Industry reactions to the rejection of the BBC’s £68 million proposal to add video bulletins to its 65 BBC Local sites…

—BBC management statement: “Management believed that the local video proposal would strengthen the BBC’s news coverage for local communities and deliver real value for licence fee payers ... The BBC Trust challenged BBC management to instead improve its existing services to ensure audiences across the UK see a better reflection of their local communities. That is a challenge we will pursue with vigour. We will consider a range of options for how we can best achieve this and will return to the trust in due course.” That task will fall to future media and technology director Erik Huggers.

—Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI) CEO Sly Bailey: “We are delighted that the BBC Trust and Ofcom have recognised and confirmed our view that BBC Local plans would have posed a severe threat to the commercial regional and local media marketplace. We can now continue to invest without the fear that a publicly funded giant would be duplicating already existing services. However, we will still be seeking assurances from the BBC Trust that the BBC will not be overstepping the boundaries of their current Service Licence by launching new hyperlocal map-based news services.”

—Newspaper Society director David Newell: “We are pleased that the BBC Trust and Ofcom have responded to the industry’s concerns and rejected the BBC Local Video plans for the time being. This is a proposal which the BBC should never have made and would have severely reduced consumers’ media choice and the rich tapestry of local news and information provision in the UK. We will be seeking an urgent meeting with the secretary of state to discuss the future roles of the BBC, BBC Trust and Ofcom and the current challenges facing regional and local media. We must be on our guard to ensure that the BBC is not allowed to expand its local services by alternative means.” Newell led the fight against BBC Local on behalf of the 1,300 papers and 1,100 websites the society represents.

—Radio Centre CEO Andrew Harrison: “We are pleased that, in looking at the evidence presented to it by RadioCentre, Ofcom and other stakeholders, the Trust has reached a sensible conclusion. Local communities already receive valuable local news and information from 320 commercial radio stations spread across the UK; the introduction of a publicly funded service of this nature would have had a devastating effect on these small local businesses.” The umbrella body had jumped on to the newspaper lobby’s campaign and came up with the same argument - that BBC Local would threaten to kill local radio stations.

—National Union of Journalists general secretary Jeremy Dear: “This decision is a missed opportunity to improve local news for communities around the country. Local papers are closing and job cuts mean thousands of journalists don’t have the time to do their jobs properly anymore. ITV (LSE: ITV) is withdrawing from its regional and local news commitments. Against a significant decline in local journalism, here was an opportunity to take a small step in the opposite direction by actually enhancing local news provision ... Newspaper employers have spent years taking huge profits out of local media whilst cutting jobs. Now they have helped stop new jobs being created because they said such competition would stifle their investment. Now is the time for them to put their money where their mouth is and invest more in local journalism - in jobs, in training and in resources for hard-pressed newsrooms.” Ironically the only cheerleader for the proposal, the NUJ’s support put it out of step with the local newspapers that are its membership base.

—Guardian Media Group regional new media head Paul Lomax: “Phew!” GMG’s regional unit owns Manchester Evening News. (Disclaimer: ContentNext is owned by Guardian News & Media).

—University of Central Lancashire digital journalism tutor Andy Dickinson: (1) “The BBC dumping local video plans means the local media now have to make good on all the grandstanding they did about video.” (2) “It could have been the mainstream newspapers benefiting from the Beeb’s plans.”

—JupiterResearch analyst Nick Thomas: “Telling news websites they can’t include video is just weird. And won’t magically make local papers’ efforts any good.”

—BBC Wales controller Menna Richards: Job losses coming as a consequence: “What we were hoping, because we have to meet very testing savings targets, the creation of new jobs would allow us to redeploy some staff to BBC Local, that will not now be available to us; we are going to have to look at it (redundancies).”

• BBC Trust Rejects £68 Million Online Local Video Proposal
• Comment: BBC Local Ruling Won’t Save Local Press, Will Constrain BBC