Local papers whinge approximately the BBC,and the BBC approximately the over-75 squeeze on licence fees. Clipping the corporation’s digital wings would be a neat solutionThe press and the BBC seem locked in eternal enmity (ill will; hatred; hostility) because the Beeb’s sort-of-free website harms press website growth. Is a peace treaty possible? The BBC offers to catch on 100 extra reporters to back local papers report things such as council and court proceedings. Local papers decline the offer but, after a while, or request for £14m of licence fee cash a year so they can catch on 364 extra reporters to do the council-and-courts stint themselves. It’s a dialogue of the deaf.
Meanwhile James Harding,head of (bad budgetary) news at the BBC, sees £80m of the licence-fee money he depends on vanishing as the over-75 squeeze comes on. What can possibly proceed? Perhaps the BBC News Channel, or churning round the clock. Perhaps Five Live will die rather live. Perhaps local radio news must lose its sense of locality or community. But there is another way that might also mean peace in Harding’s time,so far as the snarling dragons of Fleet Street and the local press are concerned.
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Source: theguardian.com