Mark Thompson announces plans for local television pilot in West Midlands

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson has outlined plans to pilot a new local television news service, designed to serve individual cities and counties across the UK.
The trials will start in September 2005 in five different areas of the West Midlands.
Speaking at a CBI lunch in Birmingham on March 18, Mr Thompson announced that the pilot scheme would use the latest broadcasting technology to create different kinds of local television news on broadband and digital satellite television, on digital cable and possibly on remote devices such as mobile phones.
The pilots will run in the following areas: Herefordshire and Worcestershire; Stoke and Staffordshire; Shropshire; Coventry and Warwickshire; and the BBC WM editorial area, including Birmingham.
Mr Thompson said: "They will be as local as our radio services, serving individual cities, conurbations and counties."
The linear service will be a rolling interactive service running on digital satellite television, with each of the services available at fixed points within each hour, accessed via the red button on viewers' remote controls.
The same regularly updated sequences of up to ten minutes' duration will also be available instantly on demand: on the internet, on broadband TV, or even via mobile phones.
Mr Thompson said: "Our aim is to create a new model of local television, centred on news, information and community partnerships and we will work with public, private and voluntary sector partners to build and sustain the pilot service.
"We will also aim to use our viewers' own contributions in new ways, and one producer in each area will work exclusively on developing networks of local contributors and community correspondents."
For the past three years the BBC's Nations and Regions have been working increasingly with the latest video cameras and computer editing systems, enabling more journalists to go out on the road and cover more stories for the regional news programmes.
Mr Thompson added: "The potential of this new technology can now be harnessed, with the advent of Local TV.
"We'll put small teams of journalists into each area to record many more stories - and we'll be able to use them all."
Once the pilot scheme is completed a rigorous appraisal will be conducted, including its market impact in the West Midlands.
Subject to these tests and a formal review by the BBC Governors, the BBC then hopes to introduce around 60 similar services across the UK, as a key part of its Out of London strategy.
This strategy was first outlined in Building Public Value, the BBC's manifesto for the next Charter period, published in June 2004.
(GB)