New Attempts to Curb BBC News Delivery

A new twist to the battle between commercial newspaper publishers and the BBC has appeared in the call by the Newspaper Publishers Association to block the BBC from extending its iPhone news applications, which provide news free on a mobile phone.

Arguing that the launch of free news and sport applications by the BBC would damage the commercial market for news application, the NPA called on the BBC Trust to stop this development pending a ‘Public Value Test’ given the ‘unique and narrow commercial space’ provided by Apple’s iPhone Apps to commercial news providers.

Claiming that the BBC was preparing to muscle into a developing market and ‘trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers’, David Newell for the NPA echoed Rupert Murdoch and argued that the corporation’s on-line presence was a key obstacle to the development of paid-for models for online content provision.

Some time ago the NPA was successful in blocking an attempt by the BBC to launch a network of local news sites, claiming that this would impinge on their own plans in this area.

Critics of the NPA would point out that the only result of this has been to block improvements to local coverage that would undoubtedly have resulted from the BBC’s move into this area.

We are still waiting for the services to appear from local commercial providers. It seems however that it will be a very long wait.

BBC news is already provided free via several applications that can be downloaded at no cost  from the iTunes store, and free news feeds are available from most BBC web sites

The state of the UK Local Media – facts and figures

In their discussion document Local and Regional Media in the UK Ofcom outline some interesting figures in terms of the state of the UK media. They tell us:

In Radio there are

• 80 commercial local radio operators, managing approx 300 services
• A growing number of community radio services – 200 have been licenced to date with over 150 already broadcasting
• Two radio groups own 40 percent of local radio stations

In Newspapers there are:

• 90 regional and local newspaper publishers
• 1300 titles
• Five newspaper groups control about 70% of local ownership

Local Television

• One company (ITV) holds all Channel 3 licences in England and Wales

Ofcom also tell us that in the UK:

• Regional TV news is watched at least once a day by four fifths of adults
• Half of all adults listen to local radio or read a free paper at least weekly
• Two fifths read a paid for local paper at least weekly
• One in five use local commercial news websites

What about the Internet?

• A third of adults with broadband say they use local websites at least weekly
• The internet is the main source of news for just 6 percent of people

The Kindle – only a threat to books, not newspapers?

That certainly seems to be the view of BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. Trying out Amazon’s new Kindle ‘moving global, but still only available from the USA’, he found it very easy to use: “Plug it in, charge it, download your first book and you’re away. Then subscribe to a digital edition of a newspaper and it is wired to you in the morning, via the Kindle’s “whispernet” 3g connection.”

He believes that its strong point is its integration with the Amazon store and suggests they are looking to Apple’s iTunes as an example of what can be done using download technology.

He was impressed with the experience of it all: “When I started reading, it felt pretty close to the paper experience. There’s no glare on the Kindle’s screen, so you get simple black text on a cream background, with just enough added bells and whistles. You can make digital notes, search the text, and, if you fall asleep with the book on your face as is my wont, it will remember which page you were on when you turn it on again.”

Having said this, he doesn’t believe that newspapers should feel under threat, the way way book sellers eventually might. This is because reading a book is an ‘analogue’ experience (he probably meant ‘linear’), starting at page one and continuing till the finish. “A newspaper, on the other hand, is more random, more interactive. I scan the sections and leap from one article to another, much as I do on the web. That’s what is already available to me – for free – on newspaper websites, so why would I pay for a less satisfactory digital newspaper?”

Mail on-line most read UK brand worldwide

For world-wide readers of UK newspapers, the Mail on-line continued to be the most read brand in July of this year with 29.9 million global readers, according to the Press Gazette’s ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) figures.

For readers based in the UK however, the Guardian remains the favorite on-line site, with 9.9 million unique readers – on a worldwide scale they have a reader base of  27 million.

Current ABC circulation figures for hard copy National Broadsheets were:

Dailies:

Daily Telegraph: 814,087, down 5.4 per cent

The Times: 576,185, down 6.0 per cent

Financial Times: 395,845, down 5.2 per cent

The Guardian: 311,387, down 6.4 per cent

The Independent: 187,837, down 18.3 per cent

Daily Sunday papers:

The Sunday Times: 1,164,831, down 0.72 per cent

The Sunday Telegraph: 599,131, down 3.1 per cent

The Observer: 361,761, down 12 per cent

Independent on Sunday: 160,809, down 18.3 per cent