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January 24, 2009updated 26 Jan 2009 6:09pm

Media Money: Will regionals produce ITV local news?

By Peter Kirwan

So Ofcom has proposed that consortia of ‘established UK-wide and regional news providers’could bid for contracts to supply ITV with regional news.

Who might be up for this £30m-£50m job?

At the Guardian, Chris Tryhorn and Mark Sweney suggest all sorts of people: ITN, Reuters, the Press Association and ‘national newspaper groups, many of which have fledgling online video operations”.

Weirdly, their stories don’t mention regional newspaper publishers.

Perhaps if the regionals had invested more in online video (and the web generally) during the boom years, they might be considered natural bidders in this race.

Admittedly, the prospect of regional publishers getting involved does occur to Dan Sabbagh at the Times.

But only ‘outside England”, and even then, the regional press would be –- in Sabbagh’s scenario – relegated to supporting ITV. (Providing ‘extra resources’and gaining ‘some cross-promotional benefits”.)

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Sounds like a fairly constrained little game to me.

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