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BBC drops local video plans

Last Modified: 21 Nov 2008
By: Newsroom blogger

Two BBC rows - over the Jonathan Ross phone calls and the corporation's proposals to create a local video network - are on the agenda at the morning meeting.

Ross-Brand-Granddaughter-gate rears its head in the running order again. The findings of the BBC's inquiry into the lewd phone calls made by top talents Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand to actor Andrew Sachs are revealed today.

Ross's £6m salary has fuelled ire about how the corporation should be spending its licence-fee-funded budget.

But there's another - arguably more interesting - BBC story to look at: the fate of the corporation's plans to launch a network of local news websites with video content. It is announced this morning that the BBC Trust has rejected the plans.

'One of the things that explains the BBC's predicament is they had the whole print media turning against them.'

Why have they been so controversial?

"It's £68m free content - at a time when local newspapers are cutting jobs massively and trying to diversify themselves into video."

"The newspaper stuff is germane to the Ross situation: one of the things about the Ross story that explains the BBC's predicament is that they had the whole print media turning against them.

"Why are they turning against them? It's a big commercial battle.

"Local newspaper groups are all shedding staff and the BBC is doing this - the Ross story must be manna from heaven."

It's not just newspapers baring their teeth. Yesterday retail boss Sir Philip Green - invited on Radio 4's Today programme to discuss his own business - turned the tables and questioned interviewer John Humphreys about how the BBC would cope in a downturn, if it were reliant on ad revenues.

We hope to speak to Sir Michael Lyons, head of the BBC Trust, which is meant to act as an independent overseer of the BBC.

'Should the BBC be doing this kind of thing - should it be competing with commercial rivals?'

But can we tie the two stories together - or do we need to pick one or the other?

"Unless the report says Ross is sacked - which I don't think it will - it'll end up being stuff about long-winded compliance procedures."

"Lyons is the anchor between them."

"I think Ross and Brand is also part of the thing about, should the BBC be doing this kind of thing - should it be competing with commercial rivals?"