Providing quality information to local communities in order to improve public life is at the core of the BBC purpose. The Trusts's decision shows that they have lost touch with the founding principles of Reith. I wholeheartedly agree with this article, the kiss-n-tell gossip of the local online rag wasn't relevant to the BBC's proposal. They missed the point.

Well, how interesting. For a start, I, as a licence payer, isnt everyone… didnt know the BBC Trust has only been in existence for 2 years.. we.. WE pay for it I guess.. DO WE NEED yet another overblown body to tell others what to do?
Trusts are usually heirachies that say THEY arent to blame, and tell the underlings off.. BUT HOW MUCH? This is more rediculous than planning to sell the studio resources off.. was THAT their idea too? WHAT is left of the BBC and what are we paying for?
I bet many still dont know the BBCs trasmitter network was sold to a texan concern in 1997? They bragged about it, but.. WHERE did that money go? Shareholders? Whole things stinks and they carry on and we pay more.. apparently via Capita, do they still collect the licence money? WHY??
I was a tv service engineer on the other end of the trade.. not being able to answer to my customers asking why does their sound go up and down.. IT STILL DOES and BBCNews.. someone cant get the balance or the mic switching right even now. WORLD CLASS..?? Or is it all digital now and is that why? So now its the TRUST and not THE BOARD is it…more and more expense.. and less production…..............

There seems to be a commentator consensus that regional newspaper publishers are miserly dinosaurs while the BBC is a thrusting innovator that is being unfairly shackled.
It tends to sidestep the fact that the BBC has a fat guaranteed income stream that isn't being cannablised by moving from a paid content model to free to view, or being diminished by smaller per reader advertising rates online compared to print, or being decimated by the move of key classified income to advertiser-owned websites (particularly in property).
Ad-supported content depends on a critical mass of users to be viable. The BBC - with massive free cross-media promotional power - can capture those users and prevent anyone else entering the market without needing to worry about how to pay for it in the interim. How much would it cost for a commercial outfit to buy the kind of free advertising doled out to the iPlayer?
The proposed supply of video material to newspaper sites was of a selection of finished, branded packages; how generous to allow newspapers to give free advertising - and distributed bandwith - to the BBC and to become reliant on them for content. (And Nick Davies worries about churnalism and relying on single agency sources…)
The Where I Live / Local sites have already been largely disbanded, removing cinema, events listings and other content that was already provided commercially. What is left is generally shallower and more feature-driven then most newspaper sites.
The core reason the Trust gave for it's preliminary view was not, though, about the commercial impact.
It said that audiences would not be well served by the development - it didn't reflect the demands of the existing audience and wouldn't be attractive to new, younger, audiences.
It is £68m that could be better spent elsewhere to benefit the majority of licence fee payers, not indulge the fetishes of BBC management.

Spot on, Robert. This is a massive missed opportunity for the old media industry to benefit from the BBC's competence and experience. If they had lobbied for a partnership giving them access to BBC content they might finally have had some must-see local video on their sites - for free.

A strange message is being sent here about how Ofcom and the BBC Trust view the BBC's role. Contrary to what today's ruling suggests, the BBC is not a TV or radio broadcaster, it's a multi-platform content creator and distributor, and a world-leading one at that. It could also provide platform opportunities to less well-funded content partners.  But that's less likely now, and it's the end users, the audience, who will miss out.