For Broadcast October 07, 2010

Hunt’s EPG relegation threat will do little to motivate reluctant PSBs.

The culture secretary has a new spin on the Dire Straits lyric “I want my MTV”.

What Jeremy Hunt wants is his local TV news, which he sees as a lynchpin of the government’s Big Society aspirations. Devolving power to local areas is part of being an “open and plural society” where it seems everyone is responsible and anything is possible.

But what is not possible - at least for local TV news - is any kind of government support. Hunt’s idea (judging by his recent speech at the RTS Conference) is to flatter TV types by saying how innovative they are, and that the financial problems of funding local TV news will just go away if TV Land responds to the challenge and invents what the government sees as a much-needed new source of information.

Well, here’s a newsflash: he’s barking up the wrong tree. No one - including his own analyst, Nicholas Shott - can currently see a commercial model for local TV news in the UK that works.

Local TV in the US is supported by an affiliate system anchored by big national networks, and while Hunt is offering release from all cross-media ownership rules, local newspapers and radio stations are on their knees and have no investment money. With no subsidy, is local TV news worth the risk?

The government is not averse to using a stick to try and get its way: Hunt is asking Ofcom to look at changes in the rules of EPG placement as a way to stimulate the PSBs into launching local TV news. EPG position “is likely to become the principal intervention through which we repay broadcasters who invest in content with a social or cultural benefit,” he says.

However, when asked if ITV or Channel 4 could lose their top slots on the EPG, Hunt demurred, implying perhaps that digital offspring (ITV2 and More 4) could face EPG relegation. Or maybe he was talking about EPG positions on the upcoming YouView platform?

In any case, I question the clout of Hunt’s EPG stick. EPG slots are important for the foreseeable future and especially for those of us who have grown up with the current grammar of telly, but EPG position will become less powerful as digital convergence takes effect over the next decade.

This summer, US pay TV giant Comcast unveiled an iPad app that allows American cable viewers to control their TV set-top boxes without reference to the TV EPG. Google TV will launch by the end of the year in the US and will have a web browser to search for TV programmes from the internet. Facebook is already a driver in directing viewers to TV shows, and Twitter is another technology that is about peer-to-peer recommendation.

Francesco Ciao, vice chairman of investment banking at Nomura and former CEO of Cable & Wireless, told the RTS that the technology is changing so fast that the EPG seems “a bit like a Victorian tool these days”.

I agree. Broadband delivery for a local news segment is the only realistic answer, perhaps with some kind of prominence on YouView and other IPTV and Freeview hybrid services. To be fair to Hunt, he has now scaled back his ambitions for local TV to “as little as one hour a day”. Anyone willing to sing his song now?