Southwark.TV website while funding to
develop the local site is raised.
British Council, UNICEF and UNDP-PAPP
showed interested when Chris Haydon met
with them in Jerusalem in late November 2004.
Somali UK, media training and website
project for the Somali diaspora
scattered across the UK. The vision is to
enable Somali people to use
media making as a real component of social
regeneration and informal learning
that they create. Young people and single
parents are a target, as is
Somali culture itself. The Somalis have an oral
tradition which video cameras and web
technology can capture and celebrate. We
will see. The plan is to make a
start in the Southwark area while a
substantial bid for a three-year project
goes in. See Item
Yangon YMCA,Myanmar - a brilliant social
project running in the capital
of Myanmar has become an
international partner to Southwark.TV
and
there are plans to providevolunteer
media trainers to visit Yangon to
work and support the many faceted work of
the YMCA. It offers language
teaching, manages an orphanage outside the
city, has accommodation,
meeting rooms, welcomes all faith groups.
Sydney, Australia - Southwark.TV
international partner
Belo Horizonte, Brazil - newest
Southwark.TV international partner
NNR: Negative News Report - still not
off the drawing board ! we were
overtaken by a substantial project that had
been four years in development
and finally found full funding (now alas
terminated). For NNR: see Item 2
Community Channel - in 2005 CTVT
produced two series of "SOUTHWARK HOUR", a monthly discussion
forum, to link in with Southwark.TV
partners and filmmakers, as well as community
project leaders, school
teachers and young people. Participants
aired their feelings and voiced their aspirations,
some via short films. The second edition
featured Decima Francis who founded From
Boyhood To Manhood; we filmed in a local
radio studio; in the offices of a young
people's magazine; in a prison for a
knife crime project; and with Southwark
Somali refugees. Discussions with the
Channel are beginning re future
commissions. CTVT is looking to mount a
similar series in
Cornwall.
Mental Health/Learning Difficulty/
Disability - CTVT has worked with a
range of organisations in these sectors,
including local arts groups in south
London via the Southwark.TV project; we
also produced a documentary film and six
promotional videos for TACT [www.tactltd.org]
and travelled to Athens with them
resarching for a new project; we filmed
FREEWHEELERS in their first drama film
commissioned by Kingston University as
part of their new Social Work degree
course.
Knife Crime - CTVT has recently
completed production of an educational
DVD to help London's Met Police combat
knife crime and knife carrying by young
people. Three hours of media across two
DVDs has been gathered from within
prisons, schools, a hospital, a
bereavement project, senior police
figures, a crime prevention officer, and
so on. A pack of lesson plans
accompanies the DVDs.
_________________________________________
ONE
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
PSP: the 3% Proposal
Debate is multplying in the UK
concerning what and how and if public
service broadcasting should exist and be
funded.
A new body has been proposed, called a
Public Service Publisher, It
would
not be a TV channel but would commission
and distribute programming.
Somehow it would be funded with £300
million. For the amount of TV
produced this would break down to a
budget per hour of £150,000.
One forgets. There was a time this might
have seemed ordinary. Having
worked outside the bizarre media
industry for some years now, I see a
ludicrous amount of money. CTVT's recent
flagship community project,
"SOUTHWARK.TV", could run for a year for
cost of one hour of PSP stuff.
CTVT suggests that for just 3% of this
amazing budget it could set up
sixty local media projects in towns and
cities across the country, in
the
style of its Southwark.TV [www.southwark.tv] project.
Furthermore, each project could produce
at least one programme for PSP's
schedule from their year's activity.
Viewed that way, the sixty local media
ventures come free.
PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA
CTVT asserts that it is time to rename
the whole media debate: we should
be examining public service media. The
digital revolution has brought
about the total empowerment of the
population, because of course
everyone
is now a media producer, if they choose
to be.
The official regulator, Ofcom, tends to
call us all
Citizen-Consumers ... which is now
inadequate, as well as ugly.
Given that the computer takes us
instantly into a multimedia environment
where stills spin out of moving images
and documents reconfigure into
emails; and given that TV and radio
channels will be happily
playing on desktop computers and laptops (let
alone mobile phones), to stick
with
the old broadcasting model 'just won't
do'.
Community TV Trust took part in a recent
consultation process with Ofcom
and proposes to make more and more of
its experience in the field of
community and education and media
training and individual empowerment.
In the end, at community level, media
making is a means to an end: the
end
is self esteem. With self esteem the
individual is ready to fly.
Limitations are
dropped. The future may be undertaken
with heart.
To prove the point of empowerment and
accessible equipment, SOUTHWARK HOUR was made on no
budget using miniDV single chip and
three chip camera equipment fuelled by
volunteer professionals and media
students. See
Item Six below.
__________________________________________
TWO.(1)
CTVT NEGATIVE NEWS REPORT
Community Media - Positive Media
If media is local, it's likely to be
relevant. If it is relevant,
it's likely to be useful. It may also be
fun. If media is
relevant, useful and fun - well, what
more do you want ?
Community TV Trust argues that the trick
with media
is to ensure there is a link - a link between the media made and
the life lived.
Through the "Southwark.TV" project I
have been exploring ways in which
Education
and Community can work together. The
vision of a local, borough-wide
multimedia
service has taken shape, in the form of
a 500-page website.
"Southwark.TV" with its
fifty partner organisations (schools
and community groups) also offers
local people
a monthly screening event at a local
theatre where young and old,
professional and
beginner, sit side by side and swap
views on what they are shown.
Friendships and
partnerships strike up. Confidence is
found, affirmation received. Some
films are also
being shown on a national platform, the
Community Channel - not to
mention there
being an opportunity too for people to
speak to a natonal audience
directly.
In the UK the arrival of Community
Channel offers real hope of
instigating a media
cultural revolution with content being
invited from community and
individual
programme makers. Money is not around,
predictably, but nonetheless we
all have
an opportunity to be active
contributors, to speak up, and to help
others do the same.
Don't hold back.
E-learning initiatives around UK schools
are showing how future
community
media practitioners are being trained up
and UK Online Learning Centres
are
becoming the community centres (public
houses ?) of the future.
Positive media is where we start: spread
the word on a larger scale and
aim to
infiltrate mainstream news media - a
pretty dire place nowadays.
More and more of us are 'switching the
news off'. What is it about
apparently
intelligent, well educated and
well-meaning adults that produces the
common
journalistic obsession with words like
'kill' 'rape' 'crash' 'murder'
'victim' 'death'
with which news bulletins are
relentlessly permeated.
It is time to campaign against this
relentless daily multimedia assault
on our
"mental environment". This will also
serve to create a happier and more
productive
environment, impacting beneficially on
societal and individual
wellbeing.
Anyone for a "National No News Day"
? For truly, No News Is Good
News.
If you fancy supporting CTVT's Negative
News Report, or want to submit
your
own comments, see the item at the end of
this edition of
CTVT-Newsletter.
Since our previous Newsletter, rather a
long time ago, Northumbria
University
have emerged as a likely partner to add
weight to planned research.
________________________________________
TWO.(2)
Iraq - where do we start ?
Since our Prime Minister led the
invasion into Iraq, many issues have
arisen:
embedded journalists, deaths of
journalists, the apparent targetting of
Al Jazeera
by US military, Fallujah and the role of
snipers, relations with Iran
and Syria,
North Korea ... Jo Wilding's film "A
Letter To The Prime Minister" is
well worth
catching if you can. We really should
address international law issues -
if nothing
else. Jo Wilding's efforts in
challenging the British Government on
points of
international law are extraordinary. For more on that film,
see
below.
--------------------------------------
IRAQ Jo Wilding
Film Screening "A Letter To The
Prime Minister"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Iraq documentary premiered at the
Barbican, London on 24th May 2005.
Young British lawyer Jo Wilding featured
strongly on the internet
providing
web accounts of daily life on the
streets of Fallujah as the US prepared
for the
terrible assault on the town.
Wilding told stories of cold-blooded
killing reminiscent of shootings of the West Bank.
Filmed and produced over two years by
Julia Guest of Year Zero Films
Wilding's journey up to and during the
'war' paints a sorry picture of
the impact of UK and US foreign policy.
If we are unsure about the
selectivity involved in the documentary
format ... is the filmmaker
spending inordinate time with one or two
people and not giving us the
full picture ... but the daily diet of
Baghdad bombings to which we are
now accustomed tells us all we need to
know.
"A Letter To The Prime Minister" is an
important document from an
unhappy period. As Time Out of London
said: "Guest’s film also includes
unique and exclusive footage from inside
the April 2004 siege of
Fallujah,
where Wilding served as witness to the
brutalities of an illegal US
strategy."
Order from:
http://www.alettertotheprimeminister.co.uk/
Jo Wilding webpages at:
http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/
_________________________________________
THREE
.... ah Brave New Radio World !
US Radio Deregulation: Has It Served
Citizens and Musicians?
A recent piece of research about the
effect of de-regulation in radio in
the States makes interesting reading
"The radical deregulation of the radio
industry allowed by the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 has not
benefited the public or
musicians.
Instead, it has led to less competition,
fewer viewpoints, and less
diversity in programming. Deregulation
has damaged radio as a public
resource.
This research makes an overwhelming case
that market consolidation
intended by the act does not serve the
diverse needs of Americans
citizens. Substantial ethnic, regional
and economic populations are not
provided the service to which they are
entitled. The public is not
satisfied and possible economic
efficiencies of industry consolidation
are
not being passed on to the public in the
form of improved local
service."
see:
http://www.futureofmusic.org/research/radio studyexecsum.cfm
--------------------------------------
MORSEL:
Unhappiness
spreads more easily
than physical
disease.
- Eckhart Tolle
__________________________________________
FOUR
REMEMBER
ENRON ? SMALL BEER ?
B y t h e N u m b e r s
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bush/Cheney and Enron
*$15,400
Total amount the Bush campaign paid
Enron and
Halliburton for use of corporate jets
during the
2000 recount.
*$13,500
Maximum amount each of Enron's 4,500
laid-off
employees would receive as part of a
proposed
settlement.
*$5,300,000
Average amount Enron paid each of its
140
top executives in 2001
*16
Months that Vice President Dick Cheney
has refused to
release documents related to current
U.S. energy policy.
*Source: Harper's magazine, Oct. 2002
= = = = = = =
The above 'article' comes from S O J O M
A I L, a regular e-publication
from America promoting values at the
crossroads where spirituality,
politics, and culture meet. I worked
hard in the run up to the Iraqi
invasion and was a lone voice in the
'patriotic' wilderness.
website: http://www.sojo.net
For more information, e-mail: <info@sojo.net>
_________________________________________
FIVE
ISRAEL & PALESTINE NEWS MEDIA
Maan Independent News Agency
http://www.maannews.net/english/index.php
This is a new trilingual website
operating in Hebrew, English and
Arabic.
It covers West Bank towns and Gaza Strip
plus Jerusalem. The URL above
will take you to the home page of the
English language section.
Involved in setting it up is a vibrant
Raed Othman who previously was
manager of Bethlehem TV, a one-town
satellite TV station serving the
Palestinian community of this iconic
location. There are practically no
Christians left now, for those who could
emigrate have done so.
Bethlehem does however boast three
refugee camps, one of which I visited
in 2004 during a ten-day stay in the
area. A resulting documentary was
shown on Community Channel, one of the
plethora of digital channels
that now wash over us. This Channel is
funded by the UK Government's
Home Office and has no money to buy its
programmes. They are starting
to take community media now, instead of
just showing charities' films.
That is where CTVT comes in with its
SOUTHWARK HOUR series.
During my second visit to Ramallah,
Jerusalem and Bethlehem last year
I saw the progress being made by the
Israelis erecting their walls and
fences
around West Bank communities.
The withdrawal from Gaza Strip is
extraordinary. Who knows what will
happen next. One is not confident that
their nice new 8-metre walls will
be
dismantled very soon.
I was numbed to learn of the scale of
Palestinian deprivation,
disengagement,
malnutrition, economic disintegration
across both West Bank and Gaza
Strip
that the United Nations have catalogued
over the last three years.
Annually the UN has sought to disperse
funds for development of the area
but each year has had to call on those
funds to combat chronic need
amounting
in fact to emergency. All of this is of
course orchestrated against the
Palestinians
under our noses with the apparent
consent of the West. Individuals
protest
and write and attempt action and are
shot or bulldozed to death
occasionally
and escort young children to school past
violent settlers suffering
beatings
themselves. Is this not reminiscent of
the famous anti-war march in
London
in February 2003 just prior to the
invasion of Iraq ? Our Government(s)
too
easily detach.
To return to the subject in hand -
This new news agency is a tremendous
step in a positive direction. Raed
Othman
produced a nightly news programme for
Bethlehem TV by offering a live
simultaneous translation of the main
Israeli news programme whose
pictures he
screened alongside his presenter's
instant re-versioning. The
journalist-translator
was passionate about accuracy and
fairness. To both sides. Outstanding
venture in
the most complex of political
situations.
It would be good to offer feedback as
the service begins to find its
feet.
"Maan Network" <info@maannet.org>
--------------------------------------
MORSEL: When you judge people there
is no time to love them.
-- Mother Teresa
_________________________________________
SIX
COMMUNITY
MEDIA ...
SOUTHWARK CALLING
Community TV Trust produced two series of
one-hour programmes for use
on
national Community Channel (carried by
BBC Freeview, Sky Digital,
TeleWest/ntl). These discussion and film
insert shows combined media trained Southwark.TV
partners - schools and community
groups, with residents, councillors and
anyone with a voice and
something to say.
"SOUTHWARK HOUR": Community Channel
opens doors wider
Southwark.TV has created a model of
community media, informal learning,
local media and web publishing. Self
esteem is a real benefit for the
individual participating in this type of
'work'. One embellishment of that model
is the generation of broadcast
programming from within the community
now served by media training, web
publishing and monthly film screenings.
Programmes are edited to about 55
minutes and are usually shot on a
combination of single chip camcorder,
handicam and three chip camera.
CTVT is very happy to be doing this as
it proves a point. No money should never
stop anyone and certainly not a good
idea. The first broadcast was in
January 2005 and the monthly pattern continued into a second series.
SERIES ONE
Programme 1 pensioners, mental health
groups, the arts
Programme 2 local foundation training
excluded young males
Programme 3 local radio project
engaging community and young people
Programme 4 local magazine project,
local filmmaking
Programme 5 Southwark Somali
representatives
SERIES TWO
Programme 6 films from a local anti-knife
crime project
Programme 7 more films
combatting knife crime
Programme 8 Young voices
Programme 9 DAC Brian
Paddick meets
boys from a Peckham PRU
Programme 10 Young
filmmakers show and talk about their work
CTVT plans to create variations on the
Southwark.TV model:
(i) in Cornwall - a rural counterpart
to urban Southwark.TV ... how well
can a dispersed population function,
does it see itself as a community,
will isolated villages be affected by
access to broadband ?
(ii) for UK Somali communities - one
culture & ethnicity, many locations -
the inverse of Southwark.TV which
operates across one specific location
but includes all cultures
(iii) for Palestinians on the West Bank
- in towns largely cut off from one
another by the infamous Israeli Wall,
people may well benefit from
'celebrating' their culture, reinforcing
their identity. The
local/global paradigm of the internet
means the locally focused media will
be useful to us outside their Wall and
keep us informed
about their wellbeing.
It is proposed to draw into the
SOUTHWARK HOUR material from a wide
range of sources. You might like to
offer something.
For up to date information about
"Southwark Hour", visit Southwark.TV's
website at
www.southwark.tv where transmission
information is posted
together with a video trailer also on
the Home Page.
Chris Haydon
Community TV Trust
tel: 020 7701 0878
m: 07970 970 715
email:
chris@communitytvtrust.org
_________________________________________
SEVEN
TAKING IT
GLOBAL
The Global Youth Action Network is a
global collaboration among youth
and
organizations to share information and
link efforts to improve the
world.
It is an incubator of global
partnerships setting numerous projects
in
motion such as Global Youth Service Day
(gysd.net).
gyan@youthlink.org, USA
+1-212-661-6111, South America +55
11-9137-6830
TakingITGlobal is an international youth
organisation that inspires,
informs, involves and connects young
people through a global online
community, supporting youth action
globally and locally.
info@takingitglobal.org, +1-416-928-3362x4225
GYAN has merged its website,
youthlink.org, with TakingITGlobal
creating
one of the richest sites on the Internet
for young leaders. Check out:
www.takingitglobal.org
[Comment]:
I received this information via
www.idealist.org
--------------------------------------
EIGHT
SOMALI.UK
SOMALI UK - A COMMUNITY IN NEED
CTVT is proposing its next flagship
project: a web and media training
mix similar to Southwark.TV but shaped
to serve the Somali refugees, single
mothers and disaffected young people
currently making out in Britain.
Fifteen years of civil war has created
many casualties. A shocking number of
families have lost fathers and brothers
and uncles, creating an under-class in
the UK of isolated mothers struggling
with children alienated in a new
culture, at risk themselves from drugs
and crime. The mothers may often have
poor or non-existent English language
and the children may have received
little or no formal education in the
mother tongue.
Language teaching therefore stands high
in the list of needs, in both
Somali and English.
Rockingham Somali Support Group is based
on a housing estate near to
south London's Elephant & Castle. This
group joined "Southwark.TV" and recently
received video production training, shot
footage as they
celebrated the end of Ramadan and
recently dealt with editing the material
into some form of film. Showing their
first efforts at a monthly Southwark.TV
screening event is on the agenda.
A programme of support for Somali pupils
at a Lambeth school, the
Lilian Baylis Technology School, ran
from January to July this year:
various media projects were dreamt up,
some with a view to being useful
for newly arrived compatriots with
language difficulties and lack of
knowledge of local facilities and
agencies.
The plan is to incorporate these two
teams of media trained youngsters
into a development phase of CTVT's
larger project. Ways will be explored
for offering continued support to help
these young people create text and video
media that can directly serve their
community. Research will be needed to
identify priority needs and short
information films will then be created
and presented on the website, alongside
written material. Films will also be
distributed on video.
A group of five met in December 2004 to
instigate the formal development phase
of this substantial programme of work. CTVT provided the services of a
professional fundraiser who compiled a
full funding proposal to the now defunct
Community Fund. A decision on the
application will not be reached until
December. A second application, to the
Bridge House Trust, is also being
submitted.
Discussions are advanced with Morley
College and partnership in the
delivery of media training for a Somali
women's group is in place, with funding
now being sought.
Somali media enthusiasts in Harrow &
Wealdstone are looking to produce
regular programmes for the Community
Channel. New however to TV
production, I believe they will soon
need more hands on deck than are
currently available.
If you would like to volunteer to
support this work or similar, contact CTVT
by email. And in the meantime Chris Haydon is hoping to travel to Puntland,
the North East part of Somalia, with Abdulkadir Jibril of the Rockingham
Group. In addition to war, Puntland was
also affected by the tsunami. Perhaps
we will find a local internet partner,
school or organisation, with whom
our London friends can link up.
___________________________________
By The By
... Everything I need to know about
life, I learned from Noah's Ark ....
One: Don't miss the boat.
Two: Remember that we are all in the
same boat.
Three: Plan ahead. It wasn't raining
when Noah built the Ark.
Four: Stay fit. When you're 600 years
old, someone may ask you to do something
really big.
Five: Don't listen to critics; just get
on with the job that needs to be done.
Six: Build your future on high ground.
Seven: For safety's sake, travel in
pairs.
Eight: Speed isn't always an advantage.
The snails were on board with the
cheetahs.
Nine: When you're stressed, float a
while.
Ten: Remember, the Ark was built by
amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
Eleven: No matter the storm, when you
are with God, there's always a rainbow
waiting.
NOW, wasn't that nice? Pass it along and
make someone else smile, too.
___________________________________
NINE
CTVT's FLAGSHIP: "SOUTHWARK.TV"
www.southwark.tv
500 pages, 50 partners - schools,
groups, community centres ... streaming
media - video in Windows and Quicktime,
audio in various forms ...
To find an international partner or
local partner group on Southwark.TV's
website, select a partner on the
drop- down available on the top right
corner
of the Home Page ... select the partner
you want and then press the 'go' button.
There are also a range of direct link
buttons lower down on the Home Page
navigation.
Of real use is the top bar navigation
button 'Sitemap' from which you will
quickly gauge what group is active and
who is resting.
HOT TIP
Try the one minute video "PUDDLE" made
by Southwark Pensioners
Action Group known as SPAG. It is a gem.
About a puddle. It is funny, sharp,
concise and may well have brought about
change. At all events, shortly
after the film appeared on the website,
the local council repaired requisite
area.
After two years of trying.
MONTHLY SCREENINGS
These are held at the Blue Elephant
Theatre on Bethwin Road SE5. People
of all ages and abilities are showing
work, grabbing the free hot snacks and
using the bar (not free). Always on
Monday nights at 6pm/6.30pm, these
evenings are proving useful and fun; the
networking is clearly beneficial.
This is a crucial component of the whole
community media mix ... it is this which
ensures there is a link between the
media made and the life lived, within a
community context.
ROAD SHOW
A collection of locally made films
themed around gun crime plus a video
projector preovided by Southwark Young
People's Magazine Project constitute the Southwark.TV Road Show which has
successfully visited schools, youth
clubs and community centres.
A new Road Show is being planned to
focus on Knife Crime - a subject on
which CTVT has been producing a teaching
DVD with the Metropolitan Police and
Southwark agencies.
--------------------------------------
MORSEL:
wise heart, seeing eye
"Laboratories and
libraries,
halls and porch and arch
and learned lectures—
all shall be of no avail
if the wise heart
and the seeing eye
are absent."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
___________________________________
TEN
BBC GOES LOCAL, ULTRA-LOCAL
Is this unreservedly a good move ?
'Auntie' has used her free billions to
wage commercial war on rival
broadcasters. She runs a 24 hour news
channel. She has opened up new digital
TV channels and radio services.
Community level work is already in
development, in the case of radio this
goes back 20 years and more, and
I am not sure I want to see publicly
funded journos come waltzing onto my
turf. Now if they thought of spreading
the moulah around ... that might be
different.
The BBC has provided further details
about its planned interactive news
service, whose existence was first
revealed by director-general, Mark
Thompson, at a Confederation of British
Industry (CBI) lunch in Birmingham
earlier this year. A nine-month pilot of
the service will run in the West
Midlands region, starting December,
2005: the service, which will be
available via digital satellite and
broadband, will allow viewers in five
areas of the West Midlands (Birmingham
and the Black Country; Coventry and
Warwickshire; Herefordshire and
Worcestershire; Stoke and Staffordshire;
and Shropshire) to access
ultra-localized news bulletins.
Digital satellite viewers will be able
to press the red button to see
10-minute news bulletins from their
immediate area at fixed times within
each hour: news from Shropshire, for
example, might always appear at 20
minutes past the hour, the BBC says.
Broadband users, meanwhile, will be
able to watch ultra- local news
on-demand, linked through their local "Where I Live" Website (note: the
BBC's "Where I Live" sites are
accessed via the URL,
www.bbc.co.uk/whereilive). They will
have the choice of watching the news in
a single 10-minute bulletin or divided
into separate story "chunks." The BBC
says that, as well as news, the
bulletins will provide public service
information, sports coverage and
weather info; in addition, it says,
"there will be an information service
appropriate to the time of day and items
which celebrate local heroes, the arts,
entertainment and heritage."
Non-breaking news will be refreshed once
every 24 hrs.
The BBC says it plans to appoint nearly
40 staff to run the new service,
including six journalists for each
locality. One journalist in each area
will specialize in developing networks
of local contributors and community
correspondents, and one of the main
goals of the pilot will be to test a
variety of ways of commissioning
user- generated content from individuals
and organizations in each locality (the
pilot will build on the lessons learned
from such BBC initiatives as Digital
Stories and Video Nation). The BBC
stresses that all community material
broadcast
"will be subject to the usual BBC
editorial and health-and-safety
guidelines."
Once the pilot is complete, the BBC says
that a "rigorous independent
public value test" will be conducted,
including an assessment of the
service's market impact in the West
Midlands and detailed scrutiny by
the corporation's Board of Governors. If
the latter give the green light, the BBC
plans to introduce around 60 similar
services across the UK. The pilot is
part of the BBC's "Out of London"
strategy, which is intended to counter
the dominance that London has over the
UK's cultural life by moving BBC
departments to other regions of the UK
and by creating more programming that
reflects the interests of those regions.
--------------------------------------
CTVT rettelsweN / Feedback
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Many thanks for the kind comments.
CTVT looks forward to your further
comments on issues raised, on passions
unspoken, on concerns raised.
Remember E.M.Forster: "Only
connect."
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