Only way is down for Beeb

Ben Bradshaw's speech to the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge last night did not specifically mention the regional press, but there is no doubt that its content will have repercussions for the industry, in particular his comment that the BBC has "probably reached the limits of reasonable expansion."

The culture secretary pointed out that in the last 20 years, Bradshaw said, the BBC has grown from being a provider of two TV channels, four national radio stations and a local radio network to a media giant with a world-leading online presence and a commercial publishing arm, adding: "If it were to continue on anything like that trajectory, the rest of the industry would be right to be worried and the mixed economy would be seriously imbalanced."

This confirms the fairly widespread view that last year's battle over the corporation's plans to set up 68 local internet TV stations, and the ultimate defeat of those plans by a powerful regional press lobbying operation, probably represented the apex of the trajectory he describes.

Media Guardian has the full pdf of Mr Bradshaw's speech here.

Reverse publishing boon from hyperlocal project

A couple of months back we covered the launch of the new LocalPeople.co.uk sites in the South West by Associated Northcliffe Digital.

Now AND's director of strategy Roland Bryan has given an update on how the initiative is going in an interview with PaidContent which makes interesting reading.

Roland says that although LocalPeople wasn't designed solely as a community news platform, around 1,500 individual contributors have already posted something on the sites, with 12 user-generated stories finding their way into Northcliffe's print titles.

The initiative is due to be reviewed at the end of the year, but Roland says there’s no question that LocalPeople.co.uk will make money, “unless something very strange happens to our user numbers.”