Welsh regional news bidders line up for 'beauty contest'

I felt a surprising sense of deja vu attending yesterday's public meeting in Cardiff at which the three bidders for the contract to supply ITV's news service in Wales paraded their wares.

The event at the Welsh capital's Millennium Centre was oddly reminiscent of the beauty parades I attended when ITV franchises were up for renewal, and rivals competed for the prize with promises to local politicians and special interest groups that one doubted they would ever deliver.

This flashback took the gloss off what I had half hoped might be a demonstration of the creativity unleashed by the so-called element of contestability, with ideas pitched competitively.

The haste of this process, the race against the clock to agree and sign the contracts by March ahead of the general election, also worries me.

In the current climate, public money is a highly desirable commodity, and the winner can make their return from a management fee. High-level lobbying is undoubtedly under way in a bid to push through the three independently funded news consortia (IFNC) pilots – the others being in Scotland and the north-east of England and the Borders – and other publicly backed Digital Britain-type pilots.

Similar meetings are being held to discuss the other two IFNC pilot contracts in Newcastle tomorrow, and then Glasgow, on Monday. In total £40m of public funding is up for grabs.

At stake in Wales is a contract worth £12m of public money, for a two-year pilot. But the pilot will require more public funding to survive, so the commitment could be open ended.

All three bidders for the Welsh franchise promise news websites and provision for citizen journalists to publish stories, and says they will allow news feeds to be re-versioned by other publishers.

Yesterday's meeting was packed. The three bidders, who spent the morning presenting detailed proposals to the selection panel behind closed doors, were given just seven minutes each to make their pitches to the audience.

Lack of time meant the rival bidders had to concentrate on high-impact videos and broad-brush plans. This left the audience, ranks swollen with lobbyists, a mere 30 minutes to pose questions.

It was the first chance to examine the proposals and meet the decision-makers, after the selection panel, chaired by Richard Hooper, former deputy chairman of Ofcom, was set up on 7 January, going on to publish a shortlist of eight approved bidders for the three pilots on 13 January. The selection panel includes Stewart Purvis, the former chief executive of ITN and now Ofcom executive, who has pioneered the proposal. Also advising on the process is Robin Foster, another former Ofcom executive.

Looming over the whole process is the general election. We already know that Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, vehemently opposes the pilots, and has said he will scrap them if possible.

His alternative idea of local, city-based local multimedia news operations doesn't seem at all suited to a more rural and decentralised area, such as Wales.

But supposing the contracts are signed, what will happen if the Conservatives win and Hunt can't scrap them, but he doesn't want them to continue?

Along with Conservative opposition, there is also the question of whether the new regime at ITV, Archie Norman and Adam Crozier, will support the proposal.

The winners of all three pilots have to take on existing ITV news staff. It emerged yesterday in Cardiff that ITV has, as yet, not provided details of staff numbers. It also has to draw up a draft contract for the pilot providers because it will be responsible for compliance.

A government spokesman has pointed out that a decision on whether contracts can be signed will be taken by the Cabinet Office. I suspect that is code for saying they won't go ahead.

Rival bidders for the ITV Wales news pilot

Tinopolis

The Welsh independent producer said the core of its offering will be a news website, Wales 24, the focus for news stories and feedback from the public. Tinopolis promises that reporters will cover the whole of Wales, which it says is not being reported or reflected accurately.

The question mark against Tinopolis is whether it has the hard news credentials to make a mark. The company's main programmes for Wales are topical daily magazine shows for S4C – although it also owns the London-based documentary and current affairs specialist, Mentorn, which makes Question Time.

Ron Jones, the Tinopolis chairman, does not think the IFNCs will ever make a profit and will require continued public money.

Taliesin News

Named after a 6th century Welsh poet, Taliesin is a grand alliance of ITN, with ITV Wales news staff, independent producer Boomerang, Newsquest, Northcliffe Media, Town & Country Broadcasting, owners of several radio stations in Wales, and the media departments of four Welsh Universities.

The bid is chaired by Clive Jones, a former ITV director of news, and ex chairman of GMTV. "We offer the very best of the old with the best of the new, quality professional journalism plus citizen journalism," he said.

Taliesen promises to place TV journalists in newspaper newsrooms, and establish a fund to train up members of the public.

The problem it faces is that the existing ITV Wales news bulletin performs poorly.

UTV and NWN Media

This bid, an outsider's challenge, is headed by Michael Wilson, managing director of UTV, the ITV franchise for Ulster.

Yesterday they were hard hitting and openly critical of the status quo in Wales, unlike Tinopolis's implied criticism. Wilson said UTV would transfer the techniques of its much more successful regional news service in Northern Ireland, which had a 34% audience share, double that of ITV Wales.

The bidder's video included a vox pop, in which Welsh people pointed out that north Wales is always left out of the news agenda. It already has a Wales Live website up and running.