---

Local Media

I am delighted to welcome my hon. Friend, the new Member for Hove, who has had a distinguished career in the film industry. I went down to Hove to support him during the election and got into trouble with the Daily Mirror as a result, but I will not go into that. I like to think that my visit contributed substantially to my hon. Friend's impressive victory, and I will certainly drop him an e-mail about my definition of super-fast broadband. After deregulation and broadband roll-out, the third strand is our major announcement on strong public-service local television. Bizarrely, this country has had no real local television. As I am sure right hon. and hon. Members will point out, when they turn on their local news it is, in effect, regional news, and regional news can be wholly irrelevant to one's local area. As an Oxfordshire MP, I am used to getting news from Southampton and other places, which are fantastic, but the news is not entirely relevant to where I live. Things are very different in America and western Europe, where local television thrives. A local television network, enabled by a new regulatory regime, could form a core plank of local journalism and local democracy in a thriving multi-platform local media ecosystem. If the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) wishes to put down a parliamentary question, I will give him a definition of multi-platform local media ecosystem. The Government's focus is on making new local media models commercially viable. We believe that local television has the potential to revitalise local media markets with new cross-media models, and as a new platform for reaching local audiences. Before I go into further detail, I want to stress that regional news will remain, for both ITV and STV, an obligation on the channel 3 licence holders. Our vision for local TV is in addition to existing regional news services. We are looking at the potential for existing public-service content providers in the nations and regions to play a role locally.